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Wedding at Cana

THE GREAT WEDDING

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Preached at Good Shepherd, Berkeley, CA

Second Sunday after Epiphany, January 16, 2022

Year C: Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 36:5-10; I Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11

The reading we heard this morning from Isaiah has a kind of irresistible beauty and delight. The salvation of Zion, of the human society of this world, comes in the form of a marriage with God, a reunion of God with humanity. After eons of estrangement, uncertainty, suspicion, disappointment, and longing, we at last find our peace with God and with ourselves. 

“You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,

and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. . . . 

and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,

so shall your God rejoice over you.”

It’s such a hope-filled passage. No wonder people long used the new names given here to Zion as personal names—even if they seem old-fashioned now: Hephzibah, “my delight is in her,” and Beulah, “Married.” 

“Your love, O God,” as the psalmist truly says, “reaches to the heavens and your faithfulness to the clouds.” And, for that matter, to the ground under our feet and even into our own well-defended hearts. This good news sometimes seems absurdly far from our current reality. But it’s always there, waiting behind the scenes till we’re ready to notice it and give ourselves to it in whatever way we can. 

It’s no accident that our gospel story this morning takes place at a wedding. John the Evangelist certainly means much more by this story of the wedding at Cana than just a casual narrative. He warns us in advance, when he begins, “On the third day”—nudge! nudge! wink! wink!—just like another important event later on in the story, the resurrection. “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee. . . . ” The wedding . . . the resurrection . . . they’re both part of God’s great reunion with humanity.

Now, John’s Gospel can be difficult to follow. That’s partly because everything in the book seems to point to something beyond itself. John says as much when he tells us that this miracle at Cana “was the first of [Jesus’] signs.” It’s a sign; it’s pointing at something greater than itself.

Let’s see how the story goes then. “The mother of Jesus was there.” She will have had family connections or, at the least, a long-term friendship with this family. And Jesus is invited, too—and not just Jesus, but also his disciples, even though they were essentially strangers to the the family in Cana. The new couple are happy to have the world share in their joy.

But then—the wine gives out! How terribly embarrassing for these people! This wasn’t a world where you could send a groomsman out to pick up another case or two of wine. What they had was what they had. And Mary doesn’t want to see these people she loves shamed. So she says to her son, “They have no wine.” Just a comment, right? Well, Jesus seems to think it was more than just a comment. His response is to say, “Not our problem.” Or, as our translation this morning put it: “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?” “Woman,” in English, sounds like a rude way of addressing one’s mother, but it doesn’t feel that way in Greek. It’s really more like “Ma’am” in English(good enough even for the Queen of England, right?) “Ma’am, what business is that of ours?”

And then he goes further, “My hour has not yet come.” That’s odd. Why would he not want to perform a miracle for them? I think he didn’t want to get a reputation for that sort of thing. I mean, would anybody still want to sit patiently and listen to his teaching then? Or would they all just throng up to get their miracles? The other gospels tell us that Jesus did get overwhelmed at times and to escape to the wilderness. And yet, he was wrong to say that his hour hadn’t yet come. John’s told us that this is happening on the third day, Easter, the day of fulfillment! And every day is a third day to some other day! Every day is capable of being part of the eternal reunion of God and humanity. The hour for Jesus to begin reconciling God and humanity is always now!

Is your head spinning yet? Reading John can be like that. But here’s where we are after just four verses of this story: Jesus wasn’t planning to do miracles this early in his ministry. And yet, there was a serious problem here—how to save the honor of these kind people and the joy of the wedding. And what is Jesus in the world for, anyway? To bring about a marriage—the great marriage between humanity and God. Mary knows what’s going through his mind. And she gives him a little extra push when she says to the servants—in his hearing—”Do anything at all that he tells you.” And they must have great respect for her, because they do, even though they must have thought that hauling this vast quantity of water was truly stupid.

And then I think about that poor servant who had to take a sample of the water to the chief steward. Was he dreading a tongue-lashing for playing a stupid joke at a very awkward moment. Or could he detect from the bouquet what he was actually brining. In any case, the steward, clearly a wine expert, as his task demanded, is blown away. “Oh, wow! this is the really good stuff? Why have you been keeping it back all this time?” And the bridegroom doesn’t know what’s going on. The chief steward doesn’t know what’s going on. The guests don’t know what’s going on. All they know is that wine is one of the blessings of God’s creation, and this wine is really good wine. And they rejoice and give thanks.

So Jesus succeeds in performing a miracle and ensuring that the joy of the wedding is not interrupted without anybody knowing about it. Well, the servants know, but they’re servants. Who’s going to believe that wild tale? Easier just to shrug it off as the rediscovery of some misplaced jugs. The disciples probably figured it out, because they’d been shadowing Jesus the whole time. But Jesus can still roam about the countryside without the pressure of immense crowds. 

And all these people had important roles to play, even the ones who had no idea what was going on. Mary’s intervention helped it all happen. When you find your self doubting the importance on intercession, this is the story to come back to. True, God doesn’t need to be told what we need. But God loves to see people joining together in love and caring for one another. It’s exactly what God longs to bring about. It prepares the way for the gift.

The servants were indispensable, too. They were just doing their ordinary work but, without that, it wouldn’t have happened. And they knew what had happened, but not how or why. They just knew God had something to do with it. Who but God created wine in the first place? Who but God could do it again, in an instant, with ordinary water? 

The steward of the feast was the herald who proclaimed the miracle, even though he didn’t know it was a miracle. He praised the quality of the wine and he noticed that it had appeared not at the expected time, but at a totally unexpected one. That, of course, means any time at all. You never know.

And even the guests played an essential part. They must have enjoyed that feast and the wine greatly and been moved by the goodness and generosity of God and of the people who made it possible. They rejoiced and gave thanks—exactly what needed dong.

Thus, in a perfectly ordinary year in Galilee—neither the best of times nor the worst of times—Jesus, at a wedding feast, created a foretaste of the life of the age to come. The salvation of Zion, the salvation of humanity, our salvation comes in the form of a marriage with God, a reunion of God with humanity. After however many eons of estrangement, uncertainty, suspicion, disappointment, and longing, we at last find our peace with God and with ourselves. And it isn’t just one great event at the resurrection in the last days. The third day can be any day. And when it does come to us, our job is to accept the gift of new wine, to share it, to rejoice in it.

“Your love, O God,” as the psalmist says, “reaches to the heavens and your faithfulness to the clouds.” And to us and to all the people God has made and loves so deeply.

FINE WINE AND OTHER GIFTS

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A sermon preached by Bill Countryman at Good Shepherd, Berkeley

Second Sunday After Epiphany, 1/20/2019

Readings (Year C): Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 36:5-10; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11.

Each year, on the Sundays after Epiphany, we hear gospel readings that tell of occasions when God shone with particular brightness through the life and ministry of Jesus. The marriage at Cana is a great example. It’s as if God’s creative power and imagination, the power and imagination that made this universe in the first place, suddenly blazed up again. Gallons and gallons of water becomes wine—and not just any wine, but the very best of wine! That’s an epiphany, for sure.

But there’s something else surprising here, too. In other miracle stories, the onlookers are all amazed, and there’s lots of talk and excitement. But in this story, almost nobody knows what happened. Mary knows. The servants who hauled the water in the first place and then ladled out the wine—they know. But the only thing anyone else knows knows is that the wine has suddenly gotten a whole lot better. 

It’s a wonderful story and a puzzling one, and we’ll come back to it later on. But first I want to turn our attention to the reading we heard from 1 Corinthians, where Paul tells us about gifts of the Spirit. It’s about epiphanies, too.

We’re familiar with the basic idea here.The Spirit lavishes all sorts of gifts on us when we’re gathered together as church—gifts that the church needs and, beyond just the church, gifts the world needs. And they all come from God’s Spirit, who is a generous—we could even say “profligate”—gift-giver. 

It’s easy to notice the people with the big, public gifts. This weekend commemorates Martin Luther King, Jr., who was certainly a great example. He had exceptional gifts of speech, of political savvy, of organization, of persistence, of bravery in a dangerous situation. And he placed them all at the service of the church and of the world, even at the price of his own death. 

Now, it may be easier to recognize the gifts of the Spirit in someone like Martin Luther King, Jr., but the same sort of thing happens, on a less dramatic stage, all around us. I’m very much aware how often I find myself blessed by the gifts of other people. People at Good Shepherd have been sharing the Spirit’s gifts with me for more than thirty years. It’s made my own life richer and more loving and hopeful, for which I’m deeply grateful. 

Everyone here has gifts to share. Maybe you’re quite conscious of what they are, maybe not. Maybe you’re even too modest to admit that you have any. Maybe you’re so impressed by other people’s gifts that you don’t properly esteem your own. Maybe circumstances just haven’t been quite right yet to let you see what your gifts are. But you can take it for granted that you have them because, as Paul says, that’s how the Spirit operates. And experience proves him right again and again. Remember that Martin Luther King didn’t change the world single-handed. It took the combined gifts of thousands of faithful people.

And these gifts of the Spirit are also gifts to us from Jesus—a way for Jesus to continue his ministry here and now. When we share our gifts with those around us, we become an epiphany of Jesus. Our gifts may seem a little humdrum compared to gallons and gallons and gallons of first-class wine. But they’re not. They, too, show the love of God being woven right into daily life and creating something wonderful in our very midst. 

Paul emphasized that the gifts of the Spirit are very closely tied to Jesus. Any prophetic spirit that couldn’t who say “Jesus is Lord” was automatically not the real article. Now, of course, it’s not really simple as having the right formula. Paul—Mr. “It’s the Spirit and not the letter”—certainly knew that. He was just responding to one form in which problems were arising in the church at Corinth.

The words can be used to cover something quite different from Jesus’ message of love. I’ve known people who shouted “Jesus is Lord” in loud voices and plastered it on the bumpers of their cars—not in order to share God’s love with the world but as a sign that they belonged to a religious in-group that was also burgeoning with political power and that they were confident that they were on the right side of everything—up to and including the Last Judgement. I think they’d forgotten Jesus’ Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, with its message about how surprised everybody is going to be at that day. 

What they missed was what is truly important in Jesus’ message: the love of God for everyone—a love that God hopes will inspire love in us, love for God and love for our neighbors. When we share our gifts with love, we become an epiphany. We give to others a glimpse of Jesus that is, at the same time, a glimpse of God. 

And just like the wedding at Cana, it won’t be visible to everybody. This isn’t a big, splashy epiphany. Jesus did that kind of thing, too. On the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, we’ll hear once again the story of the Transfiguration. Big, flashy epiphany, right? And, you know, it didn’t turn out all that well; the disciples couldn’t figure it out. 

What worked best for Jesus, as he brought the love of God to people, was the daily generosity of teaching and healing and feeding multitudes in the desert and dining with outcasts—even if, just for a nice change, he could also supply wine to a wedding feast that was running short. And most people never knew about it, but there were those servants who knew–knew that the house had been visited by God’s grace—and there was Mary, still coming to a deeper understanding of what God was doing in this child of hers. And that’s how the gift spreads. The blessing of being together in the church is that we get to see, in one another, Jesus’ epiphany still at work. 

The Jesus who revealed God’s power at Cana is present here today. This Holy Table is the wedding feast. And the Holy Spirit makes Jesus present here—both in the sacrament of bread and wine and also in the gifts she gives each of us to share with one another and with the world around us. Yes, we, when we are living in love, are an epiphany of God in our world.