Sermon for Epiphany 3
The Wedding at Cana - The Old is transformed to the New
There are some people who describe the miracle of Jesus
turning water into wine as a ‘luxury’ miracle. No one was healed, no one was
saved from an evil spirit, no one was raised from the dead, not even a touch
where someone feels the presence of God. All it seemed to achieve was saving
the family at Cana acute embarrassment.
But this is to miss the point of the story. It is at the beginning of John’s
gospel and gives insight into the entire meaning of the gospel. If John’s
gospel was a musical work, the story of the wedding at Cana would be the
overture, giving a foretaste of what is to come.
The story starts at the end of last weeks reading where Jesus tell Nathanael
that Nathanael will see angels ‘ascending and descending on the Son of Man’,
a reference back to Jacob’s dream where Jacob had seem a ladder or stairway
going from earth the heaven.
So Jesus has, in effect just told Nathanael, and us, that He is that ladder,
He Himself is the way of access between heaven and earth. Something in the
world order is changing.
The story now passes to Nathanael’s home village of Cana. And our gospel
reading begins, ‘On the third day…’
John is giving us a clue as to the magnitude of what is about to unfold. The
readers of this gospel would be fully aware of things that happen on the
third day. Death becomes life on the third day, the old world order if fully
superseded by the new world order on the third day, that which was hopeless
becomes a fount of hope on the third day. On the third day, there is a
wedding at Cana in Galilee
The very words that open the story evoke a picture of the old and the new
coming together. Jesus’s mother (the old world order) was there; Jesus and
the disciples (the new world order) had been invited. The old world order
has run out of wine. Run out of steam. Despite the best efforts of those
involved the old world order has been found lacking. Jesus’ mother, at this
point a link between the old and the new turns to Jesus and tells Him what
has happened.
Jesus replies that His time has not yet come, nor will it fully until
another story involving three days, but Mary can sense the new world order
is beginning and instructs the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them.
John notes were six stone jars there. The old world order is even referenced
in the past tense.
Jesus asks them to take the vessels that are normally used to hold the water
for ceremonial washing of the old world order of the law. He asks them to
fill them up with water, the water that would be used to cleanse themselves
so they were fit for entering into their rituals and engagement with God,
fill them up to the top. It doesn’t matter how full they are, they can be
full to overflowing in the old regime, they will never be adequate.
And then once they are full, Jesus simply says to draw some of it out and
take it to the master of ceremonies, the architriklinos (ruler of the three
couches, from the three couches and tables that were laid out at a Roman
banquet for people to set and eat from)
And we know that the water has been transformed into wine. The way in which
people came before God was transformed by the presence of Jesus.
In John’s gospel there are many references to water, springs, wells, basins,
and ultimately water flowing out of Jesus’ side. It’s often a symbol of the
raw material of our human nature.
In asking for the vessels to be filled up with water so that they can be
transformed into wine, Jesus is demonstrating that He can take the very
stuff of our human nature, all that we have been in our lives up to now, all
that we will be in the future, all our cares, all our concerns, all our
fears, and transform them by His very presence.
There was no great histrionics when the water was changed into wine and
there need not be great histrionics as Jesus transforms our lives. All He
asks is that we offer the very stuff of our lives to Him so that He can
touch it and transform it so that we can know the fullness of the other
third day. So that we can experience the intersection of the old world order
and the new world order in our lives, the intersection of heaven and earth
in our lives.
Jesus doesn’t take our old way of doing things, our old way of being, the
way we have been up until now and smash it to pieces, saying it’s worthless.
He asks us to expose it to Him so He can transform it by His touch and His
presence.
What He wants to do is fill what we are up to the full make and then
transform it. In this sense He does not want less of our human nature, He
wants more, He wants it all, so He can transform and us it and us for His
work and transform us so we can have a relationship with God through Him who
is the way of access to heaven.
When we come to church we are exposing ourselves to this transforming power.
God’s Spirit is with us in our churches as we come before Him week by week
so we are exposing ourselves to His transforming power and are transformed
as we do so. We may not feel very transformed, but that is what’s happening
to us.
The very thing He promised to Nathanael and that He demonstrates at the
wedding in Cana happens to us week by week as we expose our lives to the
transforming power of God and the new world order increasingly breaks
through in our lives.
There are two other points which John draws out in the story of the wedding
at Cana. He says that this is the first sign, the beginning, the ruling
principle, the overarching principle or sign of Jesus. A sign of
transformation, a sign that the new world order has come, a sign that the
way of access to God is not some abstract ladder in Jacob’s dream but Jesus
Himself as the Messiah, the Son of God.
And if this is the ruling principle of the signs that follow, the healings,
the walking on water, the raising of the dead, need to be understood in its
light. That Jesus takes the old world order and transforms it by His touch
and His Spirit. He did then and He does now.
John also tells us that in performing this sign that He revealed His glory –
a word that can also mean the weight or value of something or brightness. In
performing this first sign Jesus demonstrated His worth and the brightness
that had now come to a world in darkness.
It would not be until the next story of the third day that this full value
the brightness that overcame the darkness would be fully understood by the
disciples but we can see it now.
And as we allow Jesus to take the very stuff of out lives, as we expose it
to His transforming power, so His glory shines from us, perhaps not very
brightly sometimes, but shines nonetheless.