Second Sunday after Epiphany
Penelope Bridges
The season after Epiphany is a season of revelation: that’s what an Epiphany is, a revelation, in this case the revelation to the world of Jesus as the Messiah. Sunday by Sunday we are learning who Jesus is by the public acts he does. In today’s Gospel St John introduces Jesus to the world with this miracle at a wedding in his home town of Cana. In our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures Isaiah prepared the way for us to hear this good news, foretelling the revelation of God’s sovereignty and ultimate reconciliation with and among all humanity.
The miracle of water becoming wine is the first of seven signs that John describes in his Gospel, signs that tell us who Jesus is. In fact the whole first half of this Gospel is known as the Book of Signs. Other signs will include healing people, calming the waves, raising Lazarus: life and death situations; but John starts here, with Jesus saving the day at a party, a communal celebration of unity. And that is not an accident.
In 1983 I was married in the parish church of an English village. I sang in the church choir, but I didn’t know a lot of people, and our wedding reception was small because we didn’t have a lot of money. But when I walked into the back of the church for the ceremony I was astonished to find the church full. Everyone had come out to celebrate with us. The elderly couple who had sold us their house were seated in the back pew – and they weren’t even members of the church.
Similarly, in the ancient near east, a wedding was the high point of village life. Everyone came to the celebration, and it went on for days. In that world, everyone had a sacred obligation to take care of the stranger at the door. Hospitality was a fundamental value. The story of Sodom in Genesis is actually about the abuse of hospitality, regardless of what some would say about it. It was incumbent on hosts to provide all that their guests might want, without giving any hint that it might be a hardship or that resources might be strained. This being so, what could be worse than running out of wine at a wedding?
This story teaches us something about God’s extravagant hospitality, of abundance beyond our imagination. When Jesus rescues the situation, he doesn’t just provide enough wine: he provides something like 180 gallons of wine – enough to fill a jacuzzi. And it’s really good wine too.
The miracle starts with water. Water is the basis of life, both physical and spiritual; it is a substance both ordinary and essential. The trash-can-sized jars of water are there for ritual purposes, ready for the wedding guests to purify themselves before they eat. In a time when water wasn’t safe to drink, wine was the basic beverage, usually well diluted. Wine was regarded as a blessing by God’s people. To be able to grow vines, to harvest grapes, to make and enjoy wine was a gift of peaceful times, of prosperity, of faithfulness to God. Christian doctrine adds another layer of meaning, as we use wine in the Eucharist to symbolize blood, the blood of Jesus that was shed for us; and blood was regarded as sacred by God’s ancient people, so sacred that they were forbidden to eat meat with the blood still in it. So this first sign of the divinity of Jesus carries layer upon layer of significance. An abundance of life-giving water, reserved for religious purposes, transformed into an over-abundance of excellent wine, so that people might celebrate life together, in community.
The ironic thread that runs through this first half of John’s Gospel is that the world doesn’t get who Jesus is. Over and over people fail to recognize that the Messiah they have longed for is right there in front of them. The mother of Jesus knows though, and she has a crucial role here, as she encourages him to act. She nudges him: they are out of wine. She knows who he is and what he can do, and she pushes him to live fully into his calling. It’s the only time Mary shows up in this Gospel before the crucifixion, but she has a lot to teach us in this cameo appearance.
When Mary tells Jesus, “They are out of wine,” he initially pushes back – not my problem, not now! Why is Jesus initially reluctant to act? Why does God delay, in solving world hunger, putting out wildfires, ending war? Mary’s faith in her son shows us how important it is to pray for deliverance, to bother God, to pray without ceasing. We may not understand why bad things happen, but we must continue to ask for God’s intervention. And it is Mary who teaches us this with her gentle intervention. She tells the waitstaff, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Now there is an instruction for all of us. Do whatever Jesus tells you. Listen to him: doing what Jesus tells us to do can result in amazing outcomes, as we will read in the rest of the Gospel: healings, abundance, life renewed and transformed. Listening to Jesus will result in our recognition of his presence and God’s grace in the ordinary miracles of our lives.
The waitstaff do as Jesus tells them. Jesus acts. And the water becomes wine just as soon as the jars are filled to the brim.
When one of the waiters takes a sample of the wine to the maître d’ , he assumes that the bridegroom supplied this good wine and can’t understand why he held off on serving it until people were half drunk. Only the servants know that the wine was miraculously supplied by Jesus. The people who did what he told them, servants way down low on the social ladder, people not even noticed by most of the guests; they, along with the close friends of Jesus, are granted the revelation. They alone have witnessed to his power. And the party goes on, the guests and hosts oblivious to what has just happened. As so often in Scripture, it is the little people whom God favors with grace.
We may wonder if it is appropriate to be joyful in the midst of this broken world. This story tells us that yes it is. We need moments of light, moments of celebration, moments of humor, to keep us going when times are grim. If we forget how to smile and laugh, we will forget how to be fully human. The most memorable moments at a funeral are the affectionately humorous anecdotes a loved one shares with the gathered mourners. The world is in a mess, there’s no denying it, but we can rejoice today, because we are beloved and forgiven. We have an amazing vocation: we are called to bring new life to the world, to lift up the fallen, to comfort the broken-hearted, to speak truth to power and to call for positive change, to turn water into wine.
So we celebrate the Eucharist every week. We schedule winter socials and hymn sings. We don’t just have an annual parish meeting, but we gather for lunch first. We plan for our Zydeco Mass on Shrove Tuesday and Ashes to Go on Ash Wednesday. We look for God’s grace in the darkness. We give thanks for God’s goodness in the face of tragedy and disaster. We practice radical hospitality. We focus on abundance rather than scarcity, abundance of love, abundance of blessing, abundance of possibility.
When we invite Jesus into our lives and celebrations, God’s abundance is immeasurable. We are blessed more than we might imagine, more than we deserve. Abundance isn’t about having lots, although that is certainly part of this story. It’s also about fullness of life, about the surprise of just how much God loves us, about being surprised by joy. Just as Jesus does his first miracle at a celebration that joins two families together, so we are called to do amazing things in his name, things that will bring people together and create the conditions where new life can thrive.
This is how, in the words of today’s collect, we will bring the light of Christ to the world, shining with the reflected radiance of Christ’s glory, so that he may be known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth. Amen.
.
