The Wedding at Cana (John 2)

“Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel of John, chapter 2, verse 11.

    

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     The first thing that catches my attention in today’s Gospel is the opening phrase, “On the third day there was a wedding.” On the third day? The third day from when? By my count, four days have already passed, from the opening of the Gospel to the beginning of today’s story of the wedding at Cana. The first day is the questioning of John the Baptist by the priests and Levites. On the second day John sees Jesus and declares him to be the Lamb of God. On the third day, John sees Jesus again, and again declares him to be the Lamb of God. On this day, Jesus speaks for the first time in John’s Gospel; he begins, interestingly, with a question. And the question is: What are you looking for? And also on this day, Jesus chooses his first disciples, Andrew and Simon Peter, or rather, they choose him by seeking him out, and Jesus accepts them. On the fourth day, Jesus goes to   Galilee, and chooses two more disciples, Philip and Nathanael.

     And so we come to the fifth day of the narrative, by my count, the day of the wedding, but the third day, according to the Gospel writer. We realize that the Gospel writer is thinking of the number of days from the calling of Andrew and Simon Peter, and the number of days from Jesus’s first words in the Gospel. The Gospel writer is also foreshadowing that other third day, the day of resurrection.

     It is significant that in John’s Gospel, the first miracle, the first sign, of Jesus, occurs at a wedding, a party. Here we see the Incarnate Lord rejoicing in a marriage, an earthly celebration, and helping the party along by producing more wine for the occasion. But even in this most earthly of celebrations, Jesus points to something beyond. The mother of Jesus says to him that the wine has run out, and he replies “What concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” This terse statement is a summary of a much longer conversation, and an introduction to the rest of the Gospel, which leads directly, to Jesus’s hour, to his death and resurrection.

     And how does Jesus answer his own question? With nothing like the remoteness and aloofness implied by this question, but by having the servants fill some giant stone jars with water, and transforming the water into wine. Our translation says that each jar holds the equivalent of twenty or thirty gallons. This must be quite a party! Simple arithmetic says that there are from 120 to 180 gallons of wine in these jars. That is a lot of wine, at least 750 bottles, as someone told me recently; it makes sense if there are many guests, several hundred perhaps, maybe the entire population of Cana. So this event is no quiet, discreet, formal dinner party for a few people, or even a formal banquet with a few dozen guests. No, this is a big, noisy, crowded affair, a real party with loud music and carrying on and more than a few rather drunk guests. In fact, today’s Gospel suggests that everyone is drunk! The steward says, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk.” The Gospel writer takes it for granted that everyone is inebriated. And Jesus has no anxiety about adding to the gaiety of the affair, by increasing the wine supply. The Incarnate Lord clearly does not separate himself from the joys of earthly life, any more than he separates himself from its sorrows.

     It is significant that the steward and the bridegroom don’t know where the wine has come from, although the servants, who witnessed the event, do know where it has come from. In other words, the first revelation, in this first sign in John’s Gospel, is to the servants, to the people of lowest status in the celebration. The important people, the bridegroom and the steward, are not aware of what has happened.  The teaching here is clear: the Lord is revealing himself to the lowest class of people. He is beginning with the people of low estate. Already Jesus has begun to upend our usual way of looking at the world.

      “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.” This is a straightforward statement, one that we’re used to, one that we’ve heard and read many times. But think for a moment about how odd it actually is. Producing a lot more wine for a large party that is already well lubricated is a very odd way to reveal his glory, but, there it is. The ordinariness of this is very striking. Glory in ordinariness, in a wedding party where the Lord is one of a very large number of guests. He’s almost invisible, really. We don’t know how many people actually noticed him, but the Evangelist says, “his disciples believed in him.” The Gospel does not say that anyone else believed in him, at least on this occasion. So this great revelation has strengthened the belief of at least a few people, his immediate followers.

     Now these disciples had previously believed in him enough to follow him when John the Baptist pointed Jesus out to them, or when Jesus called them personally. But that must have been a preparatory belief, because the Evangelist finds it necessary to say that, after the wedding party, his disciples believed in him. So there has been a change in them, a change in their belief, since their first encounters with Jesus, before the wedding.

     In chapter one of John’s Gospel, John the Baptist describes Jesus as Lamb of God and Son of God. The first disciples, however, when they meet Jesus, address him as Rabbi, Teacher, Messiah, King of Israel. But at the wedding at Cana, the disciples get a glimpse of Jesus as something more than these traditional titles suggest. They get a glimpse of Jesus himself as “the new wine,” a new revelation, the best wine. Just before today’s reading, Nathanael addresses Jesus as Son of God, and Jesus calls himself Son of Man. The wedding feast confirms this new belief, and widens the understanding of the disciples, beyond the traditional expectations which they brought to Jesus in the beginning. The disciples had been seeking a Teacher, a Messiah, a King. Now they are disciples of the Son of Man and Son of God, who includes in himself all the traditional expectations, and goes far beyond them.

They came to Jesus looking for old wine, and received, in addition, new wine.

     Where do we look for Jesus? What do we expect from him? Do we look for him in the ordinary, the unlikely, the unremarkable? Do we look for him in parties, perhaps? Would we notice him even if he were there? The story of Jesus is now so old, so much a part of our civilization, that perhaps our expectations of him are traditional, ancient, respectable even, just like the expectations of the disciples before the wedding at Cana. Perhaps we need a glimpse of something impossible, like the new wine at Cana, to encourage us to see him in a new way, in new situations. The disciples caught a glimpse of something new, something beyond their first hopes.

     Our task, it seems to me, is to be like the disciples at the wedding feast, eager and able to see, and to drink, the new wine which Jesus is putting before us. The disciples did not know what they were getting into, although they probably thought they did when they first met him. But events took a different path, and Jesus led them into a completely new situation, far beyond their first hopes. The new wine is not like the old. We need to be like the first disciples, ready to let go of our traditional expectations, and to be open to new possibilities which our Lord is putting before us.

     “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.