Wedding at Cana
This is the second week in a series on John that is going to lead into and through Lent and Easter to Pentecost. The one exception at this stage is next week, the First Sunday of Lent. On this Sunday we always read about Jesus 40 days in the wilderness and John does not have this story so we will be jumping into Mark for that.
I have decided to do this as the lectionary does not actually have a year for John. There are readings slipped into the years of Matthew, Mark and Luke, but I had a prompting this year, hopefully from God, that it would be good to spend some more solid time in John. It was good last week to get some feedback from people who are said they were looking forward to it. And I am too.
And this story is in John chapter 2. It follows on from last week’s story of the calling of the first disciples. It is the first of 7 miracles in John. But in this gospel these miracles are called signs because they each reveal something about Jesus and this revelation is more important than the miracle itself.
These miracles are all found between John chapter 2 and 10 and so this part of the gospel is known as the book of signs. These miracles cause increasing controversy culminating in the raising of Lazarus. After this sign the religious leaders will decide to kill Jesus and this launches the gospel into the second half of the gospel which focus on Jesus last week.
This sign does not have such dire consequences but this story has certainly caused its own controversies. Jesus, yet again is not conforming to the expectations of the 1st century nor the expectations of the 21st century.
Jesus is at a wedding with his disciples. His mother is also there. It doesn’t say who is getting married and their relationship to Mary and Jesus, only that they have run out of wine. As you have probably heard in previous sermons on this passage in 1st century Jewish culture this is social suicide for the new bride and groom and their families. Though I think it probably still is now. We are still pretty obsessed with the idea of the perfect wedding, an obsession fanned by consumer culture that particularly goes after our young girls.
And Mary notices. And so she goes to Jesus and she says, “they have no wine.”
This line is probably not the centrepiece of this passage. It is certainly not the climax of a story overflowing with 150 gallons of first-rate wine. But I think it a line we can all relate to. We have bought this line to Jesus before. They have no food. She has no home. He has no family. I have no more strength. This is Mary’s prayer of intercession. And as I struggle to reconcile a Bible story about abundance in a world that is so not ok I am grateful for it. I do not know how to turn water into wine but I know how to do this.
Jesus responds, “woman, what concern is that to you or to me, my hour has not yet come?”
This response is jarring. It many ways it comes across as disrespectful and dismissive. Personally, I have found that hard, but speaking to Ben about it this week, he said for him it made Jesus seem more human, more relatable that he too might have had a bad moment.
But the truth is we do not really know what was going on here.
Maybe it is dismissive. Maybe Jesus really is not concerned with how much wine is at that wedding and the social standing of the bride and groom and their desire for the perfect wedding. While, this may not be a particularly popular notion, maybe that’s ok. Maybe Jesus does not have to be concerned with what wine they (nor we for that matter) are drinking at the wedding or how popular everyone is at the end of it.
That is not to say we cannot bring these things to Jesus. Mary does, I do too, all the time. As many of you know, our car, after breaking down in Marla and costing us a fortune in tow truck bills died and we have had to get a new one. And so I have been putting lots of car prayers out there. And you know ultimately Jesus does in fact respond lavishly to Mary and I have to admit there have been many small blessings in car stress land for me too. And I am grateful. But perhaps Mary and I and possibly you too at times need to be reminded that Jesus is not our own personal genie in a bottle, obligated to act on our every wish. Jesus has his own time, his own agenda that we in fact need to get behind.
Or maybe there are other things going on in this conversation. Again I do not know but as I have reflected on this week in light of my own life I have wondered if perhaps Jesus genuinely wants to know what her concern is.
Perhaps it sound more like this, “woman, what concern is that to you?”
As someone who can get myself involved in and worrying about a whole lot of things that are not mine to get involved with I too sometimes need someone to ask me this question. There are endless needs in the world as we know and to concern ourselves with all of them will only lead to burn out. Perhaps Jesus is offering his mother the chance to let go of something. An idea I find reassuring.
But perhaps on establishing that it is a concern for her, for whatever reason, he acts because she asked. Perhaps this totally over the top, extravagant gesture on his part is as much for her as it is for everyone else. An affirmation of her ability to see the need around her, to care for others and for him, and to trust in him. We will not encounter Mary in the gospel of John again until Jesus is on the cross. Perhaps this is his gift to her before all the challenges begin.
Or another possibility, perhaps Mary is not concerned with the wine or social status of her friends or family either. Perhaps she has been watching Jesus grow and leave and gather his followers and now he has returned to this wedding and is stalling. Jesus I think knows that once he starts revealing himself to the world, his journey towards the cross, “the so called hour” also begins. With this in mind we can understand his desire to put that off. But maybe the hour has in fact come and Mary knows it. Perhaps she sounds more like this. “They have no wine.”
And perhaps somehow through this conversation, this God filled prompting from his mother, he too becomes aware that the time has come. He is able to realise what he must do and embraces it fully.
And so with all the hard stuff that is before him and those who will take the journey with him – the 12, his other disciples and his mother as well – he decides to begin it with this revelation of God’s abundant and overflowing grace. Jesus affirms that while he and they will be called to step into the world’s pain they are also called to celebrate. That pleasure and hospitality are also part of the discipleship journey. Perhaps he wants the disciples to know from the beginning that even though he will suffer and die and so will they, that what he is really bringing is joy and new life.
Again, I do not know if one of these is what was really happening or all of them or none of them or something completely different but whatever I love that there is conversation and that it matters.
Last week we talked about the complex and hard balance between grace and accountability. How do we offer the grace that is at the very heart of our faith, the hope that all people and all situations, no matter how hopeless and broken can indeed be transformed and redeemed. While at the same time acknowledge the pain that is caused by violence, corruption, oppression and exclusion and tell the truth about the trauma that is in our history. How do we ensure that grace never makes our communities, our institutions, our churches unsafe or offer abusive and corrupt leaders easy passage back to leadership?
Again here we are confronted with a complex and hard balance. How do we see the lavish, excessive, extravagant abundance of God as well as the great need in our world. How do we rejoice about all that is good and share and celebrate our joy together as well as lament over abject poverty. How do we hold divine abundance alongside the scarcity we so often feel as well?
Next week Lent begins. Lent is a time of prayer and fasting as we journey with Jesus to the cross. It is a time the church puts aside to reflect on some of the harder things of the faith journey and this is important I think. But as we do let us carry this story of abundance of wine at a wedding. This sign that reveals to us that ultimately what Jesus is bringing is transformation – of the ordinary into the sacred, fear into joy, of scarcity into lavish, excessive and extravagant abundance and of death into new life.
And so let us sing, all who are thirsty, come to the fountain, dip your heart in the streams of life, Let the pain and the sorrow be washed away, in the waves of his mercy, in the waves of his ever more abundant generosity and grace.
