Joy’s Foundation
“[T]he eternal Son of God was a guest at a feast.”[1] You could do worse than to have Jesus as a guest at your celebration. I haven’t been sure how to preach on Cana. Water into wine. Lots of it. Miracle. What is a miracle? A sign. A sign of God’s power, grace. A miracle is God speaking through action. For God, to speak is to act. When He speaks, it is so. God is always at work, in the world, in us.
So, what are we to make of these jars—these vats—of water into wine? A change. Abundance. Now, abundance makes the deepest, strongest impression when there has been lack, absence, shortage. In our times, it has been easy to take abundance for granted, though we’re hearing about shortages, too. A few may remember hearing stories of living through the Great Depression or growing up during World War Two. O, the stories! People had to make do. They made a virtue of making do, until abundance came. They didn’t know when that would be.
Like nearby Nazareth, Cana was not a large town, not a bustling, prosperous place. “[T]here was much poverty and constant hard work,” William Barclay tells us.[2] Nearly everyone in the ancient world lived a life of subsistence, not abundance. I can’t begin to describe to you what a man or woman from the ancient world would make of our lives today, what we assume as the norm. They would think we had created heaven on earth. But they would also see the disease, the conflict, the crime, the immorality, and very soon recognize their own tainted, broken, fallen, world.
It’s reasonable to ask how Mary and Jesus were involved in the wedding. People don’t ordinarily attend the weddings of perfect strangers. Barclay supposes Mary had some connection. He draws upon traditions, stories, which were collected in the early centuries of the church: Mary was the groom’s aunt. Maybe. The groom was John, his mother was Salome, and Salome was the sister of Mary.[3] Maybe. Salvation doesn’t depend on whether we accept or doubt these details.
I’d like to add that, just as this early episode in the history of Jesus on earth occurs at a wedding feast, one of the last details Scripture records is of Jesus at a wedding feast, the feast of the Lamb, receiving his bride, the Church.[4] This vision communicates a great mystery, something wonderful and holy, bright and good, that we don’t fully understand, but, as we reflect, pray, and grow, we appreciate it more deeply. A wedding is an occasion for joy. Jesus adds to it. W. Graham Scroggie beautifully reminds us that Jesus is “a joy-bringer.”[5] Christ, who is union, the union of God and man and man with God, is also at the heart of the marriage union. Jesus teaches us here what marriage is for, and that is a bracing, awe-filled thing.
Have you ever wondered what Jesus was doing all those years, from the time his parents frantically search for him in Jerusalem until he goes to John to be baptized? Barclay also notices the absence of Joseph, concludes he has been dead several years, “and that the reason why Jesus spent eighteen long years in Nazareth was that he had to take upon himself the support of his mother and his family.”[6] My maternal grandfather finished eighth grade in 1921 and then, as the oldest child, had to go to work to help support the family [Bo, Kenley, etc.]. Let’s not pass over Barclay’s conjecture too quickly. It is conjecture. Scripture does not say. Salvation does not depend upon any answer, here. It seems heartening to me, though, to consider that Jesus spends these formative years taking care of his family, supporting his family, laboring and sacrificing, many things, for the sake of his family. His family is everything to him. We may recall what Jesus says regarding the identity of his family (Mk 3:35, Mt 12:50).
An excellent student of ancient times and writers, Barclay informs us that the wedding ceremony would conclude with a torchlight procession all through the town to the home of the newlyweds:[7] light in the darkness—an assertion of joy and hope in the face of a darkened world. The people let their light shine. We also have light. Light is meant for shining. John powerfully reminds us that the darkness does not overcome the light (Jn 1:5). Darkness has no power over the light—but that’s hard to believe, isn’t it, when darkness makes itself felt? It does make itself felt. How does light feel? Hold onto that feeling, because it can lead you quickly back to faith; faith is light, true light, eternal light, light for life.
Jesus brings several disciples. When we plan a celebration, we keep the number of guests in view, especially when our resources are limited, as they were in Cana. Just enough food—they hoped! Just enough wine—they prayed! Then, extra guests. For a large wedding, that might be an inconvenience. For a small wedding, a poor wedding—if I may call any wedding poor—extra guests are a disaster. Joy and celebration turn to sorrow and worry! We also are familiar with that! If anyplace is a place for joy and celebration, beloved, surely it’s the church, yet here also is where we bring our worrying and sorrowing. And rightly so.
“For a Jewish feast,” Barclay writes, “wine was essential. ‘Without wine,’ said the Rabbis, ‘there is no joy.’”[8] Can I get an Amen from our cradle to Bethel Baptist brothers and sisters? Now, hold onto that thought about wine and joy.
Impending disaster! Is Mary worried? Is she fretting? Maybe. Maybe not. She knows where to go, to whom to go, when there is a problem. She knows who can take care of it, who can take it from her and do something about it. Jesus, fix it! She goes to Jesus. Do we? She goes without doubt or hesitation. “Instinctively,” writes Barclay, “Mary turned to Jesus whenever something went wrong.”[9] Catholic commentator Francis J. Moloney speaks of Mary’s “unconditional trust in the efficacy of [Jesus’] word.”[10] If he says it, it will happen; when Jesus speaks, things happen. Mary knows this beyond question, beyond doubt, beyond worry.
People aren’t really sure what to make of what Jesus then says to his mother, how he seems to say it. Rude! Barclay tries to soften it: “Jesus was simply telling Mary to leave things to him, that he would have his own way of dealing with the situation.”[11] He even suggests that we should hear that “woman,” as a much more courteous, “My Lady.”[12] This is helpful, yet I can’t shake the feeling that we are supposed to be at least a little shocked by how Jesus responds to his mother. Moloney is on target: this is “not the type of response one would expect from a son to a mother.”[13]
Mary also knows that Jesus is more than her son. “Do whatever he tells you,” she says to the servants, but they don’t know him! Who is he? What can he do? What use is he? But, used to taking orders and doing as they’re told—such is life!—the servants await his word. If Mary gets ahead of herself, here, Jesus doesn’t seem to be especially upset about it; he only reminds her that his hour has not yet come (2:4). Early in the story of Jesus, John is hinting that the glory and the hour are bound together, as if one were for the other. We will not perceive the fullness of the glory until the fulness of the hour has come—but we can catch glimpses. All that happens before the hour is a preview of the hour. Here, we get another glimpse of something very good, indeed, glorious. A wedding is the perfect place for this!
Every wedding has its hiccups. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something—missing! Forgotten! A lack, an absence. Wine, a drink for joy. Life can feel joyless, until we remember that our joy is not established upon or even measured by a feeling. The foundation of our joy, the root and fruit of our joy, is the presence of Jesus Christ. His presence at the wedding is another reminder, as John reminds us, that what had been missing, lacking, was now come. This is the start of something very good!
Barclay argues that John, writing from his Jewish background, is calling attention not just to the jars but to the number of them: six. In Scripture generally, seven is a number for completeness: seven days, Jacob’s seven years of labor, twice! The rituals and ceremonies wherein the priests are instructed to repeat an action seven times, and so forth. Six, then, is almost but not quite.[14] The water jars were there for a reason: so much water was necessary for the ritual washings required under the law, particularly as it had been interpreted and elaborated over centuries. The law. What was the aim of the law? The law was there to tell people how to be clean before the Lord, how to keep the way clear. If they needed telling, it was because they either did not know, were always inclined to go another direction, or both.
These were big jars, meant to hold as many as twenty gallons each. One hundred and twenty gallons is enough and more than enough for any celebration! Abundance, indeed, superabundance . . . of wine? Yes and no. The wine seems to be the point, seems to be the miracle, but what’s the wine pointing to? What was the water pointing to, for that matter? The law? The burden and barrier of the law? All the washing, always being repeated yet never being clean? The lack or the absence always present in the law, the divinely-appointed absence, the sacred lack? Without the presence of Jesus, yes, but when he is present? Water and wine. The water and the blood. “This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood” (1 Jn 5:6). Glory—the glory of the water, baptism, washed, cleansed, purified: grace. Blood—the glory of the blood, sacrifice, atonement, forgiveness, cleansing, purification: grace.
All well and good, and it’s taken a long time to get here, pastor, but so what? Beloved, the glimpse of glory and grace Jesus revealed at that little country wedding in obscure Cana in remote Galilee, he also reveals to people today—no occasion is too small because no life is too insignificant for Jesus! No one comes to Jesus apart from the water, the blood, and the Spirit (1 Jn 5:8). Jesus accomplishes what he came to do through all three, and it is only through all three that what he came to do can be accomplished in us, in anyone and everyone who responds to the call of Christ, responds to the presence of Christ. Brother Moloney puts the matter in some midgrade theological terms: “what Jesus said was done, and his glory was manifested as a consequence of an unconditioned acceptance of his word.”[15] In layman’s terms, if you want to experience the glory of Jesus, his presence and power in your life, unconditionally do what he says, with no ifs, ands, or buts. Accept his word. Trust him, give it to him, leave it to him, and he will show you his glory and you will praise his name, and this pleases God more than you know, though you will, in Christ.
And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.
[1] W. Graham Scroggie. Gospel of John. Study Hour. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1976. 20.
[2] William Barclay. Gospel of John. Vol. 1. Daily Study Bible. Philadelphia: Westminster P, 1975. 97.
[4] Francis J. Moloney points to Old Testament instances of the marriage feast of the messianic era, 66. Francis J. Moloney, SDB. Gospel of John. Sacra Pagina. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical P, 1998.
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