Isaiah 60.1-9 / John 2.1-11
The wedding at Cana is a familiar and well-loved story from the very beginning of Jesus’s ministry. We are not told why the wine is running out. Perhaps the families involved have been over-generous with their invitations, perhaps the presence of Jesus and his disciples has strained their resources. Whatever the reason, a serious embarrassment is looming, and Mary, who seems to be in a position of some responsibility, appeals to Jesus for help. Reading between the lines, you get the impression that Mary has become accustomed to relying on Jesus in a crisis. His initial response is reluctant, but she trusts him to act, and tells the servants to follow his instructions. It may seem strange to be asked to fill up the water jars, but they do as he says, and the master of the feast pronounces the new wine better than the old. The crisis is averted, and the feast goes on without anyone but the servants and Jesus’ disciples knowing what has happened.
John tells the story as the first of seven signs, seven miracles. Taken together, these seven signs will support the claim he makes in his gospel that Jesus is the Word, active with his Father in creation, now gloriously revealed in and through the life and death of Jesus. Full of grace and truth, he gives power to all who see his glory and put their trust in him to become God’s children. This miracle, the turning of water into wine, is just the first manifestation of his power, bearing witness to his love of life, his concern for the happiness and welfare of others, and to the overflowing abundance of his loving provision. The wine is of excellent quality, far better than it needed to be, and there is more than enough for the wedding celebration to continue for many days. This is not the whole picture – the remaining signs and the stories that go with them will build up a more complete picture of one who draws us into putting our trust in him, who heals and feeds and guides us, who is the Light by which we walk, and finally the Life which is stronger than Death itself. But this first sign of his loving, joyful, abundant provision for our needs draws us into his welcoming, attractive company, just as the first disciples had already been drawn into his company by the simple invitation to come and see.
In his little book on Being Christian, Rowan Williams advises us, as we read the Bible, to see each vision, each poem, every passage of history, law or prophecy, each story in the context of the whole narrative of God’s relationship with his people. The point of such an approach to the reading of the Bible, he says, is to look at God, to look at yourself, and to ask where you are in the story. In this story then, am I the worried host, relieved that the crisis has been resolved? Am I the puzzled toast master, who partially answers his own question, but doesn’t really want to go any deeper? Am I one of the servants, observing the miracle, but apparently drawing no conclusion from what they have seen? Am I one of the guests, enjoying the party and asking no questions about where the excellent wine has come from? Or am I Mary, placing my problem in Jesus’ hands, and trusting him to take it from there? John is very clear where he wants us to find ourselves in this story. He gives us his answer in the punch line – Jesus did this … and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him (John 2.11). In his prologue he has already indicated the context in which he wants us to see the life of Jesus, and he has selected his stories to support his thesis. At the end of the book, he will remind us that there were lots of other things Jesus did, but these he has recorded so that the reader ‘may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing [we] may have life in his name’ (John 20.31). That’s what it’s all about. Jesus revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
The link between glory and belief is an interesting one. Some people are naturally attractive. When they are talented too, for example on the sports field or on the stage, their natural attraction may be greatly magnified by skilful marketing and publicity. They are surrounded by a certain aura, or glory. More and more people are drawn to the super-attractive image that has been created. They may even come to believe in it themselves. They become celebrities, and find themselves in a position of wealth and power. Faced with such opportunities, many cannot resist the temptation to exploit the situation for their own profit and pleasure – and we have seen how this can lead to the scandalous abuse of their admirers’ trust. Eventually the bubble bursts, the media circus moves on to the next coming thing, and the distressed victims are left to pick themselves up as best they can.
Jesus faced just such temptations and dismissed them. He refused to become the centre of attention himself, because he was aware that the glory which attracted people to him was not his own glory, but the glory of his Father’s love which was revealed in and through the effect that he had on people, which could at times be seen as miraculous. His primary concern was to give the fullest possible expression to that love, so that as men and women put their trust in him, they would discover their loving Father, respond to his love and so enter into their full inheritance as His children. That path of unconditional love would eventually take him through a brief moment of wild public enthusiasm and personal celebrity, before reaching its fullest expression in the giving up of his life on the cross.
At Cana all that still lay far in the future. As he said to his mother, my hour has not yet come. He must have sensed that a public miracle would propel him all too quickly into a fame that would get in the way of the work that had to be done to show his disciples what the love of God was really like, and then to prepare them for the climax of sacrificial love and its glorious vindication which would seal his mission. So he managed to solve the crisis with a miracle that was only truly seen and understood by that little group of disciples whose eyes were open when he revealed his glory; and they believed in him.
In this season of Epiphany, as we celebrate with Mary and Joseph and the Wise Men the very first revelation of Christ to the Gentiles, St John invites us to see, in this miracle of the water turned into wine, the first sign of that loving Father-God which the child in the stable would fully reveal when his hour had come.