St John does not call them miracles; the miraculous events that he describes are called “signs”. I suspect there is a good number of signs in all the accounts of Jesus’ miracles, but John’s stories are especially rich in symbolism perhaps because there are no parables as such in John. The obvious sign in the story of the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee is the abundance of wine, transformed from water, but the sign that I want to explore today is the setting for the miracle. What is meant by making the occasion a wedding feast?
In the Old Testament, weddings are first symbolic of happiness. The public festivities around a marriage were, and remain, an important element in the proceedings which are not to be confined to close family and friends. The whole community must witness and celebrate the joining of two individuals to form a new social unit.
But the more intimate pleasure of the man and wife is also used for symbolic purposes, and so we heard in the passage from Isaiah where God’s relationship with his chosen people is compared to that of young lovers who have committed themselves to each other: as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, “so shall your God rejoice over you”.
Both Matthew and Luke recount parables which liken the Kingdom of God to a wedding feast, to which the invited guests refuse to come. The feast is then thrown open to all; to those wandering the streets- perhaps the rough sleepers; the feast and the Kingdom are truly open to everyone. The absurdly large quantity of wine available that day at Cana in Galilee is surely an extension of the idea of a joyous feast open to all.
There is also, however, a more sombre theme which we see also in those foolish bridesmaids who run out of oil when the bridegroom is delayed. For these gospel writers a wedding is a place of testing. It is a trial, a test for bridesmaids and guests, or those who should be guests.
In John’s story perhaps the only person to be tested overtly is Jesus’ mother. Jesus’ enigmatically abrupt, even rude, response to his mother’s pregnant statement, “They have no wine.” follows this tradition of testing. He answers “Woman what is that of concern to you and me? My hour is not yet come”. There is real tension for a moment, kept unresolved as Jesus gives his strange and apparently irrelevant instructions about filling a lot of stone water jars. We know the story too well to appreciate the drama, and the surprise when the steward announces ”You have kept the good wine until now” The dramatic tension helps us appreciate that that “Now” might not have happened.
Anyone, I suppose, who has been through a wedding will recognise some of this tension; my own particular anxieties began with How will my relations contrive to embarrass me? and went on to What will the best man say? and Will I be sober enough to respond? (You will have guessed that my father-in-law’s generosity was, and remains, such that there was little fear that the champagne would run out; my anxieties were rather the opposite)
More fundamentally, however, albeit, and, I guess, subconsciously in most cases, there is the question for the waiting groom; Will she actually turn up? And, for the Bride, Will he actually say “I do”? If you haven’t been through this yourself, then think of the film “Four Weddings and Funeral” which exploited the tension I mean to its fullest, hilarious, extent.
Jewish matrimonial practice in Jesus’ time was not dissimilar to our own; there was a betrothal equivalent to our engagement followed by a period several months, perhaps a year at the end of which the groom came with his friends to carry off the bride to his home to consummate the marriage. The engagement/betrothal period was a test; to have sex with another man during the betrothal was equivalent to adultery (typically, the test seems only to have applied to women) Nevertheless we can understand that the bride waiting at home with her bridesmaids, was going through a tense moment; Would he come? When would he come? And, if we can imagine ourselves back to a much less permissive age, What would happen and what would it be like when he did come?
Weddings expressed therefore an element of choice and trial and the joyous resolution of these in the commitment of bride to groom are only two sides of the same coin. The joy is relief as the commitment is meaningful, because things could have turned out otherwise.
Understanding how and why the imagery of weddings and marriage worked in a society in some respects remote from our own, gives us, I hope, some insight into how Jesus himself and his immediate audience heard his message. That is important in itself, but it will be of greater value if we can find in it something meaningful and lively in our own condition.
I have mentioned the tension present in any wedding, looking at the anxieties associated with the ceremony and celebrations, but I have not mentioned the greatest concern of any couple with any imagination. This is of course, whether living as one flesh with another person will actually work. You might think in these days that is not much of a concern; there cannot be many married couples nowadays who have not to a greater or lesser extent lived together before coming to church or registry office. Nevertheless the fact that they choose to marry (when it is so easy not to) makes a statement of lasting importance. It is bold step and there in it an element of risk and danger. Not all marriages are successful, nor is it necessarily either party’s fault that they are not. It is the public declaration of determination to overcome that danger that is at the heart of the joy of any wedding. It would be a hollow joy if it did not recognise the realty of the risk involved. There is therefore, present joy inextricably mixed with anxiety and aspiration for the future.
There is a corresponding ambivalence in the Kingdom of God; on the one hand the Kingdom has arrived; we are to celebrate because Jesus the bridegroom has come and is with us and has given us abundant and excellent wine to drink. And in this and every Eucharist, he makes that wine available to us, to revive and inspire us.
On the other hand the Kingdom is clearly also something which has yet to be realised in full. Whatever the meaning of the second coming, which is for me one of the hardest ideas in the New Testament, it is clear that in some vital respects we are still waiting, and should still be striving for the Kingdom in a world where millions are hungry, dispossessed and ground down by poverty. The era of peace and harmony may have dawned, but it is painfully obvious that it has not come to perfection. The wedding celebrates the union of man and wife but they know it is only the start of a marriage. Their love gives them the potential to achieve lasting happiness. So, I believe God’s intervention in human form on earth, his presence at Cana in Galilee, and his presence here today in bread and wine give us the grace to work fruitfully for the full realisation of the Kingdom.
So too the idea of the Church as the bride of Christ has a lively meaning for us. We can, I think, usefully see our relationship, as a church, with God in terms of a marriage. Like a marriage, it is a growing relationship, organic and potentially fertile. The parallel is not, of course exact in every particular, notably we know that we as a human institution will change, but God remains changeless. As in a marriage, however, it is not so much that the parties change as that each will grow in understanding the other and that growth and deepening of understanding will bring about development in response. The church will find different ways of responding to God’s love for it, just as we as individuals do.
Perhaps none of this should be very surprising; John tells us that God is love. It is natural then that human institutions, such as marriage, which demonstrate and realise our love for one another, should also tell us something of God’s love for us and how that love, through our effort, can work in the world.
Amen