The Wedding Feast at Cana must be everyone’s favorite miracles and it’s worth asking why it appears only in John’s Gospel, and why in that Gospel it is given such a prominent position as the first of Jesus’ “Signs”.
The excessive quantity of wine sets a precedent for other miracles which express the abundance of the new life offered by Jesus. But turning water into wine isn’t to my mind the most spectacular miracle; it has something of a conjuring trick about it and it’s one of those miracles which most easily lends itself to psychological explanation; the water wasn’t really turned into wine; it just felt like it as Jesus’ charismatic personality persuaded them all they were having a jolly good time. There is certainly a psychological element in many of Jesus’ miracles, although seldom enough to explain them entirely. What is very obvious in John’s stories is a symbolic element; the Signs are not just stories of healing etc there is a meaning and structure to them which is more apparent than in Matthew, Mark or Luke.
Another oddity about St John’s Gospel is the absence of any overt reference to the institution of Holy Communion. It is not referred to in the obvious place, that is in the narrative of the Last Supper, although there are clear references to what we know as Communion following and explaining the miracle of the Feeding of the Five Thousand- another miracle of super-abundance. There is, as you might imagine, a huge literature on why John omits the thing that we most associate with the Last Supper, but my point now is that it is a miracle- one of John’s Signs- that prompts Jesus to discourse, in typically enigmatic, almost bizarre, and provocative terms, on feeding on his body and drinking his blood (drinking blood being, of course, anathema under Jewish law) What this means is that we are entitled to look for symbolism, specifically Eucharistic symbolism, in the turning of water into wine at Cana in Galilee.
The obvious similarity is the transformation of water into wine at Cana, and of wine into blood in the Upper Room. The significance of both is, I believe, more to do with our own transformation, than any metaphysical chemistry. What really matters is the changes that come about in us as result of the events at Cana, and in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, and which we shall be re-enacting in a few minutes here.
While John gives us no obvious commentary, on this occasion, he does drop one or two hints as to the meaning of the miracle at the wedding feast. The water turned into wine is drawn from jars used for ritual purification. That must have seemed very odd; it’s like drinking from one of those ewers that used to come with a basin in old fashioned continental hotels and prep school dormitories. Stranger still is the fact that only the servants know about the source of the wine. John’s point is two fold; Jesus is introducing a new purification, a new way of making ourselves clean before God which is not based on the ritual of the Mosaic Law. There is surely also a premonition here of the cup at the Last Supper- the cup which we are told is the blood of the New Covenant. The purpose of blood in Jewish sacrifice was purificatory; it was sprinkled on the altar and the clothes of the priest to purify and sanctify. The wine shared at Communion is to have the same effect.
Further, the way in which we make ourselves clean, and so suitable vehicles to receive God’s grace and live as he intends us to live, is by drinking the purifying liquid, now turned into wine. We drink it; we don’t wash in it or sprinkle it about. It has become something internally inspiring rather than externally cleansing. The cleansing and preparation are not merely a ritual or routine (indeed, the wedding guests don’t even know where it came from) but something that happens within us. It’s no coincidence that we call the alcohol in wine “Spirit”.
The preparatory aspect of the miracle perhaps explains why it comes first in John’s story. The occasion is important too. A wedding is a happy celebration of a new start of a new joint life, one which will, with the grace of God, engender further new lives. Similarly new resurrected life will follow the Last Supper, despite the intervention of pain and death.
Sipping a drop of diluted sweet wine from a silver chalice early on Sunday morning may seem rather far away from the gallons of vintage premier cru flowing so freely at Cana in Galilee two thousand years ago, but it is enough to prepare us and revive us in the new life that we have been given. It should remind us too, despite Cranmer’s eloquent efforts to the contrary, that this is a joyous thanksgiving, every bit as happy an occasion as a wedding. Amen.