The first Sign
20th January 2019
Prayers……
The wedding at Cana - Epiphany week 3 - an Epiphany a moment of sudden and great
revelation, and yes this the first of
John sign is indeed a revelation, an epiphany.
I’m sure like me you often find your
running out of things at home, you know when you open the cupboard to make the
sauce for the pasta and find there are no tinned tomatoes. Now we have the
Co-op close by in Pitlochry, not so near in Blair Atholl, but its open all
hours so you can usually get what you need. It wasn’t like that in Jesus day
and even todaythins can and do go wrong.
Back to the story as told in John’s
Gospel it is his account of a wedding, a wedding in which they run out of
something important, not of tomatoes—no, they run out of WINE and that was
definitely a “necessary” In fact, there was an old rabbinic saying back then
that goes like this, “There is no joy
save in meat and wine.” And this was especially true when it came to first
century Jewish weddings. Wine was part of the joy of that kind of celebration.
And here we have as I said John telling
us of a wedding where they ran out of wine. And what do they do, people didn’t
know, now the Gospel story is quite
concise but it appears that Jesus’ mother, Mary, does know what to do. So keep
your pewsheets open for reference and lets see what this is all about. Its not
just a good story its really important
But, before we go any further, let’s
get a good grasp of the SETTING and the CONTEXT Verse 1 says that this wedding
and the events surrounding it happened in CANA of Galilee—a village that was
very near to Nazareth. St. Jerome,4th C who stayed in Palestine, wrote that he could
see Cana from Nazareth—so it couldn’t have been more than a couple of miles
away, which means the people of Nazareth, Jesus’ home town, and the people of
Cana were neighbours. They knew each other. Think of Pitlochry (Bridge of Tilt)
and Moulin (Blair Atholl) so you get the idea.
And it would seem that, Jesus’ mother
had a very important role in it the wedding festivities. She comes to tell him
they have no wine, how did she know, it seems like she was intimately involved
in this wedding maybe having a formal
roll, kind of like the work our wedding co-ordinator does with weddings here at Holy Trinity. And I base this on John’s account where not only does she know
the wine has run out but seems to have the authority to order the servants to
do whatever Jesus tells them to do.
Now there is a tradition which says
that Mary was the sister of the bride-groom’s mother—but this is just legend—
and we don’t get the specifics. What we do is there is no wine left and this is
a disaster as in Jesus’ day a wedding was a VERY big deal. The whole town
was involved. In fact, in Palestine, the wedding festivities lasted for far
more than one day often up to a week (no honeymoons in those days) and for the hosts to run out of wine was a very embarrassing thing. Just as
it would be today.
So what happens next, well Jesus
turns and says to his mother ‘what concern is that to you and me’ which sounds
rude, but the mere fact that Mary walks away telling the servants ‘to do
whatever he tells you’ suggests this is not the case at all ,or that she has
confidence in her son that he will do whatever is necessary to make things
right, and he does, telling them to fill
the 6 stone wine jars for the rites of purification with water and then when
the ‘water is tasted it is wine, not only is it wine but ‘the best wine’.
Now it may seem frivolous to you that that first miracle, that first
sign in John’s Gospel is to turn water into wine, and I think we have to ask ourselves why? the
story only appears in John’s Gospel and it comes between Jesus calling the
first disciples and the cleansing of the temple (which are all very serious
events) and remember its not until chapter 4 that the 2nd Sign
appears when Jesus saves, cures the royal officials son.
So what this is saying? Well consider,
maybe this sign, what it tells us and those who have gone before us is that
Jesus (God Incarnate) really cares about the
everyday things in this world, how people feel about the smaller things that happen all the time in
their lives, and that he is with us in all those things, so although healing
the sick, (Matthew 4:23) curing a man with an evil spirit (Mark1;23 & Luke
4: 31) come as the 1st miracles in the 3 synoptic gospels and are indeed
themselves signs of Jesus divinity, the wedding at Cana is a powerful sign not
only of who Jesus is, but a sign that everything matters to God.
And that my friends is the wonderful
news we can open ourselves up too, we can share with those around us, that no
matter who we are, God cares about what we need, what you need, what I need and
not just humans but everything, even the smallest sparrow. It means we are not
alone our lives that our personal joys, and struggles are understood. And that
is something really worth shouting about.
So on the 3rd week of
Epiphany a real epiphany moment, just think Jesus came among us, God came among
us as a human being to share what it means to live and to die on this earth. To
share the joys, the excitement, the loneliness, the pain and the sorrow of
human existence, and not only that but also to share the earth with all
creation and then to take all of that back to the source of all things. IN the
beginning the word was with God and was God, the Alpha and Omega.
Surely our greatest discovery must be that at the heart of the gospels we
find Jesus simply showing us by his day to day existence, travelling his human journey
in the everyday ordinariness of life,
how to live, how to follow the Way, with all its pain and pleasure, its heartaches and its hopes, its
disappointment and its dreams, and to realise that the sign of turning the
water into wine at the wedding at Cana tells us in no uncertain terms that he
totally gets it, totally understands the need to express the love of God in
ordinary events, and that it is for us too, in our everyday lives and the roles we
undertake, in our responsibilities and our relationships, and it's all modelled for us by
Jesus.
It also tells us that our faith does
not belong in a separate compartment marked sacred, is not confined to church
walls but encompasses where most of our lives are lived in that place some mark
as secular. And just as Jesus walked among the everyday lives of those he
lived, worked and integrated with, so whatever we do, when cooking a meal,
reading the Bible, mowing the lawn, shouting at the partner, grandchildren, our kids or each other, saying
our prayers, watching the TV, laughing, crying, bored, excited, angry, sad, or
lonely whatever we do ,the life of each person matters. And by changing the
water into wine Jesus shows us and here a direct quote from one of my favourite writers Malcol Guite "the profound and liberating things about God that he reveals to us, His delight in and
concern for our own personal life and loves, and His abundant generosity in
more than meeting our needs in the midst of everyday life"
But what we also see in this
sign As Malcom Guite also puts it, "is that Jesus also calls us to us to move
from the mere outward purity, beautifully symbolised by the water for ritual
washing in those 6 jars, to a transformation of inward joy, symbolised by the
wine. But most importantly, this sign points to the gift of His very self, His
own heart’s blood, given once for all on the cross and received by us in
communion"
This sign is both a celebration of
ordinariness and an earthed humanity and confirms that nothing and no one is
ever outside God’s love and grace.
Epiphany at Cana - Malcolm Guite
Here’s an epiphany to have and hold,
A truth that you can taste upon the tongue,
No distant shrines and canopies of gold
Or ladders to be clambered rung by rung,
But here and now, amidst your daily living,
Where you can taste and touch and feel and see,
The spring of love, the fount of all forgiving,
Flows when you need it, rich, abundant, free.
Better than waters of some outer weeping,
That leave you still with all your hidden sin,
Here is a vintage richer for the keeping
That works its transformation from within.
‘What price?’ you ask me, as we raise the glass,
‘It cost our Saviour everything he has.’ Amen
