Presented to The Salvation Army Swift Current Corps , 06 Jan. 2012 and Corps 614 Regent Park Toronto, 17 Jan 2016 by Captain Michael Ramsay
We have just finished spending some time home with the kids over the Christmas break. For a few days I spent more time with our youngest as I was trying to potty train her (unsuccessfully) but I was also able to spend some time with my 10 and 11 year-old: sledding, playing cards and taking in a hockey game or two.
I remember when I was their age, 10 or 11. It is an interesting time as changes are happening. I remember once we were watching TV in the living room –my mom, my dad, my sister, and I - and I, as a 10 or 11 year-old boy make some apparently hopelessly inappropriate comment about something on TV so my mom decides that it is time for my dad and I to have a sex education talk and so the two of us are banished to the kitchen.
My dad and I talk about what we are supposed to talk about for a while but the conversation eventually changes to other interesting things such as God and family history. It is an easy transition from sex education to family history especially as my grandfather’s father brought the first rodeo across Canada; he was always travelling from the east coast to west. He had another reason for travelling too. He had one family here in Saskatchewan and another family one back east in the Maritimes – until, of course my great grandmother found out. My dad’s grandfather could have used one of these sex-ed talks. I am eagerly learning all of this family history from my dad and it is starting to get really interesting as we have long accomplished our assigned topic and task and we are actually laughing about some of the more interesting family stories and other things.
It is at this point that my mom hears all the laughter. My mom comes into the kitchen and with a firm voice reminds us why we are supposed to be here. It is not supposed to be fun. It is so ‘I can learn a lesson,’ She says. ‘And how is the sex education talk going?’ She asks. To which, as an 11 year-old boy, I reply, ‘Very well, I’ve taught dad everything I know’. My dad continues, ‘Yes, I’ve learned a lot.’ That doesn’t go over so well. We laugh. Mom doesn’t. I, however, am glad that my dad had added to my comment what he did because it means that I am off the hook and I am able to sneak out of the room and out of trouble as Dad is now the recipient of Mom’s attention.
Our pericope today speaks to –amongst other things- a relationship between a mom and her son. We have an interesting exchange between Jesus and his mother here in verses 3 through 5 of John Chapter 2. Jesus is older than 11 in our story today; he is probably in his early 30’s. He is at wedding, probably a family wedding.[1] He is there, as is his mother, his brothers, and his disciples (a least the first 5 of them anyway).[2] The wedding is taking place in the town of Cana. Cana is really close to where Jesus, his mother, his brothers, and most of his disciples live. It is only 8 or 9 miles north of Nazareth. Eight or nine miles: what is there 8 or 9 miles from here? It is closer than Waldeck is to Swift Current here. It is probably actually about the same distance from the corps out to Lloyd and Elaine’s place. That is about the distance to the wedding from Jesus’ hometown. This wedding in Cana is pretty close to Nazareth.
Whoever is getting married is obviously a family member or a close friend of the family because we notice that when trouble arises – the running out of wine – it is Jesus’ mother, Mary, who either volunteers or is tasked to find the solution to the problem. Mary and Jesus, his brothers and his disciples are not just casual guests. They must know the people getting married fairly well. They (or at least Mary anyway) have some significant role to play in this event.
Now we have just finished the Christmas season here and we looked briefly - as we often do on Christmas Eve - at the 1st Century Judean engagement/betrothal arrangements that are really quite a bit different from traditional Canadian engagements. Today, in our pericope, we have a wedding. Now Galilean weddings in the first century did have some things in common with Canadian weddings of the 21st century. There were often lots of people there; friends and family would travel a great distance to attend the festivities. Then, after they did travel all that way, the family would often stay to visit for a while– especially if they walked there, which many of them would have in 1st Century Galilee.
Marriage celebrations then and there, unlike weddings here and now lasted quite a while. A wedding ceremony nowadays can reasonably be expected to last between 30 minutes and 2 hours and then add another hour or few for the reception afterwards. There and then in Galilee it was expected that the wedding festivities would last for up to a week.[3] The Bridegroom was the host. He and his family would then be expected to host all the relatives, friends, and family from both sides for this week: providing them all with accommodations, food, and beverages. Here and now in our world today it is embarrassing enough if we don’t quite make enough sandwiches for a funeral or some other event. There and then, can you imagine if the marriage celebration began on a Monday and was to last until Friday or Saturday but you ran out of food and drink for your guests on Wednesday? It would be humiliating! You couldn’t just call to have pizzas delivered. You couldn’t just have someone run down to the Co-op and pick up a sandwich tray. You would be out of food; you would be out of wine and the whole town, your whole family and the whole lot of your new in-laws would all be thinking a few things about you if you ran out of wine at your wedding celebrations.
This is the background to the story when we get to the part of this pericope that always interests me, verses 3,4 &5:
3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”
5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
The question many people seem to ask here is why is Jesus’ first miracle to make wine (and it is wine; it is not grape juice![4]) for people who have already had quite a bit to drink. If they had roadside check stops in those days, I probably wouldn’t recommend that any of them drive home.
The questions that strike me though are: Why is Jesus’ mother even asking Jesus to do something about the fact that they have run out of wine? Why doesn’t she ask Jesus AND his other brothers who are there? Why just Jesus? Does she expect him to do some kind of a miracle? Has Jesus done something similar at home before? In the context of the Bible here (John 1-2), it has only been in the last few days before this wedding that Jesus has even just acquired his first disciples – he probably doesn’t even have all of the twelve yet; did his mom expect Jesus to send these disciples to do something or did she know already (before he had ever performed any public miracles; this is the first one remember) that he could and that he would perform miracles such as this – making wine at a wedding.[5]
Another question I have pertains to Jesus’ response to his mother’s inquiry. When asked by his mom to do something, he says: “Woman, why do you involve me? My hour has not yet come,” To this my dad would respond, if I ever uttered such a phrase, “is that anyway to speak to your mother?” Aren’t we supposed to honour our mothers and fathers? How honouring is this response?
And another question that I have relates to Mary’s response then to Jesus comments here. Mary asks him to solve the wine problem in whatever way he will solve it. Jesus replies in such as way as one might infer that he is refusing to help his mother: “Woman, why do you involve me? My hour has not yet come.” But this does not faze his mother at all; she seems to ignore his objections all together and says to the servants, “do whatever he tells you”? Why isn’t Mary fazed by Jesus? Why does she seem to completely ignore his response to her as if he is a toddler or a child protesting for the sake of protesting?
Can you imagine the scene here at the wedding then. The wine has just run out. It is a potentially devastating situation for the bridegroom and his family and Mary and Jesus are having this little discussion as recorded in verses 3-5.
The questions then arise, of course? What is the author of the Gospel of John leading to in this story? What is the text doing? And more importantly: what is God doing here in the story? Now if instead of a sermon, this were a TV show today and if we have just been introduced to these most important questions that we are waiting to see how they are resolved, and if the tension is building up such as this; if on your set, the TV good guy is dangling off the cliff and the bad guy looks like he is going to get away what happens next? What happens when a TV show is at its most interesting part? …We break for a commercial message.
Today that is exactly what we are going to do. So I will have you all think about the questions we have raised about Jesus, his mother, the book of John and what God is doing in this pericope while we take a short break.
In our break from our regular scheduled sermon here today, I want to do a little sports biography for us. Did anyone get up early to watch any of the World Juniors or the Spengler Hockey tournaments over the Christmas break? I admit that I did. I made a point of setting my alarm to see some of the games and I was glad I saw the ones that I did – I was also glad that I decided to sleep in and miss the ones I missed. I admit that I have been missing hockey during the lockout here and this brings me to our short sports biography today. With no hockey season so far, occasionally I saw some overseas soccer matches. I happened to watch the game where Leo Messi broke the world all-time scoring record in a year. He not only broke it, by the end of the year he had completely left the old record behind in the dust. This player, Messi, is just amazing. In a sport where most teams only score one goal, this player put together a series of matches where he would score two goals each game. All this and as a child he had a growth hormone problem. His nickname is the ‘flea’ because of his size. Apparently all the odds were stacked against him and somehow he came out the other side. I would say that now he is far and away the greatest player in the most popular sport in the world. I gained a lot of respect for Messi as this feat of scoring way more goals in a year than anyone ever in history pointed me to researching his biography: Whereas I vaguely knew who he was previously, I now have a lot of faith in Messi’s ability. He really is the Wayne Gretzky of soccer and even more. Now back to our regular programming…
The wedding party has run out of wine. Jesus has just had this encounter with his mother. He then proceeds to save the day by turning some jars of water that they used for ceremonial hand cleaning into about 150 gallons of the best wine possible, to be served when most people have been drinking for a while and so won’t even have noticed how good it is.[6] John 2:11: “What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” This miracle is Jesus’ first sign of who he is and what he is doing and his disciples put their faith in him. For the disciples who just started following Jesus this would have been very similar to what is was like me for, who has just started watching oversees soccer, to see Messi transform the world’s most popular sport. Jesus’ transformation of water into wine causes his disciples to put their faith in Him.
This miracle of Jesus’ was no small feat. There was a lot riding on the fact that the wine would show up. If it didn’t the bridegroom would have been humiliated. Jesus, in turning the water into wine, and not just any wine but into copious amounts of the best wine of the wedding, not only saves the day by scoring the final goal, but he also shatters the record and his team mates, his disciples, here and now put their complete faith in him.
It is the same in our world today, when we are faced with difficult situations, when we are faced with family members putting demands upon us, when we are faced with potential embarrassment, when we are faced with humiliation, when we are faced with even not being able to provide for our family in our world today, Jesus is there for us just like Jesus is there for his friends and family in Cana. The only questions for us then: do we believe in Jesus like his disciples do? And are we willing to put our faith in him like his mother does?
Speaking of questions, I am not going to leave us hanging entirely about the questions we mentioned before the commercial break. Let’s see what we can find in the way of possible answers. First about the question that everyone asks regarding Jesus making wine for people who had been drinking and were possibly even drunk - does that mean that he condones drunkenness? No, the Scriptures condemn dunkeness more than once actually (Leviticus 10:9, Proverbs 31:4-5, Ecclesiastes 10:17, Isaiah 28:7, 1 Timothy 3:8). However, making water into wine has been associated eschatology and with divinity (Jeremiah 31:12, Joel 3:8, Amos 8:11-14; cf. also Enoch 10:19).[7] There is a difference then and there between drinking and being drunk. The important part of this miracle pertaining to the wine itself though is that providing this wine is a real part and an important part of showing hospitality to your neighbour in 1st Century Galilee, especially on an important occasion like a bridegroom’s wedding. Jesus isn’t promoting drunkenness, which is selfishness; on the contrary he is showing his faithfulness to those around him, as well as to God, and he is showing that we can put our faith in him.
Now about the other questions: the questions about the way Jesus was addressing his mother. He wasn’t actually speaking with any disrespect. The word translated ‘woman’ here in our text, when he addresses his mother can bee seen as a neutral or a positive term and he does definitely honour his mother in the text by fulfilling her request and much more (cf. Matthew 15:28, Luke 22:57, John 4:21; cf. also 2 Kings 3:13, 2 Chronicles 35:21).[8] Jesus doesn’t leave her in the lurch; he saves her as he saves the festivities. Mary takes no offence by what Jesus says and she has perfect faith in him as she even instructs the servants in this story to “do whatever he tells you.”[9] I think this is good advice for us today too. Whenever we are faced by life’s crises, like Mary and the servants, we should have the faith to ask Jesus what to do and then we should have faith to do whatever Jesus tells us to do. He is faithful and we can put our faith in Him.
So then pertaining to those of us who are here today, I know that there are people in this congregation and even in this room who are facing challenges every bit as big as Jesus’ friends and family at the wedding. Some here are facing challenges of possibly not being able to provide for your family. Some here are without work. Some have here have even just lost their jobs. Some are faced with the daunting prospect returning to work after a long break. Some here have had serious health challenges. Some here have just lost loved ones and family members. Some of us are faced with family problems every bit as intense as the challenges of today’s text. Some of us are hurt. Some of us feel betrayed. Some of us are anxious, some of us are angry, and some of us here today are just plain sad. Sometimes life can be overwhelming.
John’s record of Jesus’ miracle of turning the water into wine has a special message for each of us who find ourselves in situations like this here today. When things look as bad as they can look; when there seems to be nothing that we can do; when it seems like our life and our world is ‘going to Hell in a hand basket’, as they say; when it seems that everything going askew, we can put our faith in Christ – just like Mary did and just like the disciples did. When everything seems to be going sideways, we can put our faith in Christ and we can turn our will and our lives over to Him. Just as Jesus was faithful in the midst of the chaos and concern at the wedding, saving the day, that his disciples put their faith in him; Jesus is still faithful here and now in the midst of the chaos and confusion of our lives so that we too can put our faith in Him and we too can be saved.
Let us pray.
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[1] Cf. Rosemary King, “17th January: 2nd after Ephiphany: The Marriage at Cana (John 2:1-11)," The Expository Times 121, no. 3 (December 2009): 134.
[2] Colin G.Kruse, John: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 2003 (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 4), S. 93.
[3] Stack and Billerbeck, Das Evangelium nach Johannes in Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Tulmud und Midrash, (Munchen, 1924), 401. Cited in William Hendricksen, John, in New Testament Commentary, (Grand Rapids, Mi: Baker Academic, 2007), 114.
[4] Cf. William Hendricksen, John, in New Testament Commentary, (Grand Rapids, Mi: Baker Academic, 2007), 115.
[5] Cf. Colin G.Kruse, John: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 2003 (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 4), S. 93: these were after all eschatological signs.
[6] Gail R. O’Day, The Gospel of John, in The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 9, ed Leander E. Keck, et. al. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), 538.
[7] Gerard Sloyan, John, in Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, ed James L. Mays, et. al. (Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press, 1988), 36-37
[8] ‘Gail R. O’Day, The Gospel of John, in The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 9, ed Leander E. Keck, et. al. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), 536-537.
[9] Cf. Merrill C. Tenney, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:John/Exposition of John/II. The Public Ministry of the Word (1:19-12:50)/A. The Beginning Ministry (1:19-4:54)/3. The first sign (2:1-11), Book Version: 4.0.2
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