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Home » Sermon – 19th January

Sermon – 19th January

    SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

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    Readings: Isaiah 62: 1-5 and John 2: 1-11

    Today we hear one of the most famous and popular of Jesus’ miracles at the wedding at Cana of Galilee. Jesus turned the water into wine, to guarantee a really good wedding reception. The quantity of wine involved was staggering. The six stone water jars held twenty or thirty gallons each, meaning that between 120 and 180 gallons of wine were produced. It’s a bit of an understatement to say that the miracle is a metaphor of God’s generosity and goodness. One would imagine there were a few sore heads the morning after, or even the week after, as in first-century Palestine, wedding celebrations went on for several days. It doesn’t seem that this was an especially grand wedding that Jesus had been invited to – maybe there was a bit of a budget issue that caused the wine to run out. In the society and customs of the day, hospitality was a sacred duty, and for the wine to be exhausted would have brought embarrassment and shame to the family. So we can see Jesus using his power to save a simple Galilean family from humiliation. It is by such unsung deeds of simple kindness that we can show that we are followers of Jesus.

    But we’re reminded of another marriage in the reading from Isaiah this morning. It’s the marriage between the Lord and his people Israel. We’re in that part of Isaiah relating to the period after the exile in Babylon. During the frustrating days after the first return, Israel complained of God’s silence, but here the prophet breaks into song about Jerusalem becoming a great city of beauty which will shine out to the world, drawing in other nations and their kings to see its glory. We heard a similar passage from chapter 60 two weeks ago, about kings and a multitude of camels bringing gold and frankincense. So Jerusalem is seen as the place of God’s glory, and the transformation is such that the land itself, thought of as ‘Forsaken’ and ‘Desolate’ will be called ‘My delight is in her’, and ‘Married.’ There’s a play on Hebrew words here which we miss in the English translation. But the message is clear, best seen perhaps in the last sentence of that Isaiah reading today, “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”

    God is wedded to Jerusalem. But, as John Pridmore asks, ‘How has this wedding turned out? The city is the same city that today three faiths deem holy, that two nation-states claim as their capital, and that, so far from being a light to the nations, remains a focus of international conflict.’ And Christians in Jerusalem now are very much in the minority, and have rather a hard time of it.

    Our Gospel today is a happier wedding story. At Cana Jesus turns the water, there for the rites of purification, into wine.  The water wasn’t even meant for drinking, but for the washing of hands and feet. Water into wine. It’s what Jesus does with religion if he’s allowed to.

    Now we can simply enjoy the story and rejoice in the miracle, or we can dig deeper into the text. Some commentators see in the six stone water jars a representation of the old Jewish religion, which Jesus had come to supersede. Six is an imperfect number in biblical terms – lots of things in the bible are in 3s, 7s, 12s or 40s, but not 6s. Jesus had come to bring something better. Notice how the moment of the miracle is not recorded, just its effect. What has happened isn’t made clear until Jesus says to the servants “Now draw some out.” It is significant that the steward of the feast did not know where this superior wine had come from, but the servants who drew the water knew. Just a mere detail of the story? Or is the gospel-writer pointing out what becomes clear throughout Jesus’ life, that it was seldom the religious leaders of the day or the people in authority who accepted his message, and the good news he brought, but ordinary people in the street – the outcasts, the tax-collectors, the prostitutes, those more likely to be servants at a wedding feast than hosts.

    And then the tantalising final word of the dialogue that goes on, the steward saying to Jesus, “You have kept the good wine until now.” Most people serve the good wine first, and then the inferior when the good has run out, but you have kept the best wine until now.

    The Greeks had a well-known story with a similar result. In a town called Elis, three empty kettles were deposited at the site of a festival overnight, and the next morning the kettles were found to be full of wine, courtesy of Dionysos, the Greek god of wine.

    Maybe in relating the miracle at Cana, it is as if John is saying to the Greeks, “You have your stories and your legends about your gods. They are only stories and you know that they are not really true. But Jesus has come to do really and truly the things you only dreamed the gods could do.”

    To the Jews, it as if John is saying, “Jesus has come to turn the imperfection of the law into the perfection of grace.”

    Is it a coincidence that all this took place at a wedding? Weddings and the images of bride and bridegroom occur frequently throughout the bible – as we’ve seen in the Old Testament reading today, for example. In the New Testament the Church is often referred to as the Bride of Christ, and as members of the Church we are the ones invited to the wedding feast.

    So we are surely intended to pause and reflect on God’s choice of weddings as signs of his glory. One writer asks, “When we leave church, or rise from prayer, would people mistake us for wedding guests? For party-goers? Why not? What is our general bearing in life?” The Baptist preacher C.H. Spurgeon said, “I commend cheerfulness to all who would win souls; not levity and frothiness, but a genial, happy spirit. There are more flies caught with honey than with vinegar, and there will be more souls led to heaven by someone who wears heaven in their face than by one who bears Tartarus in their looks.” Tartarus, I discover, is a dark abyss in Greek mythology that served as a prison for the wicked.

    Preachers should attempt to leave their congregations with a serious thought or challenge, and maybe our challenge today comes from those five words of Mary, “Do whatever he tells you.” Mary is a woman of few words in the fourth gospel, but the ones she utters are authoritative and effective. “Do whatever he tells you.” It comes over as much as an instruction to Jesus to do something as for the servants to obey. There is no indication that Mary knew what Jesus was going to do, and she makes it difficult for him not to do something. But she had that ultimate belief in her Son – that he knew best.

    May we come to that point of faith where we are willing to do whatever he tells us, but also to point other people to him – people in need, trouble, or unbelief – and to trust that good will come.

    An American pastor writes:

    Have you ever had a Mary, someone who nudged you? Maybe it was someone who is blunt. “We’re going to church; I’ll pick you up at 9:15.” Or she says, “Open your checkbook and give $100 dollars to homeless relief” – when you were hoping to get away with five, ten at the most.

    He continues: I don’t think I would have accomplished much if there hadn’t been people who challenged me to move forward. We all need Marys – someone who will encourage us, someone who will even see where we need to be and get a little pushy with us. Do you have a Mary? Maybe this is the time today to listen to her instead of shutting her out.

    Then he says: Maybe you are supposed to be a Mary for someone else. Maybe there is someone who you sense their call to be faithful to God in some area of their lives. Go ahead, get a little more assertive, not belligerent, but encouraging. They may roll their eyes and sigh, but they may also start down a path that leads to blessing.

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