Isaiah 62:1-5, Psalm 36:5-10, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, John 2:1-11
My first congregation was Hungarian. Most Hungarians are Roman Catholic, but a strong minority is Reformed, and their emblem was the Communion Cup, because they were allowed to drink from it, while their Catholic neighbors were not. And drink from it they did, not just little sips. Hungarians are wine-makers, and my parishioners had grapevines in their yards along with plums and apricots. In the old days the members would donate their homemade wine for Holy Communion.
In the attic I found three big pewter pitchers. These were the old Communion pitchers. At Communion the people would stand side-by-side around the sanctuary, and as they passed the cups from hand to hand, the elders had to follow them to keep refilling them. Especially when particular members had made the wine. One of their communion hymns had language about drinking deeply from God’s cup. Who decided that at Holy Communion our portions should be so small?
There on the table is our old Communion pitcher and most of our old Communion beakers, from when we also passed the cups along and drank the wine. We are more careful now, more careful of addictions and fearful of disease. We also take for granted our abundance, more food than we can eat, more clothes that we can wear, more stuff than we can store. We fear the scarcity we do not live with and we are desensitized to our bounty, the abundance that comes from God. The Belgic Confession calls God, “the overflowing fountain of all good.” There are the signs right there.
“Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.” The first of his signs. John’s Gospel never calls them “miracles” but “signs.” Visible revelations, epiphanies, manifestations. A sign is something you see that directs you to something beyond itself.
A sign can be simple or complex. A sign can be richly interpreted, and maybe sometimes overdone! So how richly symbolic was this first of Jesus’ signs? We begin by noticing what we see, and then we will consider what it points to, and we do this in order that we too might believe in him.
We see a wedding reception, however that went back then. People on the floor, on carpets, eating and drinking. Maybe some dancing. We see there, sitting together, Mary, and Jesus, and his four friends—Simon, Andrew, Philip, and Nathanael. We see Mary lean over to say something to Jesus. His response to her pulls her up sharp. She glares at him, but she doesn’t answer back.
A few minutes later we see her get up and walk over to where the servants are. Let’s say there are three of them. She speaks to them and then she turns and points to her son. She sits back down.
A couple minutes later, he gets up and goes over to the servants. They follow him to the front door, where there are six big stone jars, like barrels, say 25 gallons each. They contain the water for the guests to wash their hands and feet when they come in. He tells the servants something. They look at him in surprise, but eventually they nod their heads. He goes and sits back down.
Now we watch the servants fill the jars with water. It’s a job. They have go and get it from a public well, and how many trips does it take to fill those jars up to the brim. When they are done, Jesus quietly gets up again and talks to them. Again they look surprised, but one of them gets a cup, dips it in the barrel, and takes it to the master of ceremonies. He sips it, and now he looks surprised, and he goes to the groom and talks to him, and he then looks surprised. The servants are watching this from the back of the room.
That’s what we can see: Five brief conversations—Mary and Jesus, Mary and the servants, Jesus and the servants—twice, and the steward with the groom. We see two actions—one long and laborious, and the other brief, a drink.
We can ask questions: Will the bridegroom just accept the compliment, or will he admit that he doesn’t know where the good wine came from? Will they now drink all that new wine? It’s a good 650 bottles worth, 3500 cups of wine. How long will that reception go on? The guests will have to start wondering. The servants eventually will have to tell what happened. The disciples find out. But do the servants ever determine precisely when the water was transformed?
More questions: Why did Mary set Jesus up like this? Why did she think it was his business? She was not just making an observation—that’s obviously not how Jesus took it. And why did he put her off at first? Was he wrong about it not yet being his time? Was she impatient with him? He was thirty years old and he had still not acted on his destiny. Is that why she forces him, by talking to the servants? And how was she expecting him to solve the problem? Why would she expect a miracle? She knew that her son was the Messiah, but no one expected the Messiah to be a miracle-worker.
What’s the actual sign? The six big jars? Is abundance the sign?
Or is the sign the movement of the water and its transformation—that the water of cleansing becomes the wine of celebration?
Or is the sign the excellence of the wine—that the old was good but the new is better?
Is it part of the sign that wine is a mild intoxicant? Water is clean and sober, but wine is free and loose, and even dangerous?
Is there something to the wedding feast—that if it’s the bridegroom’s job to provide the wine, then Jesus has become the new bridegroom here? Is this all a sign of who Jesus is, and what Jesus brings to life, compared to whatever was life before him? You can read all these things into the sign.
Who is Jesus? If he wants to manifest himself as the new bridegroom, then according to the prophecy of Isaiah he might as well be God. Not just that he acts for God or stands in for God, but that he impossibly identifies himself with God. Although the disciples believe in him, they don’t connect the dots till after his resurrection. But Jesus already manifests it here, that in him is not just the Spirit of God, which many of us share, but the glory of God, which belongs to God alone. Who does Jesus think he is, to manifest himself this way!
If that’s who Jesus is, what does he bring to life? The gift of life in abundance, overflowing life, intoxicating life. Nature made into supernature, animal made spiritual, vegetable and mineral made spiritual! Natural gifts made into spiritual gifts. Not spiritual and natural in opposition, but spiritual gifts from natural gifts.
This is important for the Christian life. Our Epistle lesson speaks of spiritual gifts. The Holy Spirit does not make these out of air, but from out of your natural gifts.
What are you already good at doing? What do you love to do? Don’t deny those, rather deny that you do them for yourself. Do what you are good at and what you love to do, not to keep as your own, but as gifts for the glory of the bridegroom, who transforms them into spiritual gifts, by forgiving any sinful use of them and inspiring your use of them for love and more abundant life.
Last Tuesday night we had a meeting at the church and fifteen of you were seated around the table, and I was struck by the abounding giftedness of our congregation. Who am I that I should pastor such a group! I have few real talents of my own, but I work with an abundance of gifts because I work among you all. We keep thinking our congregation is small. And thereby also poor and weak. But we must not dishonor the bridegroom! We shall not discredit the Holy Spirit!
Our group was listening to a speaker who spoke of scarcity and abundance. Scarcity is real. A billion people on this planet are hungry. My parents did not have enough money to retire on and I worry about it too. We will survive, but maybe no trips to Europe to see our grandsons. The threat of scarcity is real within my soul. When is it accurate and when is it temptation?
But I want to believe in Jesus as the bridegroom, as the God who is "the overflowing fountain of all good," so I am also required to believe in his abundance, in some real way, in some real way that challenges me. We must be transformed by the gifts of God in order to receive them as the gifts they are, we must be challenged by God’s love in order to receive God’s love.
You can believe this, like the disciples, before you can connect all the dots. I invite to believe in it again, one more week, one more year, that God is abounding in gifts to you, that God is your overflowing fountain of life, and God is the unquenchable source of love for you. And if it's not scarce, and so abounding, then you can share it. Why don't you!
Copyright © 2019, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.
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