On the third day there was a
wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.
Jesus also was invited to the wedding
with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to
him, “They have no wine.” And
Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with
me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do
whatever he tells you.”
Now there were six stone water jars
there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or
thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with
water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to
them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the
feast.” So they took it.
When the master of the feast
tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from
(though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast
called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone
serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor
wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.”
This, the first of his signs, Jesus
did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples
believed in him.
John 2:1-11
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Commentary
Inadequate
preparations have been made for a wedding. The first words spoken are those of
the mother of Jesus, she states a simple fact “they have no wine” (v3).
When we
find ourselves in any situation where there is not enough for everyone we can
look at the problem in two ways, we can either say “There is not enough wine”
or we can say “There are too many people”. The mother of Jesus chooses to
identify the problem as being the lack of wine, not the surfeit of people.
Note, she does not say “they have run out of wine”, despite the narration of
the story, for her it is as if there was never any wine. Something important is
missing from the celebration; this lack stands in the way of greater life.
The wedding
organisers have under-estimated the size of their community. Their vision has
been too small. Their view of their community was much smaller than the
reality. In their minds they had built walls, they had defined who was in, and
who was out. They had set limits on who was welcome and who was not welcome.
Perhaps the
organisers of this wedding feast have a lot in common with us. Let us consider
how we choose to organise our own modern day feasts. In general we choose to
limit our hospitality and our table fellowship to the numbers we can afford to
treat well. Often when we celebrate we will choose to offer a lavish meal to a
relatively small number rather than something much simpler to more. In
justification we plead that we have no other choice because it is the most we
can afford. We say that we would have invited more if only we could have
afforded to invite them! The wisdom of the world tells us that we need to put limits
on our hospitality and our friendship.
At the beginning of
our story the wedding is being run according to this kind of thinking. The
organisers have not deliberately chosen to exclude anyone; it is just that
their estimation of how many people are part of their community has been
woefully inadequate, far more have arrived than were expected. Because they
have made this underestimation they now feel overwhelmed, the text does not say
it but we could imagine their immediate reaction: To shut the doors, to reduce
their welcome.
Then Jesus arrives!
The presence of Jesus changes the whole dynamic of the feast, there is no
longer going to be a distinction between those who are welcome (those who have
been given wine) and those who are not welcome (those without wine), he destroys
this distinction.
Instead of focussing
on the lack (wine), as did Jesus’ mother, Jesus takes what they have in
abundance (water). The organisers of the wedding can no longer give from their
riches, they no longer have any wine but that does not mean they have nothing
to give, they can continue to give from their poverty, they can continue to
welcome even though all they have is water. Once this revolution in mindset has
taken place among the servants then gates can be opened and everyone can be
welcomed. The hosts of the party discover that the new bigger reality is much
more life-giving (better wine) than was their previous closed mentality. The
wine which was lacking at the beginning of this story was a new more open
vision, a more astonishing realisation of community.
The events of the
wedding at Cana are described by John as a ‘Sign’. A sign is something which
points us to somewhere else. A marriage is the beginning of something new. We
are being pointed towards the birth of a new community whose values will be
very different from the established norms of society.
Both symbols, wine
and water, will return at the end of John’s Gospel[1]
in the story of the crucifixion and resurrection. It seems that at the centre
of his story of redemption the author of John wants to remind us of his earlier
teaching, we are being pointed back towards the wedding feast as a way of
understanding the crucifixion and resurrection. But this time the
transformation is reversed, the wine which passes into the crucified Jesus
through his death re-emerges as water and blood.
The community which
emerges from Jesus’ death and resurrection is called to live very differently
from the world by which it is surrounded.
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