Thomas J Parlette
“A Preview in Cana”
John 2: 1-11
1/19/25
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. A well-known list of essential wedding ingredients. You could probably add one more to that list, if you’re being realistic – “Something to go wrong.” You could call it “Murphy’s Law: the Wedding Corollary.”
No matter how well you plan a wedding, something is going to go wrong the day of. It just happens. I have seen brides put together three ring binders of schedules, lists and assignments for each wedding party member – yes, including the groomsmen – to try and make every little detail fall into place. It’s an admirable goal. But still, something always goes at least a little wrong. And that’s okay.
“Don’t worry,” you assure them, “it won’t go to plan.” There is always something (or someone) forgotten, neglected backwards or late. There’s always a slip-up, mishap or stumbling over words, stairs or long dresses.
“Don’t worry, something will go wrong – and it will very likely become the centerpiece of your favorite wedding story years from now!”
Well, at this wedding ceremony in Cana, everything held true to form, and something did go wrong. In fact, it was a social disaster. The wine ran out!
Midway through the feast, before any of the guests were remotely ready to go home, the final drop of wine dripped into a waiting guest’s cup. Not long after, the whispering began with the next wedding guest in line at the bar, left holding an empty cup in his hand.
You could almost hear people quoting the Rabbi – “without wine, there is no joy.” This was a disaster. The bride started to cry, the groom turned red with embarrassment – this was an insult to your guests and a bad omen for the wedding.
Even Mary, the mother of Jesus, is passing on that grim message. But when she turns to her son to tell him the bad news – he declines to pass the rumor on to the next person. In fact, he dismisses it. “Woman,” he says to his mother, “what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”
But Mary knew her son, she knew what her son was capable of, even though John tells us this was his first miracle, a mother knows. So Mary turns to one of the servants and whispers “Do whatever he tells you,” motioning towards her son.
Jesus commands the servant to take the six stone jars lined up against the wall – jars typically used to hold the water used for washing hands and feet upon entering the house – and tells the servant to fill them with water. The servant does so, and when he pours some back out – wonder of wonders – it has turned to wine!
And not just any wine – this is the good stuff, the finest vintage. This is the stuff you serve when you want to impress your guests. This is not wine out of a box – this is the one with a cork.
The bride and groom look at each other with astonishment and relief. If it’s true that all six of the jars are filled with wine, there’s no chance they’ll run out again. Each jar held 20-30 gallons – that’s 120 gallons of wine! Jesus has taken their family’s shameful deficiency and transformed it into overflowing abundance!
This miracle story of the wedding in Cana has always been something of an embarrassment to some Christians. I mean, when you set aside the healings Jesus did, the feeding of the hungry, the calming of the storm, the raising of the dead – refilling the wine supply at a party seems kind of underwhelming.
Then there’s the fact that alcohol is at the center of the story. During the Prohibition years, tee-totaling Temperance preachers worked overtime trying to explain away this troublesome part of the story. Suddenly, conservative scholars discovered a so-called “forgotten fact” that generations of scholars before them had dismissed – that all the wine of Jesus’ day was really unfermented grape juice. Or, according to another theory, people habitually diluted their wine with water, so it had hardly any kick at all.
If you’re a student of history, you know how hard it was to enforce Prohibition. Now think of the sunny Mediterranean culture of the Bible with an agricultural economy, vineyards everywhere you turn – do you really believe that people voluntarily diluted their favorite beverage with lots of water. Probably not. Besides, you can find lots of warnings in the Bible about drunkenness, so you know that over-indulgence was as much a thing in Jesus’ day as it is in ours.
Bottom line – it was real wine that Jesus produced at Cana. He did so out of compassion for the bride and groom and their families – to spare them the social stigma of failing to extend the customary hospitality everyone expected.
There is also ample evidence that Jesus loved a good party – he loved hanging out with people. So many times we see him and his disciples eating and drinking and having a grand old time. In fact, it was one of the things that the Scribes and Pharisees loved to criticize him for. They might have aspired to asceticism – They might have measured their lives by fasting and austere discipline. But this tradesman-rabbi from Nazareth was none of those things.
Reflecting on this story, preacher Cosmo Gordon Lang had this to say more than a century ago: “There is a time to laugh as well as a time to weep, and the Son of Man, who shared our tears on the way to the grave of Lazarus and the cross of Calvary, shared our mirth at the feast of Cana. All the faculties of life are to be, not suspected, but redeemed from evil by the Christian; and one of the richest and happiest is the faculty of mirth. Our duty is not to check its brightness, but to keep its innocence; and surely in the laughter God is well pleased.” (1)
Note what the writer reminds us of: that Jesus came into the world as Redeemer. He came not merely to purchase back human lives from slavery to sin, but to redeem the very earth itself. As Paul declares in Romans 8, Jesus came so “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
Jesus does not come merely as a rule-giver, as the sort of austere and humorless leader for which the Pharisees hoped for. No, Jesus comes to celebrate all that’s good about this world and human life, and to teach us what needs to be done to make sure such goodness continues to abound. Naturally, he opposed sin. And Naturally, he would never have condoned the abuse of alcohol. But Jesus demonstrated such a love of laughter and such a zest for life that he was at times charged with being a “glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners.”
By growing to maturity in a small Jewish village – and later in traveling with his disciples across the Galilee, Jesus took in human life in all its rich variety. He took it in – and he redeemed it. By taking on our human life, he made the experiences of birth, marriage, attending parties and playing with children and even death itself more sacred and meaningful. In this small, out of the way village of Cana, Jesus gives us a preview of how the whole of Creation will be redeemed. Jesus will step in and make what looks like a social disaster, into the event of the year.
In the Bible, there are 35 recorded miracles of Jesus. Of these, Matthew talks about 20 of them, Mark – 18, and Luke also mentions 20. If you’re keeping score – yes, I know that’s more than 35, but there is some overlap in the first three Gospels.
The Gospel of John though, is unique. It’s quite different from Matthew, Mark and Luke. John tells of only seven miracles – unique to his gospel. John is much less interested than the other three in presenting a straightforward historical narrative. John chooses and arranges his miracle stories carefully to make his point – which is more about Jesus’ identity than the things he did.
So John is very intentional about choosing this miracle story at a wedding celebration and putting it right at the beginning of his story. This water into wine miracle results in the entire village laughing and dancing and enjoying themselves through the night – even though John is very aware of where Jesus story will end. Maybe John wants to show us something right from the beginning about Jesus as the Messiah.
You may have noticed that those water jars that Jesus chose were usually used to fulfill ritual purification requirements. All the guests had purified themselves when they arrived so now they were standing empty. Perhaps with tongue-in-cheek Jesus singled out those containers to fill with wine. He could have pointed out some wine jugs or even wineskins – that’s what they were used for. But he doesn’t – he points out the water jars used to fulfill the law.
Perhaps Jesus is giving us another kind of preview. Yes, Jesus is faithful to God’s law, but he has seen too many people burdened by the over-zealous application of it. He has seen the law, meant to free humanity from the burden of sin – transformed into an intricate machine for crushing the human spirit. Remember what Jesus told his disciples when they were hungry one Sabbath day? He sent them out into the fields to harvest some food to eat, saying “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath.”
For John, the changing of water into wine is a sign. That’s what he calls it. John carefully avoids the Greek word for “miracle” – even though that’s the word most of us would use in retelling this story. People of our age look back on this event and focus on the suspension of natural laws happening here. But people of John’s time would have taken it for granted that supernatural wonders like this could take place. But what did it mean?
For John, the most important feature of the water turning into wine is the greater reality to which it points – the reality of God’s redeeming love, already at work in the person of Jesus Christ. The wedding at Cana is a tantalizing glimpse, a sneak preview, of all that will one day come to pass – the redemption, the rescue of God’s creation from the forces of darkness – and the everlasting celebration that will follow.
For the early church, that celebration found it’s focus in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper – and for this reason, it’s no accident that wine is the central feature of the event in Cana. At the center of many other religions of the Roman world was the acrid smoke of burning sacrificial meat, the whispered words of mysterious revelation, or the re-enactment of a cosmic drama. But the center of Christian worship is different. At the center of Christian worship is a feast, a meal of bread and wine – the first fruits of a greater celebration yet to come.
Of this first sign Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, John says it revealed his glory. That’s the future dimension of this story, that’s the preview of what is to come that we’re so likely to miss if we allow ourselves to be dazzled by the miracle of 120 gallons of fine wine from water. For John, what’s most significant about this wedding in Cana is the way it points us to the future and the way it functions as a sign in the truest sense.
For this preview of God’s coming kingdom, let us give thanks, and may God be praised. Amen.
1. Cosmo Gordon Lang, “The Miracles of Jesus: Sunday Readings” in Good Words, vol 41, August 1900, 569.
