3^rd February 2010

Rev Clive Skewes, Assistant Minister, at St John's UCA Mt Waverley, Victoria Australia (Sunday 17 January 2010)

Lesson -- John 2:1-11

John's account of the wedding at Cana is dense with multiple themes. Yet what is remarkable is that the story remains clear and powerful. NT Wright observes, 'Like a great Shakespearean speech, it simultaneously drives us forward and urges us to pause and ponder.'

Wright compares John's symbolic themes in Chapter 2 to bells, each of which when struck set off other themes: the third day; a wedding; more wine needed; purification pots; glory revealed.

* Weddings feature in Jesus' parables and the closing chapters of Revelation. They speak of God's coming Kingdom.

* Wine recalls the salvation feast of Isaiah 25: 'On this mountain the Lord will prepare a banquet of rich fare for all the peoples, a banquet of wines well-matured, richest fare and well-matured wines strained clear.'
It also recalls Melchizadek, the king-priest of Salem bringing offerings of food and wine to Abraham and blessing him. Jesus' critical hour has not yet come, but, says Wright, with this action the clock moves forward another minute.

* Water tells of life, the Spirit, new birth. Jewish purification rites required water. That was the purpose of the water in the six pots at Cana.
But without the intervention of the Messiah the water was not life-giving:
it could only provide an external cleansing. The anchoring of this story in Jewish ritual symbols remind us that salvation is _of_ the Jews, but it is _for_ the world.(Wright)

The last-minute new wine speaks of new creation, coming at last through the Word made flesh. And so on. To quote Wright, who elsewhere cautions against allegorising, 'In this story at least, when the reader discovers allegorical significance the chances are the author intended it.' (Of course such allegorising needs to be consistent with the theology of
John's Gospel.)

John ends his account with these words: 'So Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee the first of the signs which revealed his glory and led his disciples to believe in him.'

Good writer that he is, John makes us work and doesn't tell us the number of subsequent signs. He will lead us through a crescendo of signs, until in chapter 13 when Jesus announces that his hour has struck, we realise we should have been counting. By chapter 20 we understand that the last signs, the final unveiling of his glory, took place at Golgotha and at Joseph's tomb on the day of resurrection. Only then do we grasp what was going o n at Cana in Galilee.

Only then, explains Wright, do we see the full picture of Jesus and his mother. She longs for him to be the Messiah she had imagined. As at Cana, he both is and he isn't. He fulfils Israel's hopes, but in a new way. She b oth understands and misunderstands. She must travel the long road and wait in darkness for the hour to strike.

Jesus' response to his mother's request at Cana reminds us he is not there at anyone's beck and call. He is there to reveal God's glory.

At that time his hour had not yet come. His hour was the time of the crucifixion. In that hour Jesus would take his own bride, his Church, and his glory would be fully revealed. Though the new wine at Cana was glorious an d revived a failing feast it was, however, only a beginning.

Shortly after the wedding, John the Baptist announced another wedding: one at which he would serve as the best man, while the Messiah whom John proclaimed would have the bride and be the bridegroom.

Soon after, Jesus arrived at a well in Samaria at midday and met a woman. Some of his forbears had done the same and come away with both a drink and a wife. Jesus came away with neither.

Another day came when Jesus asked for a drink, again precisely at midday. This time he received it in the form of sour wine and with it he took to himself his bride -- the whole world of us, whose sins he bore by uniting as one flesh with us in his dying and death. Before his mother and the beloved disciple Jesus' glory was fulfilled even as he himself declared, 'It is finished.'

How fitting, says Lawrence Wood (writing in The Christian Century), that Jesus' glory should commence its epiphany at the wedding of an anonymous couple in out-of-the-way Cana. Like Jesus' life and work, our marriages sha re in the same irony -- the full weight and glory of each appears only when death comes to part bride and groom. For the full glory of the union of a man and woman in marriage appears not in the swooning that leads them t o marry, nor in marriage's consummation, nor in the fulfilment of children, nor in the peace of the empty nest.

Wood believes he witnessed the moment when marital glory reveals itself as his mother ministered to his dying father, tenderly watching this person with whom she had shared over half a century; letting the gift of all they would be in time and space, the gift they could offer the world as one flesh, now grown to fullness and offered up, be allowed to rest in God's hands.

Here in the realm where death still appears at every wedding and sits silently through our feasts, says Wood, we continue sharing the wine that Cana's guest brings to our table. Sometimes the wine is sweet and wonderful beyond imagination. At other times the wine proves sour. We sip it from a sponge like hospice carers bring for times when lips dry up and crack.

Both drinks come from the same cup, the one we share with the Bridegroom who takes us as his own for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, and in whose arms we shall rest when death comes to close off all our other stories. We drink this wine and give our hearts away in the breath-taking risk of believing -- a form of falling in love.

Then others see his glory in us, a glory poured out like new wine from old stone jars. But it is especially when we take our last sip from a sponge that the glory of Cana's guest appears and shows the only way towards hope.
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