The First Sign of Jesus
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“And God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy
Yes, God will delight when we are creators of justice, justice and joy.”
These are the words of the refrain of the song For Everyone Born, a Place at the Table, by Shirley Erena Murray. We’re not singing it as one of our songs today, but I’d like you to hear the refrain as a frame to the message in the next few minutes. “And God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy.”
This miracle of turning water into wine might seem frivolous. Beneath Jesus. Not worth mentioning in the Bible. This passage from John’s Gospel might have seemed downright evil to our Prohibitionist forebears, who clearly saw the dangers that alcohol abuse posed to the community. There’s no question that alcohol abuse is social problem in several dimensions. But this story is not about temperance! And it is not particularly timely for dry January.
But let’s step back and try to read this story with the eyes of our gospel writer, John and his audience. Let’s look at it in the context of how John tries to depict Jesus as incarnating God, i.e. bringing God into our world.
First, let’s notice with what prominence the Gospel writer recounts the story. He tells us that it is the first of his signs.
The first of Jesus’ “signs”. In the Gospel of John there are seven signs that Jesus performs. These are signs that reveal to any who would see, that Jesus is bringing God’s reality into the world, that God is entering the world through this Jesus of Nazareth. For reference, two of his other signs are the healing of the man born blind, and the raising of Lazarus from the dead. I’ll leave it to you to Google the others.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ glory is pointed to, revealed by, the signs that showed the inbreaking of divine power, grace, and love. The signs are God’s abundance breaking into our world.
This turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana is the very first of these signs. Not preaching, not healing, not raising the dead. Turning water into wine.
We find Jesus, his mother, and the disciples have all been invited to a wedding feast. The gospel writer tells us that the wine gave out. We don’t know if the groom had not planned well enough ahead, or if the guests were particularly thirsty, or if more people had stayed longer than planned. We don’t know.
But whatever the reason, John’s audience would immediately understand the gravity of the situation and how it might have happened. If the wine has truly given out, the party was about to come to a halt. This was not a BYOB arrangement. You might think that’s foolish or wrong or whatever, but that was the reality in those days in that context. That party was in trouble.
Jesus’ mother raises the subject to Jesus himself: They have no wine.
Now, the next words from Jesus are puzzling to us: “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me. My hour has not yet come.”
And, as you might imagine, biblical scholars have a lot to say about this. Some of it is interesting and helpful.
When Jesus says My hour has not yet come, he is saying that the hour of his death and resurrection has not yet come. So, whatever happens here needs to be understood in terms of that.
But what might be particularly troubling here is how we read “What has this to do with us?” One way to read this is negatively. Jesus is implying this is none of our business. It’s too trivial a matter with which to reflect his glory.
But the other way to read this is more like a frame: What has this to do with us? I’ll show you what this has to do with us. Just watch!
And that take fits with the story because his mother is not put off by Jesus’ words. In fact, she believed that he was saying that he will take care of the situation because her next words are to the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.”
Then we learn that there are six stone jars nearby. Jesus tells the servants to fill all the jars with water. Once they had done this Jesus tells them to take some out and give it to the chief steward, the fellow in charge of the food and drink for the feast. So that’s what the servants did. When the steward tastes it, he is amazed. So late in the party this new wine is better than the wine that began the party. The steward calls the bridegroom to express his astonishment.
This is unheard of. Generally the good wine is served first while people’s taste buds still have some sensitivity. But you’ve been hoarding the good stuff for late in the feasting! He is amazed.
John concludes the story by saying that in this act, Jesus revealed his glory and that his disciples believed in him.
This miracle is not frivolous. It is not beneath Jesus. It is a sign.
What does this sign tell us? What does it say that the first sign is to bring wine to a wedding feast?
In the Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky devotes a brief chapter to a reflection on this story. Alyosha hears it being read by one of his fellow monks who is sitting up with the body of the honored monk and elder Zosima. The story changes his life and as he hears it he weeps with joy. Here’s what he says:
I love that passage, it's Cana of Galilee, the first miracle... Ah, that miracle, ah, that lovely miracle! Not their grief, but their joy Christ visited when he worked his first miracle, he helped their joy . . .
He who loves people, loves their joy. Father Zosima used to repeat it all the time, it was one of his main thoughts . One cannot live without joy.
Joy, the joy of some poor, very poor people... Why, of course they were poor, if there wasn't even enough wine for the wedding, And his mother, knew that he came down then not just for his great and awful deed, but that his heart was also open to the simple, artless merrymaking of some uncouth, uncouth but guileless beings, who lovingly invited him to their poor marriage feast.
As Jesus begins his ministry he begins it in a celebration of abundance. He reveals how God created the world to be- filled with blessing and joy.
The prophet Amos had foretold
Behold the days are coming when the mountains shall drip sweet wine and all the hills shall flow with it. [Amos 9:13]
Now, let’s go back to the turning point question that Jesus asks and deploy it to set an agenda for ourselves. What has this story to do with us?
As tomorrow we remember with gratitude the life and ministry of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, let me share a recollection he wrote of the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery as part of the voting rights struggle. This takes place just a few weeks after the infamous police violence at the Edmund Pettis Bridge and the murders of two civil rights workers:
Some of us started out on March 21 marching from Selma, Alabama. We walked through desolate valleys and across tiring hills. We walked on meandering highways and rested our bodies on rocky byways. Some of our faces were burnt from the outpourings of the sweltering sun. Some literally slept in the mud. We were drenched by the rain. Our bodies were tired. Our feet were sore. The thousands of pilgrims had marched across a route traveled by Sherman a hundred years before. But in contrast to a trail of destruction and bloodshed, they watered the red Alabama clay with tears of joy and love overflowing, even for those who taunted and jeered along the sidelines. Not a shot was fired. Not a stone displaced. Not a window broken. Not a person abused or insulted. This was certainly a triumphant entry into the "Cradle of the Confederacy." And an entry destined to put an end to that racist oligarchy once and for all.
The marchers “watered the red Alabama clay with tears of joy and love overflowing, even for those who taunted and jeered along the sidelines.”
Friends, we live in uncertain times. With tomorrow’s inauguration of President Trump, many of us are worried about what comes next. What comes next for our trans siblings? What comes next for migrants and undocumented workers? What comes next for democracy and the rule of law? What comes next for those who depend on SNAP benefits and Medicaid? What comes next for the prospect of expanded economic justice? Maybe our worries will turn out to be misguided. Maybe not. I can’t say for sure with the authority of the pulpit.
But I can say this: we are continually invited into joy. We are continually invited to live out justice and joy – they go together.
Dr. Barbara Holmes, an African American theologian and spiritual teacher, who died much too early just a couple of months ago teaches us this:
We are born with an inner fire. I believe that this fire is the God within. It is an unquenchable, divine fire. It warms us, encourages us, and occasionally asks us to dance.
Suppose that at the entrance to heaven there is a scale—not a scale to weigh good and bad deeds—but a scale to measure joy. Suppose our passage into the next life will not be determined by the number of souls saved, sermons preached, or holiness pursued. Just joy.
We’ve become very somber Christians in a very somber age. It’s not that we don’t have things to be concerned about. There are wars, natural disasters, deficits, broken relationships and viruses. But in the midst of this, we’re called to joy by a joyful God and a joyful Savior. Hierarchies have always been afraid of a dancing, joyful Jesus. They’re not so worried about the institutional Christ, but they fear this living, singing Jesus who can boogie, who sings all the way to Gethsemane, and tells jokes. Remember the one he told the Pharisees about the camel and the eye of the needle?
No matter the circumstances, we’re called to joy.
Live into joy! God is inviting us into a life of joy.
Since we believe that God is present in all times and places, then there is at least some echo of joy to remember – even if we can’t exactly feel it – in every time and place as well.
Jesus’ turning the water into wine at the wedding in Cana is The First of Jesus’ signs. It’s not simply first in time, but it also sets the stage for Jesus’ whole life and ministry. He’s showing us that a foundational confidence/appreciation of joy lubricates the difficulties. Energizes. Inspires. A spirit of celebration is infused into life that both flows from, and testifies to, our trust and faith in God’s goodness.
What does this have to do with us? This has everything to do with us. Let us demonstrate that with our lives! Let us show that as we grow together as a joyful community of faith.
“And God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy.”
Let us spend a quiet moment locking that affirmation of justice and joy into our hearts, so that we may keep it with us for whatever lies before us in the days ahead.