I worked in the wedding industry for about ten years before coming to Redeemer. Our company shot about 70 weddings every year. For any of you who have been intimately involved with wedding planning, you know that weddings present a mixed bag; there is fun, happiness, joy, love, dancing, eating fantastic food, and always plenty of drinks. However, there are also ample opportunities for things to go wrong, and I have stories upon stories of things going wrong and near misses that make for great conversation but are hardly sermon appropriate. Catch me after church, and I will tell you a few.
There is one story I remember however, that fits nicely with today’s Gospel. As the bridal party was leaving the limo, a bag was left behind. No one realized it, and the limo drove away.
What was in the bag you ask? The rings were in the bag.
Can you imagine, showing up to your wedding, all your guests arriving, beginning to take their seats where the wedding ceremony will take place, and you don’t have any rings.
So, after many frantic phone calls, and bridesmaids and parents running around, and all the guests sitting waiting for the ceremony to begin and an hour passing, the limo driver made it back to the catering hall and delivered the rings to the best man.
The strange thing about this day was that, while all the commotion was occurring, the bride and groom sat there, and relaxed. They ate some food, they joked with their bridal party, and they dreamed about how this would be great a story to tell their grandkids.
While all the commotion was occurring around them, they sat, they waited, and they were fine.
They knew that their old life as individuals was coming to an end, and a new life, living as one, was about to begin, and there was nothing that could get in the way of that. On the list of things to go wrong at a wedding, losing the rings ranks right up there. I think running out of wine would be another catastrophic event to happen at your wedding.
At Cana, Jesus sat, enjoying himself at a beautiful party with his newly called disciples, and his beloved mother. Jesus was minding his own business when his mother approached him and told him that there was no more wine. His response: “My hour has not yet come.”
Yet, perhaps because it was Mary who was asking, Jesus performs his first miracle, and does so on a grand scale, turning approximately 120 gallons of water into wine. I wish I could do that. Just think about how much I’d save at Publix!
All joking aside, what are we to make of this miracle performed by Our Lord?
First, we cannot try to understand Jesus based solely on his public ministry. If we try to do that, we will make the same mistake those who crucified him made. We will see him only has a moral teacher with great power to perform acts that we cannot understand. We must recognize Jesus as the incarnate word of God.
John’s account begins by introducing us to Jesus not as a baby, or as a teacher, but as God’s eternal word, through which all creation was made! Jesus, the divine word of God, still maintains power over his creation. Jesus’ miracles are not magic acts. They aren’t changing the world into what it shouldn’t be, but they are in fact revealing The Kingdom of God, showing the world the way it should be. The Kingdom where there is “no death, neither sorrow nor crying, but the fullness of joy” Christ’s act in supplying ample wine for this feast allows us to see a window into God’s intended kingdom for us all, a place where there is not want, but only joy. What a better place to express that joy for the first time then at a wedding.
Something else that is interesting to note is the double meaning of what the head steward says, “Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.” (John 2:10 RSV) While the plain meaning of this statement is clear, we also must understand that this is imagery. Christ is the bridegroom, and the Church is his bride. The world has drunk freely of the lesser wine, the wine of idolatry, anger, fear, injustice, religious legality, and death. Now the new wine is here for us all to partake in. The new wine is Jesus Christ who will soon make that triumphal march into Jerusalem toward The Cross, towards his glory, and in dying and being raised from the dead, trample down the powers of this world, and even trample down death, by death, through his glorious resurrection.
The new wine that we partake in, the new covenant of Jesus Christ the Son of God, our Redeemer, is when our old lives as individuals end, and our new lives as a community of believers, living for one another, under Jesus our Lord, in the kingdom of God, drinking from the same cup of salvation, begins.
What wine are you partaking in? The wine of the world which leads to despair and death, or the wine of the Kingdom of God, which leads to joy, peace, and love, and which only comes from Jesus Christ the incarnate Word of God?
Sermon preached by the Rev. Christian M. Wood
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
2nd Sunday after Epiphany
20 January 2019