On The Third Day, Do Whatever Jesus Tells You Series

Second Sunday after Epiphany

Every three years we get to hear the story of Jesus changing a huge quantity of water into wine, after being asked by His mother to help a struggling newlywed couple. It’s a beautiful story often used at weddings. God designed human beings to marry and procreate—give birth to and educate—lots of children. If you look at the promise of heaven outlined in the Book of Revelations, you will see it described as a marriage banquet between Jesus, the Bridegroom, and the Church, His Bride. But there is something else at work here in God’s marvelous plan for humanity—and for you and me.

St. John pictures this as Christ’s first miracle, on the third day. “On the third day of what?” you might ask. The literal meaning is the third day of Christ’s ministry, as recorded in John’s Gospel. Just as in Genesis, the word “day” may not mean twenty-four hours, but a specific time in Christ’s life when He was doing something relevant to our salvation. In John’s liturgical calendar, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist on the first day. Then He recruited His disciples on the second day. And here He is at a wedding in Cana on the third day. We know that Jesus was in the desert, fasting and praying after His baptism in the Jordan. St. John himself uses the phrase “the next day” twice when Jesus chose His key disciples, Andrew, Simon, Phillip, and Nathaniel. Thus, the word “day” does not refer to a calendar day, but a day of divine action.

Has Scripture done this before, meaningfully?

In the story of creation, found in Genesis 1, God gathers the waters into a bowl on the third day, separating sea from land, and causing seed-bearing plants and fruit trees to come forth, and He saw how good it is. In Exodus, chapter 19, at Sinai the people of Israel hear that God was making them “a kingdom of priests, a holy nation,” a “special possession.” All they needed to do is keep the covenant made between God and them. And there, in preparation for the third day, they promised, “everything the Lord has said, we will do.”

So, at Cana, on the third day, when the cheap local wine ran out, Christ’s mother, Mary, came to Him and said, “they have no wine.” He replied, “Woman, what has this to do with me and you? My hour has not come.” Now that cannot have been a word of disrespect of His Mother, because Jesus knew He had to honor His mother. It had to mean that the miracle Mary was asking for would be huge and obvious and talked about everywhere. The act would set Christ on a course that would put Him into continual conflict with authority. That conflict would eventually lead to His sacrificial death on Calvary. So, deferring to Jesus as her Lord, Mary simply told the servants to “do whatever Jesus tells you.”

We will see the other end of the drama that began at Cana when Jesus, dying on the cross, tells His mother “Woman, there is your son (John)” and then to the disciple whom He loved, “Son, there is your mother.” What began with an act of love appearing as the best wine for a newlywed couple would end with the same dramatis personae and the taking of sour wine by the true Bridegroom, Jesus, at the completion of the greatest act of love in history. That is Christ’s redemptive sacrificial death.

Isaiah saw the struggle between Israel and sin, a struggle that over and over demonstrated human inability to save themselves by themselves. He saw that only divine intervention, in the form of the redemptive sacrifice of the Suffering Servant, could lift mankind out of the swamp of sin into a life of grace. No more would the surrounding nations laugh at the people of God, calling the land “forsaken” and “desolate,” because the Lord Himself would be the Bridegroom and the people His Bride.

So what does that have to do with us, other than to be a challenge to make certain we are members of Christ’s Bride, the Church? Our incorporation into the Body of Christ is effected by His Holy Spirit working in us to change us. And the change does not stop with our repentance, rebirth and sanctification, either. The Holy Spirit works in us to make us effective witnesses to Christ and the Church in a world that is desperately hungry for the Gospel. As in the early Church, the gifts are given to each of us so that we might build up the Body of Christ, making the Church stronger internally and more effective in spreading the Word of God. So we must discern what our particular gifts are, and step forward to use them.