Isaiah 62:1-5 January 17 2016 John 2:1-11 Pastor Lori Broschat
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ONE STEP AT A TIME
Evangelist George Whitefield was preaching to coal miners in England. He asked one man, “What do you believe?” “Well,” he said, “I believe the same as the church.” “And what does the church believe?” “Well, they believe the same as me.” Seeing he was getting nowhere, Whitefield asked, “And what is it that you both believe?” “Well, I suppose the same thing.”
Questions of faith are good for us. Inquiring minds are to be commended, provided that the answers come from a reliable source. For those seeking proof, seeking the truest, most reliable source, there is definitely something to be gained by examining the first of Jesus’ signs. To be sure, this is a most underrated and misunderstood miracle. The whole “water into wine” thing has spawned a number of jokes. It’s kind of low key and with few witnesses compared to His other signs. It seems that His mother pressured Him into it. We just don’t know what to make of it.
Actually, the number of witnesses provides excellent insight as to why it occurred, where it occurred, and when it occurred. Let’s look at some of the who, what, where, when and why. When did this event take place? John said it was on the third day, but the third day of what? The week, the month, the year? It was actually the third day of Jesus’ public ministry. More importantly, what we need to know is what happened on the first and second days. On the first day John the Baptist was preaching, and as he was standing with two of his followers, he turned them over to Jesus by referring to Him as the Lamb of God who had come to take away the sins of the world.
On the second day, Jesus was with His new disciples on the way to Galilee. There He found Phillip, and with only a two-word invitation, “Follow me,” Phillip joined Him. Convinced of who Jesus was, Philip then went off and found Nathanael. He told him he had found the Messiah in a man from Nazareth. Nathanael was not impressed with the prospect of a Messiah from Nazareth, but Philip persuaded him to give Jesus a listen. Because Jesus greeted him with a remark about his honest skepticism, Nathanael too was convinced that Jesus was the Son of God. Jesus promised him that greater things would be shown to him to make him an even greater believer.
Even greater belief should be something we are all seeking with every passing day. What are we to make of stories like this one? If our faith should be simple, then we need to find simple truth. Some commentators and preachers have made more of this passage than necessary. Some focus on the pressure Mary put on her son to act. Some see it as a sign of the coming marriage feast of the Lamb of God; others see the Old Testament purification laws made void by the blood of the Lamb.
What really matters here? Is it avoiding social disaster for the bride and groom? Is it the need to listen to your mother? Is it understanding how the new faith fulfills the old? What really matters is what happened as a result of the sign itself. John affirms that in this sign Jesus’ glory was revealed and that the disciples believed in Him.
He would do many other signs and miracles; some would create believers; others would be largely ignored or questioned or criminalized. By and large they did not make so many converts that He did not have to die. This sign, as with all the others in John’s record, was intended to cause belief in
Isaiah 62:1-5 January 17 2016 John 2:1-11 Pastor Lori Broschat
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a certain percentage of the population; the disciples and followers of Jesus, including us. If they didn’t believe, the faith wouldn’t survive. If we don’t believe the church won’t survive.
You know as well as I do that there are those who feel God’s miracles must be explained away. No one looks for or expects signs from God anymore, even though we just left the season which is captured in the verse, “And this shall be a sign unto you; you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” Jesus’ birth was surrounded by signs, but as with His first miracle, very few were witnesses to it. That must tell us something about the unique aspect of God’s timing.
What we call a miracle God may just consider a normal Tuesday afternoon, and what God calls a miracle we may attribute to human ingenuity. Let’s not dictate to God what a miracle looks like or what we will or will not believe in.
On to the question of where and when this miracle took place. It happened at a wedding in Cana where Jesus, His disciples, and His mother were invited. At some point, they ran out of wine. A crisis? No, but in Middle Eastern hospitality where celebrations lasted several days, certainly an embarrassing problem. Mary was concerned and simply mentioned it to Jesus, perhaps because the addition of Himself and His disciples to the feast caused the wine to run out early. Was she asking Him to perform a miracle? We can’t answer that.
By responding, “My hour has not yet come,” He was showing His obedience to God’s timing. Even Jesus had to adhere to a schedule. We can only speculate what went through His mind during the next few moments as He considered her words. If He acted, that would mean that His hour had come, and from that moment on His life would take a set course. A countdown clock would begin that would not stop until Calvary.
While the wedding guests may not have known it, what the disciples surely discovered was that this was more than a miracle, it was a sign. A sign is intended to convey truth that would not otherwise be known. Think about this: how would you know a street was one way unless there was a sign to tell you? It wouldn’t be very pleasant to find out by experience. The truth that was made known that day was a confirmation of what the disciples thought they knew when they encountered Jesus just two days before. Of course, they already had faith in Him or at least belief at that point. They followed Him, identified Him, and committed themselves to Him.
But perhaps until that moment they had not put their faith in Him. This sign made believers out of those disciples. It manifested the glory of God that exists in Jesus. It proved His power over nature. All the miracles of Jesus were a sign of God’s power over nature; over disease and death, over wind and rain, even over molecules in bread and fish and water.
This was not the first time the disciples believed in Jesus, nor was this faith even now fully formed or fully informed. Yet something decisive had occurred in their estimation of him through this, the
Isaiah 62:1-5 January 17 2016 John 2:1-11 Pastor Lori Broschat
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first of his miraculous signs which successfully moved their eyes from the marvel of water turned to wine to the glory of Jesus himself.1
We might wonder about the initial faith of the first disciples. What did this sign do to convince them of who they followed? What were they trusting in when they first followed Him? Only Nathanael seemed skeptical. The first two went on the testimony of John the Baptist, and then after speaking with Jesus they were enthusiastic about telling the others. Then the next day something unbelievable happened.
If they had been truly convinced before, why was this first sign even necessary? It didn’t cause a great scene. It wasn’t even publicly announced, so it’s likely only the disciples, Mary, and the servants knew what happened. The wedding party didn’t even question who brought the great vintage. So who else could this sign have been for?
The disciples saw the signs of Jesus as a reason to believe. Those who rejected Him never did. Each sign brought people closer to or farther from belief in Jesus. It was something like belief by degree, which begs the question, is faith meant to be instantaneous? Can we, in fact, believe more today than yesterday?
Charles Spurgeon, another preaching legend in 19th century England, said that 98% of the people he met, including the criminals he visited in England’s prisons, told him that they believed the Bible to be true. But the vast majority of them had never made a personal, life-changing commitment to Jesus Christ. For them, believe was not an active verb.
I’m currently reading a book about being open to God’s prompting and leading, being able to step out in faith through what the author sees as God’s open doors. He quotes a pastor who stated, “Where proof is possible, faith is impossible.” I’m not sure where I stand in terms of that statement. It seems to indicate that faith is an either/or situation and that if there is no way to prove something only then can we believe in it.
I know that we are called to walk by faith and not by sight and that faith is defined as the evidence of things not seen, but I still maintain that faith is a matter of degrees. Even when we make a decision we think is a sure thing there is still that little part inside of us that moves forward with fingers crossed.
Research shows that the average person makes about seventy conscious decisions every day. That’s over 25,000 a year. Imagine how many unconscious choices we make! No wonder it often takes a miracle to get our attention so that we will see and believe or read and believe what God has for us.
I happen to enjoy art and appreciate the talents of those who are blessed to produce works that inspire and astound and amaze me. One of the newest forms of art I really admire is something that is usually temporary and appears in a place most would hardly think of as beautiful. I’m talking
1 Dongell, Joseph, John: A Commentary for Bible Students, pg. 60
Isaiah 62:1-5 January 17 2016 John 2:1-11 Pastor Lori Broschat
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about sidewalk art; not the chalk drawings created by elementary students, but great works of art done by real artists who use the physical nature of the sidewalk to add dimension and depth to their work.
Maybe you’ve seen some of these in photos. Using the technique of trompe l'oeil, which means to trick the eye, the artists can create a river on which people appear to be rafting, or a tightrope across a great crevasse, or a cliff edge with a view that looks to be hundreds of feet down. Even though you can see it’s a painting or a drawing on an ordinary sidewalk, your mind hesitates to allow you to step across. The eye seems to control the mind.
I wonder how often God sees us hesitating to move forward in faith in much the same way. Much of what we believe in is history, and as anyone who reads articles on Wikipedia knows, history can be rewritten. The story of who Jesus is and why He came to be in relationship with us has become so far divided from the actual religion that some people are trying to live by that Jesus would find it unrecognizable.
The church has the responsibility to introduce people to Christ, but He’s become hidden by so much bias and preconceived notions and rhetoric that He may be hard to discover. A 20th century English preacher said “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”
We have John’s record to show us the miracles of Christ, not because reading something secondhand is the best way to believe, but because God enables us to have faith in what we read through His living word who takes up residence within us. Faith is the purpose of the miracle, as it is in all the miracles in John's Gospel. Faith is the reason John wrote the book, as he stated in chapter 20; “but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing in Him you may have life in His name.” Faith is not a matter of coercion but of wonder at the miracle of Christ. It is an overwhelming gift in which the Giver Himself resides.2
We can believe many things. We can believe we are sitting in this room and outside it’s cold. If we don’t activate our belief in Christ, we are without hope. Maybe the lesson here is for us to become like those early disciples; to find a reason to put our faith in Jesus, not just to believe in God or believe in the Bible, but to act on our belief daily until it becomes faith. Jesus takes what is and shows us what it can be. What is – that which is tired, worn out, devoid of joy, empty, cheap and lacking purpose – can be transformed like a sidewalk transformed by a painting. But we have to take the first step in faith.
This month we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man of great faith who did not get to see the day when racism would come to an end. He said that faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase. Fifty years after his death, I believe he would still consider the whole staircase unseen, yet he would still be stepping out in faith.
2 http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=501
