There are plenty of glass houses in our lives and one of the most celebrated comes in the form of a wedding. A wedding is ripe for judgment. From the guests showing up, to the crazy family member’s behavior, to the bridal parties’ actions, the pastor’s homily and even the bride’s wedding dress. It’s all one big judgment fest. A festival we love so much that there are two Women’s Entertainment television shows: Bridezilla and Boot Camp for Bridezilla’s. The two shows debuted in May 2013 garnishing around a million American women viewers. Why? Because Ladies dream about the wedding day, plan it for years and some will do anything in the world to have the wedding they have always dreamed of.
I read a story of true to life Bridezilla, Jessica Vega. It happened in 2010. She really wanted to marry Michael O’Connell in upstate New York but neither had the resources to pay for a big wedding. So Jessica decided to fake having Leukemia to get people to donate resources so she could have the wedding of her dreams. She ended up having her wedding but afterward a reported broke the story of the lie. In the end, she was charged with a number of felonies and misdemeanors. The couple ended up divorcing because Michael never knew the details. However, he was recently quoted as saying, “She should repay the donors but she shouldn’t have to do jail time – just mental treatment. She’s a good mom and that’s all that really counts at the end of the day. I want my kids to have their mother back.”
While the example is extreme and the actions illegal, the importance placed on the presumption that a perfect wedding is pre-cursor to a happy life creates a lot of undue pressure. It reminds me of a moment in scripture when Jesus went a wedding in Cana. A social faux pa had just occurred. The wine had run out. This is equivalent to this era’s rain on the wedding day, along with the limo not showing up, the dress in a color other than white and the wedding dinner coming from Taco Bell. The wedding steward first comes to Mary about the problem who beelines to Jesus. Now, you and I might not think this is a big issue, but it is a big issue in this society of shame and honor. The wedding was a public feast and a community affair. The wedding was more than two people coming together. It was a ceremony of the coming of age of the participants and of a new partnership of survival between families. Both families would be on display and both would work to insure the marriage success and to increase their overall prosperity. Hence, Mary reaction to the social blunder has many a scholar today believing this wedding was for a close relative of Jesus’, maybe even a sister. There is no way to prove that theory but it does help us understand the context of the conversation between Jesus and his mother.
Jesus reaction to her request is interesting depending on where you put the inflection in reading it. It could even be considered curt or rude by our standards, “Mother, why do you include me, my hour has not come.” What? Mary must have been used to these kinds of phrases from Jesus because she just turned to the wedding steward and says, “Do whatever he tells you?” I know how I would react but Jesus, he obeys/honors his mother and tells the staff to fill the 20-30 gallon ceremonial washing jars with fresh water. After they do, he instructs them to take a cup to the wedding steward. Somewhere between the filling of the jars with water and the first cup being extracted the water turns to wine. The wedding steward is so impressed by the wine he wonders aloud to the groom, why bring the good wine out later in banquet? John then comments that this sign was to reveal his Glory and for the disciples to begin to believe in Him.
Often when I read the story of the wedding at Cana, I’m struck by the cultural aspects of living out one’s life in culture of honor and shame. A life of being worried about how everything looks to others and how it will reflect on one’s family seems awfully confining and prone to anxiety. We, as Americans who pride ourselves on independence often claim not to care how it looks to others but deep down we do. It may not rule some of our lives, many are worried about being seen or judged as productive members or over achievers in this society. It’s almost a badge of honor to say, “I’m busy.” We are a performance based culture – from our kids band concerts, to high school sports, to the name of colleges our young adults attend, to the companies we work for and our positions within them – we want to be known as the achievers. Many see it as a badge of honor to be “work –aholics.” The question for all of us is, why? Why are we so obsessed with being seen as achievers? Why are we striving so hard, ignoring those close to us, just to be judged by mankind as productive? Many of us would admit that deep down within us there is something wrong, with us, the society around us and even our understanding of what life is really all about. It’s not about the big ideas the culture masquerades as the most important aspects of life but the small details.
It reminds me of a book from years ago with the title, Don’t sweat the small stuff and then underneath in smaller letters the subtitle was, and it’s all small stuff. The book itself was not all that memorable to me. However, I wonder if a similar thought was going through Jesus’ mind as his mother approached. I envision Jesus watching this community feast, wondering about the people who may be over served, seeing the sin in people’s lives, listening to the conversations, rationalizations, judgments and maybe as Tim Keller suggests in his book, Encounters with Jesus, even daydreaming about a future banqueting table in heaven when all those who would chose to believe will be feasting when he returns again. I think Jesus may have been daydreaming. However, I think it’s more plausible that he was contemplating what sign could be used to get his family and friends to live the faith they supposedly possessed. After all, people back then and even today all espouse they have faith and only rarely do they actually live it. So when his mother who is in a tizzy about how running out of wine will look comes over to where he is seated, she breaks his daydream with a volunteer /told directive. To which Jesus decides to respond with what the greatest wedding memory of all time by turning water into wine without a credit card.
Now a sign usually directs us to a place or an event or a person in the future. In this case, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he used the jars meant for cleaning ones feet. These jars would have never been used for anything other than cleaning off the mud off someone’s feet because the water would have sat stagnate for a while and would have been considered unclean. Choosing ceremonial jars, Jesus signals what the book of Hebrews expounds. Jesus fulfills the sacrificial system. Something had to atone for the sin that separates us from God. For centuries, animals were slaughtered and a lamb took a man or woman’s place. Animals cannot atone for human sin. Forgiveness absorbs the other person’s debt. We cannot truly forgive a debt without taking it on yourself.
The symbolism is so striking. Jesus would cleanse us of our sin through His willingness to sacrifice on our behalf. The use of wine in the passage is a foreshadowing of the last supper feast: a time when Jesus will once again point to a cup of wine and talk about transformation, a time where Christ will lift the traditional cup of redemption at the Passover meal and form a new covenant. A covenant not based on how good you can be or what you can achieve but simply on repenting and believing.
After which, we come to understand that we have been crucified with Christ and we no longer live, but Christ lives in us. The life we now live in the body, we live by faith in the son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us (Gal. 2:20). And for which we are called to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow Him (Luke 9:23) for whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for him and the gospel will save it (Mark 8:35).
https://communitycenter.life/rev-robert-butler-info
