Good morning. If you have your Bibles, please open up to John 2:1. We have been looking at the book of John. We are actually trying to get through the entire book of John. We are actually succeeded in getting through chapter 1, so we only have about 20 more chapters to go and we will be finished. The last few weeks we have been looking at the calling of the first disciples. Last week, Chris looked at the calling of Philip and Nathanael and this week as you may have suspected from the video, we will be looking at Jesus’ first miracle, the turning of water into wine. As miracles go, this particular miracle is really not all that impressive. In other words, even a contemporary magician today could probably do a pretty good job of imitating it fairly easily without even really impressing the audience. We have to remember the purpose of Jesus’ miracles was really not to impress. The purpose of Jesus’ miracles was to increase the faith of the disciples or rather to be a sign of something that would point to a greater revelation of himself or a greater revelation of his mission. We will see that in today’s reading. I will be reading from the New International Version starting at chapter 2:1. (Scripture read here.)
The context of this miracle is a wedding in Cana. We are told that from the very first verse. Cana is a small town about 5-8 miles from Nazareth. We are also told in the first verse that Jesus’ mother was there and in verse 2 that Jesus and his disciples had also been invited, which kind of gives us an indication that maybe Mary was really the first one to be invited. Mary was on the A-list of guests and Jesus and his disciples might have been on the B-list of guests. I have never put together a guest list for a wedding and I have been told by Debbie that there is oftentimes an A-list and a B-list. A-list would be the people that you definitely want to be there. The B-list would be the list of people that can come if people from the A-list can’t show up. I really think Mary was possibly on the A-list. She might have had a close connection to either the bride, bridegroom, or the parents. Maybe possibly even a relative of sorts. Jesus and his disciples were kind of an afterthought. Whatever the case, there was this wedding in Cana and Jesus’ mother was there and Jesus and his disciples were there. Weddings back then were big occasions. They may not have been as big as they are nowadays and as expensive, but they were big occasions. I think the video was pretty historically accurate. There would have been a lot of entertainment. There would have been a lot of food. There would have been a lot of celebration. There probably would have been a lot of wine. Contrary to what some may say, the wine did contain a certain amount of alcohol. Wine back then by the nature of being wine is going to be fermented so there would be alcohol in the wine, but it wouldn’t be artificially instilled into the wine. In other words, it would be the natural alcohol that would come through the fermentation process. Though the wine’s alcoholic would be diluted by the amount of water that was added to the wine. At the wedding celebration, there would be somebody in charge of regulating the amount of water that was added to the wine really to control the amount of alcohol but even more so to make sure that they don’t run out. In this case, as the story goes, they ran out of wine. That would have been a major problem back then. It would be on par with running out of food today at a wedding. It would be a major social blunder to run out of wine because wine back then was a staple of society. It was the common beverage. More common than water. To run out of wine at the wedding was not a good thing. I guarantee if Martha Stewart was there, she would not be pleased. In fact, it could actually put an abrupt halt to the wedding. Somebody would have egg on their face. It wouldn’t be a good start to the marriage because wine back then represented prosperity and peace and joy and all the good things. To run out of the wine early on in the wedding festivities would mean the marriage might not go so well. So it is not a good thing to run out of wine at a wedding. We get the sense that maybe Mary was feeling a little bit of uneasiness. Maybe she was friends with somebody in the wedding party. Maybe she was a relative of somebody in the bridal party or the parents of the groom or the parents of the bride. So she was feeling a little embarrassed about this situation. Maybe she was embarrassed because she might have been the one to pressure her relative to invite Jesus and his buddies. It could have been the reason they ran out of wine. After all, they were fisherman and they might have liked to drink. It could have been they were not expecting to have that amount of crowd there so they run out of wine.
In any case, we get the sense from Mary’s comment and Jesus’ subsequent reply that Mary expected Jesus to get involved in the situation. He had the ability to fix it. To do something. When we read from verse 3, we see that when the wine was gone, Mary said to Jesus “They have no more wine” and Jesus says “Dear woman, why do you involve me? My time has not yet come.” I don’t know about you, but if I were to refer to my mother as woman, I probably would have gotten a smack right across the face. It wouldn’t matter if I was 5 years old or 50 years old. It wouldn’t matter which friends I was with. It wouldn’t matter what occasion it was, wedding or not. My mama would have smacked me in the face for calling her woman because she would have seen that as a term of disrespect. The reality is, back then, when you called somebody woman, it was a sign of respect. It is kind of on par with calling someone mam today. Even though it was a sign of respect, it was a sign that a change in relationship was beginning to happen. No longer was Jesus little baby Jesus that Mary rocked in the cradle back in the Nativity scene. No longer was it teenage Jesus who got lost in the synagogue or lost in Jerusalem that day. What was happening was Jesus was now Jesus Rabbi. Jesus teacher. Soon to be Jesus Lord. The relationship was changing from Mary the mother of Jesus to Mary the disciple of Jesus that would be sitting at his feet and working according to his timeframe. That is the situation there. You get the sense that Mary deep down knew that Jesus would do something. Maybe it was motherly instinct. But she knew that Jesus would respond. What she does is begin to call the wait staff around. She says come here, my son is about to act. Jesus is about to do something. Listen to whatever he tells you to do. Get ready because he is going to act. That is what she is doing. She is anticipating that he is about to do something. The next verse, verse 6, is almost one of those verses that you would just toss aside as just incidental information. Really, this next verse holds the key to the entire meaning of the story. Verse 6 says “Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind the Jews use for ceremonial washing, each holding 20-30 gallons.” It seems like just an insignificant detail but really it is a very important detail and, once again, holds the key to the meaning of the entire story. For you who are familiar with the Bible, the Old Testament and the New, you know that the Jewish people were all about tradition and laws. They were all about precept. They were all about doing things what they saw as correct, the right way to do things. So they had built this elaborate system of rules and regulations and procedures all around these particular laws. Actually, it stemmed back to the giving of the Ten Commandments by God to Moses at Mount Sinai. It grew out of there until they had this whole elaborate religious system that was originally designed for good that became a legalistic burden. When the laws first came out, they were designed for good things. They had laws that related to cleanliness. The people who were out in the wilderness were living in close quarters. They had to have laws that would prevent disease from forming. They would have these washings and make sure people are constantly washing to keep clean kind of like we use hand sanitizers and things today. They had to constantly wash. The washings would also relate to moral purity. They would be symbolic of something that happened within. In fact, when John is baptizing in chapter 1, really what he is doing is going through a ritual that basically says I am trying to be pure. I am trying to get my relationship right with God. It was symbolic of that purity that was going on in the person’s heart. They also had ceremonial purification where the priest would have to wash their entire bodies at times before they could enter into the Holy Place, before they could approach God, and before they could seek atonement for the sins of the nation. They had these ceremonial washings. They had these laws centered around ceremonial washings. These huge clay jars represented those laws. The Pharisees were the ones that were responsible for enforcing those laws. They made a business out of it. That was their job. In many ways, by enforcing their laws, they preserved their own jobs. I don’t have the verse on the screen, but back in Mark 7, we see how they were the enforcers and they would go around making sure that everybody was doing what they were supposed to. Back in chapter 7, verse 1, Jesus and his buddies are going to some other dinner and they get in trouble by the Pharisees because they didn’t choose to wash their hands before eating. Just reading quickly through 7:1-8. (Scripture read here.) So these rules and regulations that were initially intended to promote hygiene, moral purity, and cleanliness before God had turned into these things that became these legalistic burdens and chains that nobody could keep up with but the Pharisees would use to make sure they would be able to keep their position.
Getting back to the miracle, these big stone pots were symbolic of all the years of history and regulation and rules and traditions. Jesus chooses those jars to be the context for his particular miracle. He is saying I am not only going to change water into wine. I am going to change your system up a bit. I am going to change your legalistic system into something new and really something better. That is what he does. As the miracle goes on, he calls around the servants and says take some water and fill up these jars. They did so. It says “They filled them to the brim.” Which would be a lot of water. It would be 20-30 gallons. The servants are probably thinking Jesus is a Jew so he is probably getting ready to do some sort of ritualistic cleansing. Maybe he is getting ready to wash hands or body or feet. They just do it. Then he goes on to say “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” The master of the banquet would be the one who is in charge of the whole ceremony. In modern terms, it would be the equivalent of a banquet captain at a hotel who is in charge of the wedding. He would be the person who would have the most to lose for running out of wine. In fact, he could lose his job. Some were paid to organize the whole event for the week. By not regulating the wine properly and allowing it to run out, his job was at risk. Not to mention he would have to face the wrath of the bride’s mom. He was sweating it. He “tasted this water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from.” To be honest, he really didn’t care. All he cared is something good happened. In verse 9 we see that he calls the bridegroom aside and he says “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” In other words, he is saying I have done a lot of weddings. I have been in Cana for a number of years. I have been in charge of a number of weddings so I know how it works. When you have the party, we want the bride and bridegroom to look good. We want the mother of the bride to look good. We bring out the good wine first. Then after they have been drinking for a few days or possibly a week, some are going to be drunk but with a lot of them their senses are going to be numb from drinking so much wine. Then they start bringing in the cheap stuff. That is what he is saying. Everybody normally brings out the good stuff first and then the cheaper stuff, but you have saved the best until now. You saved my job. That is really good. As the story ends, everybody is happy. Mary is happy. The servants are happy. The bride and bridegroom are happy. The parents are happy. The people are happy. The disciples are happy. Jesus is happy. Everybody is happy. End of story. Nice story. A nice miracle that we can turn the page over and let’s read about more miracles.
Except for the fact that you have another verse here, verse 2:11. It says “This, the first of his miraculous signs Jesus performed at Cana and Galilee, he thus revealed his glory and his disciples put their faith in him.” Thinking again about this idea of signs. In the Bible, especially in the gospels, a sign is something that points to something else. Just like for use today. If you think of a railroad crossing sign. There is nothing spectacular about a railroad crossing sign. What is important is the thing that it represents which is a train barreling down the tracks and if you don’t get off the tracks you are going to die. In the context of this miracle, the turning of the water into wine is the sign that is pointing to something else. It is pointing to I am about to change something. I am about to go from these old regulations and these old laws to something new and something better. I am going to replace the law with grace. If you were here when we first started the book of John, remember chapter 1. I said chapter 1 is really a preview of the chapters that would follow and of the themes that would follow. One of those themes is the theme of law versus grace. John 1:17 says “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” What John is saying is this is the theme that is coming down the road. This first miracle represents what is going on here. Jesus is saying you got the law through Moses which was a good thing. It had good purpose. But you developed all these complicated rules and regulations and ceremonial traditions. It created a burden for people. The things you thought could bring you closer to God actually brought you farther away from God. In other words, I brought the law to show you that it couldn’t work. You couldn’t reach God by your own standards. You couldn’t reach God by your own efforts. Now I am coming in and I am going to give you something better. I am going to give you grace. In other words, this whole miracle is pointing towards the cross. Some of the subsequent miracles and subsequent activities of Jesus, even as we look next week into the clearing of the temple, those are all an indication or sign that something better is coming along until they get to the cross and ultimately to the resurrection when the grace just pours out like new wine. That is the significance of the miracle. The law is being replaced by grace.
I read in a commentary which I thought was interesting. Remember Moses when he was back with Pharaoh and trying to get Pharaoh to let the people go? One of his miracles was to turn water into blood. That was a sign of God’s wrath against the Pharaoh. Jesus turned water to wine which was a sign of God’s grace which was a sign of the coming shed blood of Christ to man. That is the symbolism that is going on here. It is not just about a nice miracle that we can feel good about ourselves and we can read on. Jesus is introducing the change that is about to happen. As we think about applications for ourselves, is there an application for us? We look back and say that is a nice story, but is there something that can apply to our life or possibly the life of the church? All scripture we believe it is useful for teaching so there must be an application. Some are harder to see and if we are not careful, we can make them a bit contrived. There is always an application. We have to remember as we read scripture, the one who wrote the scripture is reading us. As we look into the scripture, as we look back 2,000 years and look at the situation there, the one who wrote the scripture is looking down on us, looking down on our lives, looking down on the church, and reading our hearts, minds, and souls. So there is an application there. What is it?
The one that came to me was this whole idea of signs. I believe that the turning of water into wine is a sign for us today. It is a sign that says we have to be careful too. We have to be careful that we don’t take some of our practices, even our good practices, what we would collectively call the spiritual disciplines, things like prayer, fasting, medication, and Bible reading, and that those things don’t become something too formal or legalistic. Something that we can each day go through our checklist. We read seven minutes of scripture. We read 20 verses. We memorized this. We got through that. Reading the Bible is a good thing, but just reading to check it off a list is not a good thing. Those things were designed to bring us closer to God not to be something that we check off our to-do list. If we are not careful, we can take those attitudes from our home into the church where the things we do on Sunday morning become very ritualistic, starting with coming to church. Some of you know that the church down the street has holy days of obligation. I am obliged to go. Or I am obliged to not eat meat on Friday because it is Lent. People go through the list. If they do that, they are obeying God and have gone through their checklist. We can do that too. We can come in here on Sunday and feel obliged to come here and feel obliged to participate in worship. We can feel obliged to pray. What happens is over time those become ritualistic to where we don’t even think about it. Even the Lord’s Table becomes a mere ritual. Even baptism can become a mere ritual void of meaning.
In closing, what is the answer? The only answer I can think of is we need to drink more wine. Not literally because some of you people probably could drink less wine. But metaphorically we need to drink of the good wine. The best wine. We have an advantage over the Jewish people back then. Still looking at this sign. You have to remember that the Jewish people were looking at the turning of the water into wine as a sign of something that was to come. Of the best that was to come. We have the advantage of looking back and know already that the best has come. The best is now. As I was thinking about my sermon, I realized that I had a typo in the title. The actual scripture says about verse 8 “You have saved the best till now.” The title of the sermon was Saving the Best Till Last. It is not last. We can think about this best as something that was applied to the Jews back then or we can think of this miracle as something that will apply to the future when we are sitting in Revelation at the wedding supper of the lamb or we can think about something that applies to us right now. I believe we live in the era of the best. How do I know it? Thinking again about the cross. What is the worst thing that could have happened to all mankind? The crucifixion. The death of Jesus Christ. The death of the Son of God on the cross crucified was the worst thing on the surface that could have happened to all of mankind. Yet the resurrection turned out to be the best thing that could have happened for all of mankind for all of eternity. We live in the context of the best. It means when we are looking at our spiritual disciplines and practices, we don’t look at those as things to do to gain God’s favor, God’s blessing, God’s approval, or to avoid his wrath. We look at those things as ways to let God know that we know we have his favor. We have been given his love through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We already have God’s favor and so we do those things to get closer to him and to stay close to him. To get to know him. To help him to work with us and come into our lives.
In closing, as a church, we have to be careful of how we view things and of how we practice our ceremonies. We have to understand that God has given us a favor. God has given us that new wine. God has given us the best wine in the form of the blood of Jesus Christ. It is our responsibility as individuals and collectively as the church to allow that wine to come into our individual context and the context of the church. Let us pray.
