John 2:1-11
The Wedding at Cana
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim.
He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
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You
all have probably figured out by now that I love food. Also, I'm
pretty susceptible to food advertising. If a commercial for food
comes on tv, I'm hungry. It doesn't matter too much what I've just
eaten—I'll be hungry. You could take me over to Ruth's Chris Steak
House, feed me the finest steak they have along with all the fixins
to the point that I can scarcely stand up, take me home, put me in
front of a television, and if a commercial for Long John Silvers
comes up and they advertise those square fish sandwiches, and it
sounds good. This doesn't make sense, but I'm just saying that there
is a direct link between what I see on tv and the sensation of
hunger.
Now,
as you probably know, food advertisers have a few tricks up their
sleeve. Have you ever wondered why cereal never looks soggy when
it's in milk on a tv commercial? That's because they don't actually
use milk. That white stuff? It's glue.
Or
perhaps you've wondered why the syrup on the pancakes in a Denny's ad
never actually soaks into the pancakes. Well, wonder no more—they
cover the pancakes with fabric protection. Oh, and they use motor
oil rather than syrup.
And
the steak that always looks perfectly cooked on the outside, yet rare
on the inside, the look that you can never quite duplicate? Well,
it'd be hard to do so, unless you use raw meat, because cooking tends
to make the meat shrink and dry up. The brown covering is probably
shoe polish.
All
these tricks explain what happens when you go to the restaurant. You
order something off the menu that looks scrumptious. You can't wait
to dive in, except that, by the time you get your food, it looks
markedly different than the picture on the menu.
In
a way you're glad about this, because you're not too interested in
eating something that's been produced with motor oil and shoe polish.
But
part of you feels that you got something very, very meager. I don't
know how many times I've ordered something from Chik-fil-A (yes, I
realize how dangerous it is to criticize Chik-fil-A in the South) and
expected it to look like the picture on the menu. When I open the
carton, it's usually a sad looking bun with a piece of charbroiled
chicken inside it that looks like it's been passed around the back a
few times, and the pickle is typically hanging on for dear life. It
just feels meager, like a sad representation of what I wanted, and
I'm disappointed. I expected more.
Do
you ever feel that way about your life? Did you rush forward into
something with great expectations, with wild dreams, and then you got
a few years down the road and you began to wonder what happened?
Have you ever looked around at things and wondered if someone sold
you a false bill of goods? Have you accumulated everything they told
you to get and yet you still feel somewhat empty on the inside?
Maybe you've made it to a point where you just feel like what you're
getting out of life seems somewhat meager compared to everyone else.
There's a new phenemenon that is being experienced by millions of
people around the world—it's called the fear of missing out.
People who were once happy with their lives are now connected with so
many people through the internet that they're spending time comparing
themselves to others. And the other to whom they compare themselves
only post the best things about their lives, and since you don't know
them well enough or talk to them often enough to know that their kids
are actually driving them crazy and they can't find anyone to take
their new puppy and the washer and dryer both exploded at once, you
start to think that everyone in the world has a better life and takes
better vacations and has perfect children, and suddenly your life
feels meager. You compare yourself to everyone else, or to everyone
else's best, and you feel like you come up short. You had great
expectations, but you fall short.
Sometimes,
if we're not careful, we construct an image of God that falls short
and feels meager, too. What happens is we allow our image of God to
be constructed by the voices that speak the loudest rather than
finding it in Scripture, and we find ourselves thinking of God as an
angry, judgmental father who is constantly on the warpath and in
search of any possible reason to sentence you to an eternal destiny
of suffering and pain far from him. We start thinking of God as a
rules-oriented teacher who will slap the back of your hand with the
proverbial ruler the second you get out of line, but if you're good
enough you get to go to heaven and fly around with dainty little
wings and play a harp in a Thomas Kinkade painting.
In
the face of life, that image of God seems pretty meager, doesn't it?
Because
what could a God like that say to a country in need of answers in the
face of evil exploding bombs near the finish line of a marathon,
killing an 8 year old little boy who, had he stayed hugging his
father rather than running back to be with his mother, would have
lived? If our image of God is meager, than we have no hope of
holding onto answers in the face of tragedies that cause us to lift
our eyes to the hills, from whence our help should be coming, but if
we live in expectation of judgment, help in the face of personal pain
and tragedy, in the face of a nation's mourning, isn't coming.
That's
why we need to understand who Jesus Christ is, because Colossians
tells us that Christ is the image of the invisible God. What this
means is that to understand Jesus Christ means that we understand
God—to know Christ fully is to know God fully.
This
sermon series is all about getting to know Jesus Christ and his
personality better. Each Sunday that we explore a different side of
Jesus, we get to know God a little better. So today, we're talking
about the wedding feast at Cana, the scene at which Jesus turns water
into wine. You might not think this has much to teach us about the
character of God. Hopefully, in a few minutes you will see
differently!
John's
Gospel is different than the other three Gospels. The other three
are very similar in nature, style and tone, and many of the stories
overlap. John's Gospel, however, presents us with a much more
spiritualized Jesus, a Jesus who clearly states who he is and what
his mission is. Also, John only includes seven miracles. If you're
counting to double check me, make sure you don't count the
resurrection. You'll end up with 8 and then find yourself debating
whether walking on water is a miracle or not. It is, but for some
reason they don't count the resurrection. Apparently, it's
complicated.
Anyway,
John only lists 7 miracles, so each one takes on a level of extra
importance. Also, this one is first. It's his first public miracle,
and his ministry has barely begun. He's called some disciples, but
there isn't much of a public following yet. Until now...
All
of this is rather curious. From what we first think of when we think
about Jesus, we'd imagine that John would want to emphasize a
healing, or perhaps a dramatic deliverance from demons, or the
resurrection of Lazarus. We'd imagine that's what he would want
people to know first about Jesus. Instead, we find Jesus at the home
of some wealthy people giving them more booze. They could have sent
for more wine, right? They could have afforded it. This is a
luxury, not a need—no one's life suffers because they don't have
any wine. And Jesus gives them more wine than any wedding party
could have consumed in a whole week (which is about how long one of
these weddings lasted) —roughly 150 gallons of it. What's that
about?
Well,
there's one word that is a key to all of this: abundance.
In John 10:10, Jesus tells us that he has come to have abundant
life, and this passage is the proof to all of this. Honestly, I also
believe that this passage also gives us insight that helps us answer
so many of our other questions.
See, Jesus didn't come just to give us a life that would barely meet
our deepest needs, give us what we need to scratch out an existence,
and helping us limp across the barrier into eternal life. Jesus has
come to give us abundant lives, above and beyond what we think we
need, above and beyond what we deserve. Jesus comes to give us
abundance, and so it's no surprise that we find Jesus at the home of
wealthy people in the midst of a party—Jesus calls us to enjoy life
and the gifts he has given us.
Think about the scenes of Jesus that have been painted throughout
history. Often we get the meek and mild Jesus or the broken and
hurting Jesus, and sympathetic Jesus is often included as well. And
these are all important sides of Jesus—but so is the part that sits
down at the party and enjoys life, the side of Jesus that gives far
more than we can imagine—this is superabundance, and it's not the
only time. Three of the 7 miracles deal in this idea of
superabundance—here, when Jesus feeds 5,000 and has 12 baskets left
over, and after the resurrection, when the disciples haven't caught a
fish all night and end up with enough to tear the nets after
following the commands of Jesus. Jesus gives us impossibly more than
we can imagine, and it's all a gift, a free gift.
So we, then, are called to enjoy this life. We're called to
recognize the abundance God gives us and enjoy this gift. Life
surrounds us—the beauty of God's creation, the gift of community,
of the people, friends and family, that surround us, the gift of life
itself. We're called to enjoy it, to enjoy loud dinner parties and
exciting baseball games, to give thanks and laugh and sing and
rejoice at all God gives us. We don't have to sit like Puritans and
be afraid of laughter—we're called to be a people who enjoy God's
abundance that he lavishly has poured out on us.
And what then, of the tragedies? How does a wedding feast respond to
those? What this wedding feast tells me is that Jesus cares about
our everyday lives. It matters. If Jesus cares enough about a lack
of wine at a wedding of wealthy people, how much more is he going to
care when we're hurting? How much more will it matter when Jesus
sees one of his children hurt, weeping and mourning? How much more
will Jesus join us in our slow walk through the darkest valleys of
life? Rather than picture Jesus as merely our ticket into eternal
life, we can view Jesus as the Savior who claims all of our life and
wants us to live it abundantly. Everyday life matters to God.
The best part about this text? Jesus saves the best for last. The
guests at the wedding have been drinking wine the whole time. Now
that Jesus has performed this miracle, the wine merely gets better,
improving markedly.
The same is true of our life with Christ. Our entire lives, we are
drinking wine. We can live sacramentally, enjoying God's gifts and
rejoicing in his love. We can love with reckless abandon and give
freely out of a deep gratitude for all we have been given, knowing
that we cannot out-give God. And upon our deaths, we then taste the
best wine that Christ gives—we enter into the banquet feast that
marks the fullness of the Kingdom of God. We pass through the valley
of the shadow of death and can exclaim, along with the chief steward,
that while the promises of the world give us the best first and
cannot fulfill that promise later, the King of Kings gives us
abundance in our lives, and then saves the best for last, for our
eternal home.
Let us pray
