January 19, 2025 Sermon
Sermon title: “Water Into Wine”
Scripture: John 2:1-11
(Other lectionary suggestions include Isaiah 62:1-5, Psalm 36:5-10, and I Corinthians 12:1-11.)
John 2:1-11
The Wedding at Cana
1On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” 5His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. 9When 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 10and 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.” 11Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
Today’s story from Scripture is a great one, and even non-believers are aware of the claim that Jesus turned water into wine! The Gospel of John is full of little hints that point to other things, such as the way this passage opens. It says, “On the third day....” Wait a minute! If you go back in Scripture there is nothing said about the FIRST day or the SECOND day! So, what does “On the third day” mean? It is a reminder that Jesus rose from the dead on the THIRD DAY! The author of John is always putting in little hints in his Gospel! John uses these incidents as “signs” of just who Jesus is. Says N. T. Wright, the author of the 4th Gospel is saying that these are times “when heaven and earth intersect with each other.” And Wright says that’s what the Jewish community of Jesus’ day thought happened in the Temple. He says, “The point is not that they are stories which couldn’t have happened in real life, but which point away from earth to a heavenly reality.”
Lots of preachers have had something to say about this passage. Here is something from Mt. Zion Lutheran church up in the state of Washington. The preacher - whose name I don’t know - called his sermon “When the Wine runs Out.” He says, “Verse 3 contains a powerfully symbolic phrase: ‘When the wine ran out....’ Throughout the New Testament, wine is associated with the manifest presence of God through the Holy Spirit. Paul evokes this when he writes, ‘Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.’” (That’s from Ephesians 5:18.) And this preacher continues, “What does it mean for the people of God to ‘run out of wine’? In this scene, wine was at the center of the wedding celebration, poured out freely to be served to the invited guests. The scene is a picture of a joyful people to whom God’s Spirit flows freely. But now a need arose because the wine had run out and the people needed it replenished to sustain their joy.”
This Mt. Zion Lutheran preacher goes on: “As Christians, we all have the Holy Spirit present in us. Yet it’s also true that we have to be filled with the Spirit continually. Every one of us experiences an ebb and flow in our walk with Christ. The low times do not mean his Spirit has left us, but it does mean we’re called back again and again to quench the deep thirst that the Spirit himself puts in us. As children of God, we need spiritual food only he can give – food that empowers us to love others as he loves, to lead a holy life that pleases him and to speak his Word with boldness to others.”
Not all theologians agree with this thinking. “But the Bible makes a strong case for continual filling. For example, the gospel writers tell us that the disciples received the Holy Spirit when Jesus breathed on them. But in Acts 2 and 4, after Christ’s resurrection the disciples were filled again with the Spirit in a different way, with manifest power from on high. Once that happened, they preached the gospel with boldness and performed incredible miracles in Christ’s name.”
You know, it doesn’t really matter to me YOUR theory of the Holy Spirit. But this Lutheran pastor says, “It’s fairly clear that to serve Jesus we all need to be filled with the Spirit - to remain in constant communion with him so he can manifest his presence in us to an unbelieving world.” He goes on to say that if you have been a believer for any length of time, “you know by experience how easily your soul can become dry, needing the Spirit to fill you again.”
Boy, for me that is a true statement. While I love taking vacations and “getting away from it all,” as the saying goes, when I am not here, I miss this place. I miss you, too, but I really need to hear the familiar hymns and say the prayers that keep me “in touch.” I think you and I need each other, and I think Jesus was on to something when he said, “wherever 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, there I am, in the midst of you.” A friend just sent me an article about how this century has become a lonely time for lots of people, and what has happened is that some of us in our loneliness have become alienated from each other, and that solitude has infected our politics as well. You who treasure church: GOOD for YOU! It’s not the only place to meet the Holy Spirit, but it is one you can count on! If the sermon doesn’t reach you, maybe it wasn’t for you but the person behind you! Say the prayers! Sing the hymns! Don’t go away mad - just go away! I’m kidding, of course - but give God a chance. If not this Sunday, how about NEXT Sunday? And if not this church, maybe it’s ANOTHER church that God has in mind for you. There is a prayer in one of the Psalms, and the person praying says, “And take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.” See, others have experienced the lack of God’s presence, or what they think is that lack. Don’t give up. Keep trying. Maybe YOUR wine has run out. But my faith tells me that God will NEVER give up on trying to get in touch with you!
I mentioned a moment ago the prayer from a Psalm. It’s from Psalm 71:12-14. ((12O God, do not be far from me; O my God, make haste to help me! 13Let my accusers be put to shame and consumed; let those who seek to hurt me be covered with scorn and disgrace. 14But I will hope continually, and will praise you yet more and more.)) A composer by the name of Nicolo Zingarelli wrote some music for it a couple of centuries ago.
This story of Jesus turning water into wine I have always liked, although maybe for the wrong reason! Look how he talks to his mother: “Woman, what concern is that to me or to you?” Or, as we might say today, “Not my problem!” And look at Mary’s response. She says to the hired help, “Do whatever he tells you to do.” A couple of remarkable things here: (1) Jesus doesn’t even call her “Mom” or “Mother.” He calls her WOMAN! And (2) she has such faith in her son that she doesn’t confront him. She somehow KNOWS that he will do the right thing.....and he DOES!
Why is it the right thing to help out this young couple as well as both families? It would have been the social FAUX PAS of all FAUX PASs! And maybe there would have been an eternal rift in the marriage from the start: “YOUR family made us run out of wine!” “No, it was YOUR alcoholic family that made us run out!” This was a small town, and EVERYBODY would have known about it. There is a certain compassion of Jesus to be sure that nobody is embarrassed. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, and Jesus wasn’t going to let it be anybody’s fault. There’s something sweet about that, I think. Also, the author of John’s gospel is trying to say that there is an ABUNDANCE that is available to ALL. In John 10:10, Jesus says he came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. Also, remember that by the time John’s gospel was written, probably near the end of the first century, there was already a difference between the followers of Jesus (the young church) and the Jewish community. So, I have to say that John takes a “dig” at the Jewish community by what we are told in this passage. We are told that there are SIX stone water jars for the rites of purification. Is the number SIX important? Yes, because it’s not quite SEVEN, the perfect number, the number of days it took God to create the world. John is saying that the Judaism of Jesus’s day was NOT QUITE COMPLETE. By not saying it, John is saying that JESUS completes the picture. Does John mean to be antisemitic? No, but by this time there was already a rift between the Jewish community and the Christian community. And what John says here and elsewhere does not help the situation.
“When the wine runs out” is how one preacher titled his sermon. He also says, “I pray that the church’s wine today doesn’t run out - that the living, trusting, sacrificing church of Jesus Christ doesn’t lose its fire and within a generation’s time become a hollow shell of itself. Sadly, this happened to the church time after time throughout history. We may run to the altar seeking the wine of God’s Spirit, but for many the answer lies in simple obedience. When Christ’s mother, Mary, saw that the wine had run out, she directed the servants to her son and said, “Do whatever he tells you.” The King James Version renders her instructions more powerfully: “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.”
He ends with this prayer: “Lord, pour out the wine of your Spirit on us - your wine of healing, anointing, deliverance, and restoration. Pour it out on brothers and sisters mired in dead religion and free them to serve you powerfully again. We want to see you move through your people to bring new life. Amen!”
Remember the TV show “Columbo,” starring Peter Falk? Sometimes he would say, “Just one more thing....” And I’ll say that now: Just one more thing....This story is about transformation: “the different dimension of reality that comes into being when Jesus is present and when, as Mary tells the servants, people do whatever Jesus tells them.” That’s a quote from N. T. Wright.
He also says that this wedding in Cana of Galilee “is a foretaste of the great heavenly feast in store for God’s people. The water jars, used for Jewish purification rites, are a sign that God is doing a new thing from within the old Jewish system, bringing purification to Israel and the world in a whole new way.”
The transformation of water into wine “is of course meant by John to signify the effect that Jesus can have, can still have today, on people’s lives.” But keep in mind that transformation “only came when someone took Mary’s words seriously: ‘Do whatever he tells you.’”
How about you, and how about me? Are we ready to do whatever Jesus tells us to do? I hope so! Amen.
Pastor Skip
