YOU JUST NEED TO BE THIRSTY
The Wedding in Cana of Galilee
John 2:1-11
On 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.
For my birthday one year, friends gave me a plaque containing these words: “Does anyone know which page of the Bible explains how to turn water into wine? It’s for a party this Friday.” And if they did a little research, they’d also discover that this story, water becoming wine, isn’t without its critics today, those who seek to interrogate the story instead of letting the story interrogate them.
For some, the problem is changing water into wine, an alcoholic beverage. Jesus, they say, would never encourage the drinking of alcohol. They write their books to prove this was a non-alcoholic drink. I read one once with the delightful title, Sipping Saints. I was a teenager and had yet to learn that life’s too short to read books about nonsensical theories.
Others see it as a ‘luxury’ miracle, unworthy of the Son of God. All it accomplished, they say, was an over-abundance of wine for people who’d already had more than enough. It did nothing to change the world; nothing to alleviate poverty, oppression, injustice, human suffering, a global pandemic. They assume that Jesus only performed world-changing miracles. Which he didn’t. Of the seven miracles in John’s Gospel, not one did anything to change the world. The benefit was only for the recipient. They didn’t even do much to make Jesus known. At least five of them, including this one, were seen by very few. So, it seems Jesus had no problem performing ‘luxury’ miracles. Although, I do think this one is more troubling than the others and even Jesus was reluctant to act.
For some people the problem has to do with historical accuracy. They ask: Did this really happen? Did Jesus literally change water to wine? It sounds too far-fetched for them. Since only John tells this story, I encourage their questions, even though I can’t answer them. The trouble is that thinking about this story as nothing more than a literal historical event results in missing the point, failing to see the deeper spiritual meaning and timeless message for the church.
We must put aside our many conundrums, resist interrogating the text, and let the Spirit take us deeper into the story, allowing the story to interrogate us. All these criticisms have failed to realize that John is more concerned with writing theology, and not accurate or literal history. He uses, and maybe at times abuses or even distorts, history to suit his theological purpose. The story’s meaning goes way beyond a literal event. Whether it happened or not isn’t the issue. The story is full of symbolism and hints at a deeper meaning. The Johannine scholar, Thomas Brodie wrote, “The text is extraordinarily dense and is open to almost endless comment.”[1] I’ll try not to turn this sermon into endless comment as I focus on its theological teaching.
The fact that John was concerned with theology is made clear both in the story itself as well as in his statement of purpose at the end of this Gospel, which is where I’ll begin. John concludes his Gospel with: “These are written that you [meaning believers in Jesus] may continue to believe[2] that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (20:30f). Belief, and its related terms, faith and trust, has to do with theology. In the biblical sense, as Tomáš Halík notes, faith, belief “is not a matter of adopting specific opinions and ‘certainties’ but the courage to enter the domain of mystery,” and to continue to believe without knowing much,[3] including about this story. With all its troubling bits, the story was written as encouragement to believers to keep on believing without knowing much and, as a result, experience life in Jesus’ name. Not surprisingly, the story ends with: “his disciples believed in him.”
There are some hints in the story itself that point to a focus on theology. One is its abrupt ending. We don’t know what happened after the steward rebuked (and I think it was a rebuke) the groom for saving the best wine until the end, when “guests have become drunk.” Instead, John concludes with a theological claim: “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” Two things in this verse emphasize his theological intent.
First, rather than calling Jesus’ act a miracle, he calls it a sign. John never uses the term miracle in this Gospel, always referring to Jesus' acts of power as signs. Signs, in and of themselves, aren’t important, and we shouldn’t get hung up on the sign. What’s important is what the sign signifies. To focus on the sign is rather like focusing on the pointing finger rather than on what the finger is pointing to. If I were pointing to the rabbit on the moon, you’ll never see it or believe it exists if all you do is look at and argue about the finger. You’ll also never believe there’s a rabbit on the moon unless you go to the Southern Hemisphere and see it for yourself.
Second, and perhaps most important, John states what this sign points to. Jesus, he wrote, revealed his glory. The sign points to Jesus’ glory, which, in John’s gospel has to do with the cross, the resurrection and salvation in Jesus. Obviously, this isn’t what the disciples saw that day. It was only after the resurrection that they finally got it. When John says they believed in Jesus, he is doing something not uncommon in Scripture, bringing the future into the present. We might say he was using something like ‘poetic license,’ and yet still speaking a truth. The disciples did believe in him with all their questions and uncertainties. We know this because they stayed with him. We’re to read this story focusing on three truths about Jesus’ glory, truths that will dominate this Gospel.
First, the cross. There are at least three indications of the cross. The first is the mother of Jesus. She appears in only two stories in John’s Gospel, this one at Jesus’ first public appearance, when she kick-started his ministry, forcing him to act, and not again until his last, at the cross. Both times she’s referred to as ‘the mother of Jesus,’ and not by name. And both times Jesus addressed her as, Woman. By the way, it wasn’t unusual nor impolite to address an older woman this way. Jesus was being neither hostile nor rude, even though it was unusual to call one’s mother, ‘woman.’[4]
A second indication of the cross is the wine. The only other occasion wine is mentioned in John is also at the cross. Just before he died, Jesus was offered wine, after receiving it “he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (19:29-30).
A third indication of the cross is evident in Jesus’ response to his mother. He refused her because, he said, “My hour has not yet come.” In John’s Gospel Jesus’ hour is a reference to his destiny, the cross. Thus, at his last meal with his disciples when he washed their feet, John states, “Jesus knew that his hour had come” (13:1). His high priestly prayer, given shortly before his arrest, begins: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you” (Jn 17:1). He was referring to the cross.
Second, the resurrection. John introduced the story with words loaded with Christian meaning: “On the third day.” Some see in this nothing more than a literary device to smoothly flow from one story to the next. In chapter one, John frequently begins a new section with “the next day.”[5] If he had kept up the count, this wedding took place, not on the third but on the fourth day. But he’s not counting calendar days. He’s using the phrase, as was common with the early Christians, symbolically. And you don’t have to be a trained biblical scholar to get that it refers to the resurrection. He was raised on 'the third day.'
Third, the story reveals a truth about the nature of salvation. This is seen in the symbolism of the extravagant abundance of wine. The six water jars held approximately 150 gallons of water which Jesus converted to wine. In today’s terms, that’s about 700 bottles of wine! It’s an extravagant abundance of wine by any standard, especially at the end of the wedding, when it was no longer needed, at least not in that quantity.
At first, I thought the lavish abundance of wine was symbolic of nothing more than the abundant life in Jesus and its newness. Jesus promised, “I am come that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (10:10). And Paul stressed its newness, its transformation from the old to the new: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor 5:17). However, after wondering about 700 bottles of wine, I now think it’s symbolic of something much more significant.
This water to wine didn’t come in well-corked bottles that could be stored for the couple to sell what remained or drink over the next few years. It would need to be consumed fairly quickly! So, either you pour it out into the streets, and create a scene like the one in A Tale of Two Cities, when the wine cart overturned. Or you give it away to anyone who wants it.
I think that’s the more significant truth about salvation this sign points to. The extravagant abundance is symbolic of a salvation that is enough for anyone. It’s for the world, as John repeatedly reminds us throughout this Gospel.[6] Redemption in Jesus is mind-boggling generous in its inclusivity. It’s so mind-boggling that the church has always struggled to accept it. Down through the centuries the church has excluded people who fail to believe and behave according to its standards. We’ve acted as if salvation was, to quote Richard Rohr, “a private evacuation plan that gets a select few humans into the next world.”[7] The generous abundance of wine points to the amazing gift of new life for all; there is enough for everyone. This truly is the glory of God, whose steadfast love, as the psalmist sang, “extends to the heavens” (Ps 35:5). It’s big enough for anyone who wants it.
Not only that, the extreme abundance also anticipates Jesus’ invitation in John 7: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me, drink” (v37f). And the invitation that concludes our Bible: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift” (Revelation 22:10). You just need to be thirsty.
So you see, there’s much more to comment about in this story than whether it actually happened or not, whether alcohol or not. We should wonder about its theology and be led to deeper faith in Jesus, albeit not greater certainty. The sign was enough for those first disciples, who knew so little about Jesus but were willing to believe and live with mystery. They saw his glory and believed in him. May the story help you too to continue to believe and experience life in his name. There’s enough for everyone. You just need to be thirsty.
[1] Brodie, Thomas L. The Gospel According to John. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 1993, p. 172.
[2] John was writing to a community of believers in Jesus who were well-known to him. He did not write for an unevangelized and unknown people. Therefore, rather than using the more common English interpretation (‘may come to believe’) I have used the less common but more appropriate ‘may continue to believe.’
[3] Halík, Tomáš. I Want You to Be. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press. 2016, p. 6.
[4] O’Day, Gail R. and Susan E. Hylen. John. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006, p. 35.
[5] See John 1:29, 35, 43.
[6] John the Baptizer claimed Jesus was the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn 1:29). And John wrote, “God so loved the world” (Jn 3:16). The Samaritans recognized that he was “the savior of the world” (4:42). Read John and discover many more verses that emphasize this truth.
[7] Rohr, Richard. The Universal Christ. New York, NY: Convergent. 2021, p. 48.
Jackie Smallbones
©January 16, 2022
Not to be copied without permission from Jackie.
For my birthday one year, friends gave me a plaque containing these words: “Does anyone know which page of the Bible explains how to turn water into wine? It’s for a party this Friday.” And if they did a little research, they’d also discover that this story, water becoming wine, isn’t without its critics today, those who seek to interrogate the story instead of letting the story interrogate them.
For some, the problem is changing water into wine, an alcoholic beverage. Jesus, they say, would never encourage the drinking of alcohol. They write their books to prove this was a non-alcoholic drink. I read one once with the delightful title, Sipping Saints. I was a teenager and had yet to learn that life’s too short to read books about nonsensical theories.
Others see it as a ‘luxury’ miracle, unworthy of the Son of God. All it accomplished, they say, was an over-abundance of wine for people who’d already had more than enough. It did nothing to change the world; nothing to alleviate poverty, oppression, injustice, human suffering, a global pandemic. They assume that Jesus only performed world-changing miracles. Which he didn’t. Of the seven miracles in John’s Gospel, not one did anything to change the world. The benefit was only for the recipient. They didn’t even do much to make Jesus known. At least five of them, including this one, were seen by very few. So, it seems Jesus had no problem performing ‘luxury’ miracles. Although, I do think this one is more troubling than the others and even Jesus was reluctant to act.
For some people the problem has to do with historical accuracy. They ask: Did this really happen? Did Jesus literally change water to wine? It sounds too far-fetched for them. Since only John tells this story, I encourage their questions, even though I can’t answer them. The trouble is that thinking about this story as nothing more than a literal historical event results in missing the point, failing to see the deeper spiritual meaning and timeless message for the church.
We must put aside our many conundrums, resist interrogating the text, and let the Spirit take us deeper into the story, allowing the story to interrogate us. All these criticisms have failed to realize that John is more concerned with writing theology, and not accurate or literal history. He uses, and maybe at times abuses or even distorts, history to suit his theological purpose. The story’s meaning goes way beyond a literal event. Whether it happened or not isn’t the issue. The story is full of symbolism and hints at a deeper meaning. The Johannine scholar, Thomas Brodie wrote, “The text is extraordinarily dense and is open to almost endless comment.”[1] I’ll try not to turn this sermon into endless comment as I focus on its theological teaching.
The fact that John was concerned with theology is made clear both in the story itself as well as in his statement of purpose at the end of this Gospel, which is where I’ll begin. John concludes his Gospel with: “These are written that you [meaning believers in Jesus] may continue to believe[2] that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (20:30f). Belief, and its related terms, faith and trust, has to do with theology. In the biblical sense, as Tomáš Halík notes, faith, belief “is not a matter of adopting specific opinions and ‘certainties’ but the courage to enter the domain of mystery,” and to continue to believe without knowing much,[3] including about this story. With all its troubling bits, the story was written as encouragement to believers to keep on believing without knowing much and, as a result, experience life in Jesus’ name. Not surprisingly, the story ends with: “his disciples believed in him.”
There are some hints in the story itself that point to a focus on theology. One is its abrupt ending. We don’t know what happened after the steward rebuked (and I think it was a rebuke) the groom for saving the best wine until the end, when “guests have become drunk.” Instead, John concludes with a theological claim: “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” Two things in this verse emphasize his theological intent.
First, rather than calling Jesus’ act a miracle, he calls it a sign. John never uses the term miracle in this Gospel, always referring to Jesus' acts of power as signs. Signs, in and of themselves, aren’t important, and we shouldn’t get hung up on the sign. What’s important is what the sign signifies. To focus on the sign is rather like focusing on the pointing finger rather than on what the finger is pointing to. If I were pointing to the rabbit on the moon, you’ll never see it or believe it exists if all you do is look at and argue about the finger. You’ll also never believe there’s a rabbit on the moon unless you go to the Southern Hemisphere and see it for yourself.
Second, and perhaps most important, John states what this sign points to. Jesus, he wrote, revealed his glory. The sign points to Jesus’ glory, which, in John’s gospel has to do with the cross, the resurrection and salvation in Jesus. Obviously, this isn’t what the disciples saw that day. It was only after the resurrection that they finally got it. When John says they believed in Jesus, he is doing something not uncommon in Scripture, bringing the future into the present. We might say he was using something like ‘poetic license,’ and yet still speaking a truth. The disciples did believe in him with all their questions and uncertainties. We know this because they stayed with him. We’re to read this story focusing on three truths about Jesus’ glory, truths that will dominate this Gospel.
First, the cross. There are at least three indications of the cross. The first is the mother of Jesus. She appears in only two stories in John’s Gospel, this one at Jesus’ first public appearance, when she kick-started his ministry, forcing him to act, and not again until his last, at the cross. Both times she’s referred to as ‘the mother of Jesus,’ and not by name. And both times Jesus addressed her as, Woman. By the way, it wasn’t unusual nor impolite to address an older woman this way. Jesus was being neither hostile nor rude, even though it was unusual to call one’s mother, ‘woman.’[4]
A second indication of the cross is the wine. The only other occasion wine is mentioned in John is also at the cross. Just before he died, Jesus was offered wine, after receiving it “he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (19:29-30).
A third indication of the cross is evident in Jesus’ response to his mother. He refused her because, he said, “My hour has not yet come.” In John’s Gospel Jesus’ hour is a reference to his destiny, the cross. Thus, at his last meal with his disciples when he washed their feet, John states, “Jesus knew that his hour had come” (13:1). His high priestly prayer, given shortly before his arrest, begins: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you” (Jn 17:1). He was referring to the cross.
Second, the resurrection. John introduced the story with words loaded with Christian meaning: “On the third day.” Some see in this nothing more than a literary device to smoothly flow from one story to the next. In chapter one, John frequently begins a new section with “the next day.”[5] If he had kept up the count, this wedding took place, not on the third but on the fourth day. But he’s not counting calendar days. He’s using the phrase, as was common with the early Christians, symbolically. And you don’t have to be a trained biblical scholar to get that it refers to the resurrection. He was raised on 'the third day.'
Third, the story reveals a truth about the nature of salvation. This is seen in the symbolism of the extravagant abundance of wine. The six water jars held approximately 150 gallons of water which Jesus converted to wine. In today’s terms, that’s about 700 bottles of wine! It’s an extravagant abundance of wine by any standard, especially at the end of the wedding, when it was no longer needed, at least not in that quantity.
At first, I thought the lavish abundance of wine was symbolic of nothing more than the abundant life in Jesus and its newness. Jesus promised, “I am come that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (10:10). And Paul stressed its newness, its transformation from the old to the new: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor 5:17). However, after wondering about 700 bottles of wine, I now think it’s symbolic of something much more significant.
This water to wine didn’t come in well-corked bottles that could be stored for the couple to sell what remained or drink over the next few years. It would need to be consumed fairly quickly! So, either you pour it out into the streets, and create a scene like the one in A Tale of Two Cities, when the wine cart overturned. Or you give it away to anyone who wants it.
I think that’s the more significant truth about salvation this sign points to. The extravagant abundance is symbolic of a salvation that is enough for anyone. It’s for the world, as John repeatedly reminds us throughout this Gospel.[6] Redemption in Jesus is mind-boggling generous in its inclusivity. It’s so mind-boggling that the church has always struggled to accept it. Down through the centuries the church has excluded people who fail to believe and behave according to its standards. We’ve acted as if salvation was, to quote Richard Rohr, “a private evacuation plan that gets a select few humans into the next world.”[7] The generous abundance of wine points to the amazing gift of new life for all; there is enough for everyone. This truly is the glory of God, whose steadfast love, as the psalmist sang, “extends to the heavens” (Ps 35:5). It’s big enough for anyone who wants it.
Not only that, the extreme abundance also anticipates Jesus’ invitation in John 7: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me, drink” (v37f). And the invitation that concludes our Bible: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift” (Revelation 22:10). You just need to be thirsty.
So you see, there’s much more to comment about in this story than whether it actually happened or not, whether alcohol or not. We should wonder about its theology and be led to deeper faith in Jesus, albeit not greater certainty. The sign was enough for those first disciples, who knew so little about Jesus but were willing to believe and live with mystery. They saw his glory and believed in him. May the story help you too to continue to believe and experience life in his name. There’s enough for everyone. You just need to be thirsty.
[1] Brodie, Thomas L. The Gospel According to John. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 1993, p. 172.
[2] John was writing to a community of believers in Jesus who were well-known to him. He did not write for an unevangelized and unknown people. Therefore, rather than using the more common English interpretation (‘may come to believe’) I have used the less common but more appropriate ‘may continue to believe.’
[3] Halík, Tomáš. I Want You to Be. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press. 2016, p. 6.
[4] O’Day, Gail R. and Susan E. Hylen. John. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006, p. 35.
[5] See John 1:29, 35, 43.
[6] John the Baptizer claimed Jesus was the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn 1:29). And John wrote, “God so loved the world” (Jn 3:16). The Samaritans recognized that he was “the savior of the world” (4:42). Read John and discover many more verses that emphasize this truth.
[7] Rohr, Richard. The Universal Christ. New York, NY: Convergent. 2021, p. 48.
Jackie Smallbones
©January 16, 2022
Not to be copied without permission from Jackie.
