John’s gospel is sometimes called the book of signs,
because one of its structuring principles is a series of seven signs, or
miracles—John uses the Greek word semion,
from whence comes semaphore in
English. And what we have here is the
first of those signs: which John—lest we fail to make the connection—tells us at the end of the story that “Jesus
did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory,
and his disciples believed in him.” And we
should note, in passing, the “his disciples believed in him” bit, because Jesus
would have a lot to say about that later in John’s gospel. As he makes clear later on, belief comes from
above, from God the creator rather than anything we do or say or see . . .
But that’s the topic for a future sermon. Our task this morning is to deconstruct—just a
little, maybe—this story of water and wine, and I have to say that this is one
of the more iconic stories in the New Testament, beloved by songwriters,
storytellers and everyday Christians in the pews. The song that sticks in my head was written
by the late, great Johnny Cash, and it’s called “He Turned the Water into
Wine” and in it Jesus is called “Just a
carpenter from Naz’reth” and that says a lot, doesn’t it? I mean, here Jesus is, a nobody carpenter
from Nazareth, and he’s doing big-time signs.
And as we’ll see in a few weeks, the hometown crowds didn’t exactly fall
all over themselves believing some guy from their own region could do all those flash-bam tricks that only God—or someone
who’s in good with God—could do. Prophets in their own country and all that.
Make no mistake, it was a wonderful sign. And it came
at a critical time, too: running out of
wine at a Jewish wedding was a big no-no.
They were raucous affairs, usually lasting a number of days, and as the
time passed the guest became increasingly, how shall we say it, drunk..
But in 1st Century Palestine, running out of wine was of much
greater concern than a bunch of sobered-up wedding guests. Their society was based on honor and shame,
and in such a society people accrue honor as they have a bucket. And when they do something honorable, it
accrues honor, it puts it in the bucket.
In this way, a person’s personal store of honor is built up in the eyes
of their neighbors. But by the same
token, when they do something that reflects badly upon them, they put shame in
the bucket, and it’s like it is “negative honor,” or maybe “anti-honor,” like
it cancels out the honor already accrued.
And one thing you didn’t want to do was go below zero in the old honor
bucket, because . . . well just because.
Running out of food or wine at a wedding would cause
one’s honor to take a serious hit, and since honor helps determine one’s position
in the community, which in turn could be a matter of life and death, this was
not a trivial situation. And so when his
mom comes to him—notice that John doesn’t call her by name—when his mother
comes up to him and says “They have no wine” it’s a serious matter for the
hosts, whoever they are, but Jesus says something that sounds a little harsh to
our ears: Woman, he says, what concern is that of you and me? My hour has not yet come . . . and even by
the standards of John’s gospel that’s a bit obtuse . . . what does his hour not
yet coming have to do with running out of wine? Unless, of course, it’s foreshadowing . . .
wine is a symbol of blood, and Jesus could be saying that it’s not time for him
to give up his own blood for the nourishment of the guests, aka humankind. It’s not time for him to be the bridegroom he
may be saying . . . and as a matter of fact, John the Baptist refers to him
that way not too much further in this very gospel . . . he calls himself the
“friend of the bridegroom, who rejoices at the bridegrooms voice.” In this metaphor—a common one, inherited from
Jewish bridal mysticism—Jesus is the bridegroom and the church is the
bride. My time has not yet come, he
seems to be saying, to give my life for the people.
But Jesus’ mother just stands there and—I imagine with
a heavy sigh—tells the servants to do whatever he asks. Now, certain commentators have pointed out
incongruities in this story. First of
all, why doesn’t John call her by name here . . . or anywhere else in his
gospel, for that matter? She’s always
“the mother of Jesus,” even when she is at the cross of her son. Maybe Joh hadn’t heard what her name was . .
. after all, we don’t think John had access to the other three gospels, which
all mention her by name, but there might be a more complex reason . . . perhaps
John wants to downplay Jesus’ earthly parents . . . that seems to have been a common thing among
some early Christians, who felt that it would have been better if Jesus had
just descended from Heaven un-sullied by human hands . . .
And here’s another thing that puzzles some folks: why
was Mary worried about the wine, anyway?
If she was a guest, she certainly wouldn’t have been, she might not have
even known, honor/shame being what it
was. Maybe she was a caterer, maybe she
was in charge of making sure the wedding didn’t run out of food. That seems unlikely, because then why would Jesus, her adult child be there, along
with his cronies, the disciples? Was it
take your child-and-his-friends-to-work day?
And further, why in the world would the servants do what his mother said? Who was she
to order around the help, telling them to do whatever Jesus asks? Some scholars have advanced a possible
explanation: maybe it was a wedding in her immediate family . . . that would explain why Mary was worried
about it in the first place, the shame of running out of wine would accrue to
her and her household if it were to come about.
We know that Jesus had some siblings, or half-siblings if you will . . .
was this the wedding of one of his brothers?
But if so, why doesn’t John just come out and say it? Why have such an elaborate, roundabout way of
telling the story? There was this
wedding, see, and Jesus’ mom was there . . . and, oh yes, so were Jesus and his
disciples . . . it seems to some that John is being cagey, as if he
doesn’t want to tell the whole story, or as if he were editing somebody else’s
text to make it more palatable . . .
these scholars suggest—quietly—that not
only was it a member of Mary’s immediate family, but that it was of Jesus
himself.
By the time John was written, they suggest, there was
a sizable group within Christianity that saw Jesus as the sinless, blameless, spotless lamb, and as everybody knows,
lambs didn’t get married, they didn’t have sexual relations. Further, there has always been a significant
faction within Christianity that viewed the act of sex as somehow sinful in
itself—see all the people who think the original sin was “sex” instead of not trusting God . . . and they abide lo,
even unto this day.
And so the thought that Jesus had a spouse, and is
abhorrent to many. But others—and they
aren’t just Dan Brown or Martin Scorsese, either—view the possibility as a
validation of Jesus’ complete humanity. We say Jesus was both fully human and
fully divine, don’t we? Well, if so,
just what does it mean to be fully human?
Wouldn’t it be a sign, a signal, a semaphore
of Jesus full humanity if he were to do that most human of things and seek out
the physical intimacy of another?
Well. All of
that speculation is well and good, but it doesn’t tell us what the sign—the
turning of the water into wine—means. As
any linguist worth her salt will tell you—especially those versed in semiotics—if
there is a sign, sometimes called a signifier, there is invariably a signified,
inevitably something to which the sign points. What could the turning of
water into wine possibly mean?
Well, obviously, that Jesus is a man of power, a mage
of some ability . . . that Jesus is closer to the divine than most of John’s
readers, which was no doubt true . . .
and in fact, John lets us know in the last line of the story that the
disciples saw and believed in him.
Leaving the problematic nature of this aside—Jesus apparently didn’t
think much of belief engendered by seeing—the question still remains: believe in him how? Believe in him in as
what? That he was the Messiah, the one
chosen by God to restore Israel’s fortunes?
That he was a prophet in the line of Elijah and Moses?
Given all of this, is there another meaning, another lesson we can draw from this
episode? I think so . . . and there’s a
hint in John’s careful description of the water jars as “six stone jars for the
Jewish rite of purification.” And it
strikes us that these aren’t just any
old water jars . . . they’re not jars for drinking water, or cooking water, or
water for the livestock. No: these jars
are part of the Jewish religious apparatus, part of the Jewish religious
structure. These jars hold water that women bathe in to make
themselves ritually clean after menstruation, water that men use for
purification after touching a corpse.
It’s water that people use to restore purity in someone who has become
outside the pale of Jewish society, for whatever reason, and in 1st
Century Palestine, there were a lot
of reasons.
So in a symbolic sense, at least, by appropriating
these jars, Jesus takes possession of a key element in the Hebrew religious
apparatus: the means of making errant individuals holy. And what does he do when he gets them? He has them filled water, to the brim, and
after they take a cup-full to the chief steward, they discover that it has been
changed into wine. But not just any wine, the good stuff, the wine that
is served first when the guests are sober enough to tell the difference; and
remember: the quality of wine a host served also accrued honor and shame.
So we can see that Jesus has taken the stuff of
religious machinery and made it something completely different. He has taken a symbol of the Jewish religious
establishment, which could be oppressive at times, which determined who is
clean and who is unclean, who is in and who is out, and transformed it into a
symbol of God’s bounty. Wine, along with
bread, was a fundamental staple of the day.
Not only did it represent blood, but it represented abundance, it
represented life. Jesus has transformed ritual—performed by a select group of
priests for a select group of people—into sustenance, hospitality, something
available to everybody at the wedding, anybody there who could dip a cup in a
jar, anybody there who had hands to lift and mouths to drink.
This nourishment is available to whomever is invited
to the wedding—and notice it’s invited, not “decided to come”. . . And who is
the host in our metaphor of bounty, in our semaphore of grace? Why, it’s God . . . God determines who is invited
to the wedding, who is present at the dance, not the wedding guests
themselves. It is God who is the host,
who decides who is in and who is out, not anybody on earth, not the Jewish
religious apparatus, and most certainly
not you or me.
Do you see? The
story of the water into wine is a metaphor for Jesus’ whole ministry, a
ministry of transforming dry, religious ritual and procedures into living,
breathing (the wine was still alive, it wasn’t pasteurized like ours can be
today) sustenance. Jesus’ whole ministry
was transforming religious practice into saving grace. It was not time to give his own blood, so he
provided it himself, in canisters that just
happened to be a marker of the very religious establishment he came to
transform. He came to turn the water of
the Jewish sacrificial system into the wine of God’s overflowing love. That’s what the wine—overflowing to the brim,
the good stuff served even to people who aren’t in the best of shape—that’s
what the wine represents: God’s overflowing, superabundant, Amazing grace. Grace that saved people, including people
just like you and me. Amen.
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