I’m going to start my sermon this morning with a warning: please be advised that some may find the content offensive. To be specific, I’m going to start my sermon with a joke which some people may not find funny. But if this applies to you, please listen on because there is a very good point to it.
I came across the joke in a cartoon that someone showed me just a couple of days ago and which, just by chance as far as they were concerned, is about our Gospel reading this morning, the Wedding in Cana. The cartoon showed Jesus stood next to a man lying in the street, face down with his head resting in the inner elbow joint of one arm, whilst clinging to Jesus clothes with his other. Jesus says, “No, I’m not going to cure your hangover!” To which the prostrate figure on the ground replies, “But Lord, you’re the one who changed the water into wine!”
Some of you may find that funny, some of you may not, but if we put humour to one side, I think that joke, that cartoon, does tell us something about the strangeness of this Gospel story. St John tells us that this was the first ‘sign’ through which Jesus ‘manifested his glory’. He also says at the end of this story that ‘his disciples believed in him’ which leads us to believe that it was through this rather strange sign that they came to faith. But what is this sign, what’s it all about? It’s a miracle story, but it’s a strange sort of miracle, isn’t it? It’s not a healing such as many other miracles that Jesus performed. It’s not like the stilling of the storm when Jesus saved his disciples from danger. It’s not like Jesus’ miracles of raising people from the dead. It’s not even like the miraculous feeding of thousands of people, because on those occasions, those who were fed were following Jesus and had no food. At the wedding in Cana, the guests had already had plenty to drink, as the wedding steward said,
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.”
Some translations suggest that the guests were already drunk when Jesus turned the water into wine, so this sign, this miracle, doesn’t seem to be about helping anyone in need but rather about catering to people’s excesses, to provide the means for people who’d already had enough, and perhaps more than enough to drink, to drink even more. No doubt some of the guests would have been hung over and Jesus had provided the means for them to get in that condition, hence the joke cartoon that I mentioned at the start of my sermon.
So it’s a strange story from that point of view but also because it’s a story that contains what appears to be an argument between Jesus and his mother, Mary. When Mary tells Jesus that the wine has run out, he seems to answer her in a harsh and disrespectful way;
“Woman, what does this have to do with me and you? My hour has not yet come.”
To which Mary seems to respond by simply ignoring what Jesus has said.
So this Gospel story of Jesus’ first sign, the changing of water into wine at a wedding feast does seem to be a strange sort of miracle set in a strange story. It’s a story full of symbolism too, about old wine and new wine. But, at a human level, what was going on at that wedding in Cana?
To begin to understand that we have to go back to the beginning of the story where we’re told,
‘On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples.’
We notice that Jesus’ mother, Mary, is mentioned before Jesus so it would seem that, of the two, Mary was considered to be the more important guest at the wedding. Some people have suggested that, as she knew the wine had run out, Mary may have perhaps had some kind of official role at the wedding, perhaps as a family member of either the bride or groom. That’s speculation, but as the story begins, we’re left in no doubt that Mary was a more important person at the wedding than her son.
Then, when Mary finds out that there’s no more wine left and tells Jesus, we have this strange discussion between them. Mary tells Jesus the wine’s run out. Jesus responds by calling his mother, ‘Woman’ and asking her what that’s got to do with him, or her. His hour, the time for him to reveal his true identity, hasn’t come yet. But Mary seems to completely ignore Jesus’ words and in response to them, she simply tells the servants at the feast to,
“Do whatever he tells you.”
Sometimes Mary’s response is taken to mean that, in ignoring his words, she forced Jesus’ hand by putting him in a situation in which he had to do something. He had to act and reveal, at least something of his glory. For that reason, Mary is sometimes credited as being the catalyst for Jesus’ ministry. But there is another way to look at this conversation between Mary and Jesus which turns that idea on its head.
In many of the miracle stories we read in the Gospels, when people come to Jesus for help, his immediate response is to take a step back. He seems to want to put some distance between himself and the one who’s asked him for help. And there’s a delay before Jesus acts. If we think about the story of the Raising of Lazarus, for example, Jesus is told that Lazarus is ill, and he’s asked to go quickly to Lazarus’ aid. But Jesus waits; he waits for 2 days; until Lazarus has died, before he even sets off for Lazarus’ home in Bethany. And in the story of Bartimaeus, the blind beggar who asked Jesus to restore his sight, Jesus’ initial response was to ask Bartimaeus,
“What do you want me to do for you?”
Which is very similar to his response to Mary at the wedding feast isn’t it? We could very easily rephrase Jesus’ words on that occasion, “What is that to me and you?” as “What do you want me to do for you?”
And Jesus response to his mother isn’t so harsh and abrupt as it seems. Calling her ‘Woman’ is simply a way of putting a distance between himself and her request. Mary was Jesus’ mother but in coming to him with a request to do something about wine having run out, was Mary coming to Jesus as her son, or as God’s? And if it was as God’s Son, there could be no favouritism shown to Mary; her request would have to be treated like anyone else’s request for Jesus to use his divine power. And as we know from the Gospels, Jesus never acted, never performed any miracles without a confession of faith from the one making the request.
If we put all these things together, we can interpret this miracle at the Wedding in Cana as story about faith, and discipleship. Jesus’ response to Mary,
“Woman, what does this have to do with me and you?
can be seen as Jesus putting a distance between himself and his mother until she has clarified their relationship in faith; her own faith in him. Mary may very well have been his mother but on this occasion, she was making a request of him to act as God’s Son, to use his divine power and so Mary had to make a confession of faith in Jesus as God’s Son. And she did. Far from ignoring Jesus’ response and forcing his hand, Mary’s instruction to the servants to do whatever Jesus told them to, was the answer to his question. It was Mary’s confession of faith that she not only believed Jesus could provide more wine but that he would. And her instruction to the servants was also a proclamation of her faith in Jesus to them, and an exhortation that they should have faith too and show it by doing whatever he told them to do.
We also find in this story an image of the right relationship between a disciple and their master. Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples that
“A servant is not greater than his master.”
The story of the Wedding in Cana begins with an identification of Mary as a more important guest than Jesus but, by the time Jesus tells the servants to fill the jars with water, those roles have been reversed. In her confession of faith and instruction to the servants, Mary submits to the authority of her son who, although he is her son is also God’s Son and her Lord and Saviour. Just like John the Baptist before her, Mary who had such a great part to play in the story of our Salvation prior to Jesus’ earthly ministry, has to become a lesser figure as Jesus’ ministry begins and he becomes greater.
And these are all things that we need to do in our lives as disciples of Christ today. We need to have faith that Jesus not only can but will act in our lives. But we need to remember that, during his earthly ministry, Jesus distanced himself from requests for help until those who asked for his help had confessed their faith. So we need to confess our faith today, to proclaim it openly and not hide it for fear of what the world may say. We need to encourage others to have faith too, to encourage them to do whatever Jesus told us to do and one of the best ways to do that is to make sure that we do whatever Jesus told us to do. And we need to get our relationship with Jesus right. We need to remember that we are the disciples, the servants, and he is the Master, and to show it by thinking less of ourselves than we do of him, to make sure that we do whatever he told us to do rather than doing what we want to do and yet still calling ourselves his disciples. In other words we need to submit to his authority and not vice versa.
If we can do these things, then Jesus can and will act in our lives today. He may act in ways we expect, perhaps by opening our minds and hearts to understand the Scriptures as we read them. But he may also act in ways we don’t expect, in ways we might find very strange. Changing water into wine at a wedding feast, giving people who’d already had enough wine, even more, does seem a strange way for Jesus to bring people to faith, but is it really? I was persuaded to return to the Church through my friendship with the parish curate, so we could say that the catalyst of my coming to faith was meeting him. And where did we meet? In a pub where we chatted together over a few pints of beer. So perhaps, bringing people to faith by changing water into wine isn’t so strange after all.
Amen.
The Propers for the 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Epiphany 2) can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 