Wedding planner

September 2018 will mark ten years of marriage for me and my husband. This time ten years ago, we were engaged and busy planning our wedding day and future together. Eugene found it amusing that I became a bit obsessed with my massive ring binder folder that contained every detail of the wedding plans – venue, caterers, bridal party outfits, colour scheme ideas. There seemed to be a never ending list of things to think about in order to make the day a success.

And yet despite my best organisational efforts, and despite us and our guests having a great day, we managed to forget to arrange for someone to take us to our hotel after the reception and evening do. We ended up being the last people to leave our own wedding and had to beg one of the guests to give us a lift.

The couple in today’s gospel reading had also made a mistake in their wedding planning. They had not bought enough wine for their guests to drink. In a culture that prized hospitality, not being able to entertain your guests would be something you could never live down. The couple and their families would forever be known as the family who couldn’t afford to pay for their wedding.

So Mary, aware of the problem, tells Jesus that the people ‘have no wine’ and asks him to intervene. He does so – although at first he seems reluctant, telling her ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ Despite saying this Jesus miraculously intervenes by transforming water into wine, wine that is noticeably better than the one that had run out, and saves the couple from embarrassment.

Why does Jesus perform this miracle? Is it because Jesus enjoyed a good celebration? Is it because he wanted to demonstrate his power so that his disciples would believe in him?

Perhaps. But this incident at the wedding is about much more than that. St John describes it as ‘the first of Jesus’ signs’.

Jesus uses this wedding miracle as a sign to point people to who He is and why He has come. Jesus is the promised Messiah – or anointed one - that Israel is waiting for. Why has He come? He is anointed and chosen to do a miraculous task – to unite the Holy Kingdom of God with the sinful people of the world.

Just as an engagement ring symbolises the promise and intention of a couple to join together in marriage at a future date, the Covenant between God and the Israelites was an agreement between the two to belong to each other. It was an agreement that through their relationship together, all other nations would also be blessed.

But this was an engagement that the Israelites often broke, rejecting God by turning to other gods and abandoning his ways. God kept his side of the engagement by continuing to love them and promising to send a Messiah who would bring about this promised marriage between God and humans.

In this miracle at the wedding, Jesus dramatically demonstrates that he is this promised Messiah. The stone water pots holding the water used for Jewish ritual washing – represent the Old Covenant, Israel’s engagement to God. Their sins prevented them from getting too close to this Holy God without going through elaborate ritual cleaning and sacrifice.

But Jesus fills these water pots with wine. Wine that tastes better than what the guests had been drinking before. Wine that symbolises the New Covenant. The marriage of God and humanity. The offer of an intimate relationship with the Holy God. A relationship where the Holy God, rather than being separated from the people by their sins, instead enters into sinful people and transforms them from the inside out. He offers to fill anyone – no matter how broken, empty, or lost they may feel.

At first glance this miracle of turning water into wine seems to be an instantaneous process. We know how wine is usually made and how much work goes into planting vineyards, growing and ripening grapes. Then harvesting them and – in the olden days – getting people to trample and crush them with their feet. Next the pulped grapes, the grape juice and the empty skins are left to ferment. And after this waiting period, the grape mush becomes wine. Something to be drunk at joyful occasions.

Jesus’ miracle seems to bypass this labour-intensive process. But if we look again we see that this ‘sign’ at the wedding points us to the fact that Jesus himself will undergo this wine-making process. As Isaiah prophesies, Jesus would be pierced for our rebellion and crushed for our sins. He will be bruised, and trampled on, he will be stepped on by Roman law, stepped on by Religious law. He will be drained out, emptied. His blood will pour from his body from the lashes he will receive. Then after dying on the cross he will be laid in a tomb – the fermentation and waiting period.

But then will come the resurrection. The uncorking of the new wine, the new covenant, The opening of a new path for all to reach God.

The new wine at the wedding didn’t require any work from the guests. No grape harvesting and trampling. The new wine of the New Covenant that Jesus the Messiah brings doesn’t require us to bring our own ingredients – our ring binder folders filled with good behaviour and hard work. This new wine is all Jesus’ work.

All the guests needed was their empty glasses ready to be filled. And that is all we need too. Like Mary, we must come to Jesus admitting that we need him to step in on our behalf. We must acknowledge the emptiness of our ‘righteousness’ our ‘goodness’, recognising that we fall short of God’s glory and holiness.

And just as the stone jars were filled with fresh water, Jesus offers to wash us with the cleansing water of forgiveness for the sins and shortcomings in our lives. He offers to fill us with the new wine, a new and better relationship with the Holy God who we can call ‘Father’. He offers us a life filled with the joy of this marriage celebration with God, both now and in the age to come.

He doesn’t promise us a trouble-free life in this world. Amidst the joy of our salvation and the New Covenant we are also called to participate in the process that Jesus went through. This may mean times of suffering, times of persecution, a life-time of pouring out our lives for those- around us. It also means a life-time of sharing the message of this offer of new wine with others.

Mary knew who Jesus was at that wedding. Mary knew he was the Messiah, the bringer of a New Covenant, a new wine, and Mary was concerned that those around her should receive the wine her son was sent into the world to give. She met Jesus’ challenge ‘What concern is [the people’s lack of wine] to you and to me?’ by her instructions to the servants to obey Jesus despite his seeming reluctance, showing that she knew that their lack of wine was of concern to Jesus as well.

Yes, at that wedding Jesus could only point to his mission to the world as his ‘hour’ of crushing had ‘not yet come’. But today we stand on the other side of the crucifixion and resurrection ‘hour’ and we shouldn’t keep it to ourselves. Like Mary – we should be concerned to share this Gospel message, this Good News, with everyone through our words and, most importantly, through our actions. So that our daily lives will be ‘signs’ that reveal God’s glory in us and show others the way to the Father.

I pray that the Holy Spirit will fill us to the brim with this New Wine, the joy of the Gospel and the knowledge of our salvation. I pray that this joy will flow out of us in all we do, in all we say and in all we are. To the glory of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

John 2: 1-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. 9 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 10 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.” 11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.