Sign at a Wedding

[This message was shared with the people of Friendship Church during worship celebrations on January 13 and 14, 2007.]

John 2:1-11
I lost count of the number of weddings over which I’ve presided long ago. But I will never forget the strangest wedding I ever did.

It was held in the building of the congregation I formerly served as pastor and the bride and groom were bikers. Neither they or any of their guests wore leather for the ceremony. But I can tell you that the parking lot was packed with Harleys and that the couple rode off to the reception on a bike, he in his tux, she in her wedding gown.

None of that was so strange. But other things made the wedding strange. For example, near the end of the ceremony, when I told the couple that they could kiss, after a time, I started looking around for a water hose to douse them. Their kiss seemed to go on forever and was...a bit demonstrative.

After we finally got them untethered, I signaled the bride to get her flowers from the maid of honor so that she and her new husband could process out of the sanctuary. But the handoff between the bride and friend was no simple thing; instead, they high-fived each other, apparently signaling the triumph that the bride had snagged her groom.

And you should have heard the motorcycles as they all collectively roared to the reception hall. It wasn't your standard issue wedding.

But as strange weddings go, nothing can match the one told about in today’s Bible lesson. On the face of it, it’s a simple miracle story...if any miracle story can be described as simple. But when we consider the story of Jesus turning water into wine during a wedding feast in the town of Cana, we’re likely to come away with more questions than answers. Frankly, I can only speculate on how to answer most of them. We might be tempted to give up on understanding the whole incident except for the words that come near the end of the lesson:

Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Last week, we mentioned that Epiphany is the season of the Church Year devoted to looking at the ways in which Jesus cast light on His deity. All the lessons from the Gospels during Epiphany are designed to show us that Jesus is God-in-human-flesh, the promised Christ, and the Savior of the world. Apparently, what Jesus did at the wedding at Cana caused the five disciples--He hadn’t yet called the other seven--to believe in Him. Why?

Weddings can be expensive propositions. We parents of young women who've gotten married know about that, don't we?

I’ll never forget sitting with Paul, a member of our congregation, as we waited to close up the building where his daughter, Tiffany was married. The photographer seemed to take hours snapping pictures. (Even though he said that he was going to take all of the pictures before the ceremony!) Meanwhile, the limo set to take the bridal party to the reception was waiting in the parking lot. Paul tapped the seat in which he sat and said, “Come on folks, the meter’s running!”

As concerned as we bridal parents may be about our expenses though, we all try to have enough of everything on hand so that the celebration is enjoyable for everyone. We do that just to be good hosts. Running out of wine at a wedding may not seem like a big deal to us. But in first-century Judea, that would have been a major, humiliating social no-no. Then, wedding feasts went on for a week. And while drunkenness was frowned on, wine was part of things the whole time, served at every meal to every guest. Guests invited to the feasts often forwarded wine to the groom just to make sure there was enough wine on hand. If the wine gave out, all the guests might wonder what sort of cheapskate this guy was and what he did with the gift wine.

So, by turning water into wine, Jesus did spare His guests humiliation. But He did a lot more.

He showed Himself capable of meeting our needs with extraordinary blessings. It’s like John writes in the opening chapter of his Gospel, “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” Just as Jesus would later turn a few crumbs of bread and some fish into a feast for five-thousand and more, He turned water into an overabundance of wine. He proved that He was able to bless us even when all seems lost. Just yesterday, I got an email from a Christian woman who’d read a four-part series of articles I wrote on my blog two years ago, called When Tragedy Hits the Innocent. Listen to some of what she wrote:

...our only child...went to live with Jesus in July of 2004. I have always known that God was with me, but I had lost my best friend, after watching him face the ravages of Muscular Dystrophy for 24 years. My lifetime of belief in God assured me that he was with God and that his wheelchair and pain and dependence on others were gone and he was free of everything that held him back. I could see him running all over heaven, laughing as he visited with my father and grandparents and his good friend Ron, who also left behind a wheelchair and weakened muscles. I knew all the right "answers" but I was still so heartbroken I couldn't get past the grief. I wanted him back. I knew that God knew best, but I had firmly believed when I closed my eyes that day and opened the Bible, putting my finger down on whichever passage God wanted me to and it said, "Your faith has made you well," that my son would be cured of this awful thief that was robbing him of his strength. But I was wrong, and my special gift from God had been ripped away from me. I never gave up on God, but I have to admit there was a very strange feeling there. I kept believing in Him. I kept praying. He kept loving me. I thought maybe He was punishing me for something. I didn't really know who I was or where I was or even IF I was. I was just numb, and I became numb to the world. I wanted to stay inside and do nothing but think of him and look at his pictures. God let me do that for a short time, and then He reminded me how much He loved me...[God’s Word] made me realize that I was the one who had moved, not God. My heart is still broken. I know I will never get over this loss. But I feel the love of God so strongly and it gives me a comfort I can't find anywhere else. He is all I need. I know that, and I will never forget it...

In the midst of great need, God blesses greatly. Jesus’ disciples knew that and so, began to recognize that Jesus was more than just a teacher. More than just a man.

But the mysterious incident at Cana gave the disciples--and us--another reason to believe that in Jesus, we see God. It’s this: Good wine was always seen as a sign of the end times when God would set all things right between Himself and those who believed in Him. Hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, Amos said that with His coming, “...the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.” And Joel said, “In that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine...”

God, it seems, always saves the best for last--things like forgiveness, hope, and everlasting life with God. One Biblical writer--the preacher in the book of Hebrews--told his fellow Jewish Christians: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoke to us by a Son...”

Jesus is speaking to you and me today. He can turn our water into wine. He’s the God Who can meet our deepest needs with His abundant grace and goodness.

The question for us, as for the disciples on that day in Cana, is a simple one: Do we believe in Jesus?