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Isaiah 62:1-5
For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
and her salvation like a burning torch.
The nations shall see your vindication,
and all the kings your glory;
and you shall be called by a new name
that the mouth of the Lord will give.
You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
You shall no more be termed Forsaken,
and your land shall no more be termed Desolate;
but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,
and your land Married;
for the Lord delights in you,
and your land shall be married.
For as a young man marries a young woman,
so shall your builder marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you.
John 2:1-11
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. 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 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.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
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And he did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
And his disciples believed in him.
Oh John. He makes it sound so simple.
To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing there. I mean, when my brother came to me saying “Simon! Simon! We’ve found him! The anointed one! The Messiah!” I didn’t expect to be rolling up to a wedding with the guy just a few days later. Right? It’s one thing to get a plus one to a wedding, but a plus twelve?!
Though in those days, I guess I didn’t quite know what to expect. There was this...in the air, you know? You could feel it. Cut it with a knife. Tension over in the capital was bubbling up and boiling over, but hey you probably don’t know what that feels like.
No. None of us knew what to expect. But I tell you what, it sure wasn’t that guy. After all, our people had been waiting for the Messiah for a really long time. Like, a really long time. As long as I can remember. Waiting for the one who would vindicate us and make our salvation shine out like a torch, yeah, I knew the scriptures. And every day, a new one just seemed to pop up, making all these promises about how they would restore Israel to her former glory and overthrow Rome and root out corruption and how they would make us shine like a beacon to the nations, our glory on display for all the kings to see. But you know what happened. Every day, they would be squashed. Put down. Nixed. Caput.
All those big and grandiose promises. A lot of good it did them.
So yeah. When Andy first brought me to him, I have to admit, I was skeptical. I mean, wouldn’t you be? He was…just a guy. Not all that impressive. Kind of scrawny and scraggly to be honest. Not all that loud or wild like that John guy he had been hanging out with down by the Jordan. And I thought, no way. No way is this guy the one we’ve been waiting for. I’d seen the Roman legions utterly destroy vast and powerful foreign armies. This guy wouldn’t stand a chance.
And yet as ordinary as he was, there was also something kind of extraordinary about him as well. He wasn’t all that different from you or me, but it was the way he looked at you, you know? Like, really looked at you. Like he knew you, like he really knew you. And then he spoke to me. Called me by my name, like I mattered. Even gave me a new one: Cephas. Peter. The Rock. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but in that moment, something came over me, and I went along, not really knowing why.
I guess faith is kind of like, as another great teacher would one day say, taking that first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.
But I digress. You want to hear about that wedding.
Well we picked up some more folks along the way, but next thing we knew there we were. This motley crew walking into a wedding that had suddenly gone dry. Isn’t that just the worst? You think you’ve planned for every possible contingency when all of a sudden, bam! The wine stops flowing. Talk about a party foul.
And you know, a lot of people like to give that steward a hard time on this one. He had one job, after all: managing the consumption of food and wine. See, around those parts and in those days, a wedding wasn’t just a one-night affair. No, the festivities would go on and on and on often for as long as seven days! Because hey, when you’re living under the heel of an occupying power, sometimes you just need a reason to get down. And the steward had the unenviable task of making sure that the stores of food and wine lasted for the whole party.
Yikes.
And sure. We can talk and talk and talk about why the wine ran out. It’s really easy to point fingers and play the blame game. But whether it was the steward’s fault for mismanaging the wine or the bridegroom’s fault for not providing enough wine to begin with or even the guests fault for drinking too much too fast doesn’t change one simple fact. There was no longer any wine to go around.
Typically, this would be the end of the party. You know. Closing time. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here kind of a thing. But if there’s one thing I learned hanging around him for three years, it’s that just when you think you’ve reached the end of the story, there’s always another chapter that’s more beautiful and full of surprises than you could possibly imagine. The party continues.
People always ask me, how did he do it? Was there a magic word or a special prayer he said? Did he do something with his hands? But truth be told, I didn’t actually see him do it. I was hanging out with another group. Oh yeah, I caught him back-sassing his mom being all “my time has not yet come, woman” and I didn’t want to be around when he and his buddies were catching her hands, if you know what I mean. No thank you.
No, I just saw the staff take those big jars out back for a little while and then next thing I knew, the steward and the groom were bickering about serving good wine when everyone is already drunk. But the staff knew what was up. One of them told me what he told them to do. “He told us to fill those purification jars up with plain old water and to give some to the steward to taste and you’ll never believe it, but suddenly all that water turned into wine!”
My head was spinning at that point, and I hadn’t even had any of the wine yet! Here I was with this guy I barely knew, even though he deeply and truly knew me…down to my soul, at this wedding as one of his guests just as the party is wrapping up and suddenly he’s taking these sacred vessels and using them to hold a lot of wine, like a lot of wine. Nearly two hundred gallons of the stuff! Do you have any idea how long of a party that much wine would sustain?! It would keep going and going and going and going!
And there it was, sitting in these giant vessels that we used to keep things ritually pure for our prayers and ceremonies! When you stop and think about it, it was kind of sacrilegious. I know that thought certainly crossed my mind anyways. How many times had I let my firm grasp on tradition and my sense of religiosity get in the way of divine action and restoration?
Because that’s what this was, right? “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when the one who plows will overtake the one who gathers, when the one who crushes grapes will overtake the one who sows the seed. The mountains will drip wine, and all the hills will flow with it.” Amos. Yeah. Like I said, I knew my scriptures. There was suddenly enough wine at that party for it to flow down all the hills. This was it. The divine promise of our people’s restoration was standing there in front of me and he knew me by my name.
And he did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
Sure, I guess on the grand scheme of things, turning water into wine to keep a party going isn’t quite on the same level as healing someone’s child or giving sight to someone who was blind from birth or bringing a friend back to life or even feeding a large crowd of people. But this one will always stick with me. This was the first one. The one where it all finally clicked. Andy was right. This guy really was the one we had been waiting for. The anointed one. The Messiah. The answer to all of our people’s prayers.
And from then on, my life would never be the same.
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