The first miracle (John 2.1-11)
The first miracle (John 2.1-11)
Eastminster United Presbyterian Church, Ordinary 2C (January 20, 2019)
Tom James
It might seem to us a little strange that a story of such importance, a story that ends with the salvation of the world, should begin with a wedding reception where the wine runs out. I guess you could say Jesus was starting small. Refilling the punch bowl, if you will, is a long way off from something that generations would remember him for. But, you have to start somewhere, after all.
There actually aren’t a lot of miracles stories in John. There are seven, and while that would be a lot for most of us to perform a period of just a few years, some of the other gospels have a lot more. Luke, for example, has about twenty. John puts his seven together in an order which does seem to build in significance. This first one may seem like a “miracle of convenience,” you might say. For those who have heard about some of the miracle stories of the heretical gospels from the second century called “Gnostic” gospels, recently rediscovered, this story may seem familiar. In some of these Gnostic gospels, Jesus has superhuman powers, and he flexes those powers to show that he is not limited to by the confines of time and space like you and I are. He does awesome things, like turning rocks into birds, simply because he can, not to make life better in this world but to show that the world’s rules are irrelevant to him, that natural laws cannot get in his way.
The Greek term “Gnosis,” from which “Gnostic” derives, means secret wisdom or knowledge. It is more than a way of thinking about Jesus, it is an avenue of hope for human beings. According to this tradition, if we align ourselves with this secret way, unveiled only to a select few, we are promised that we, too, can make the limitations of the physical world irrelevant. We can escape from its power over us; we can go beyond the tendency for things to wear down and wear out, including our bodies.
The ancient religion of Gnosticism has drawn attention recently not only because it produced some alternative pictures of Jesus with a bunch of different stories, but because Gnostic faith is in some respects powerfully aligned with a particular kind of human hope that is commonly expressed today. You could say that modernity in the West has been all about trying to make the limitations of nature irrelevant to us. Technical skill, the new “gnosis,” has become the most prized human virtue: governance becomes bureaucracy, politics becomes campaign engineering, the art of caring becomes the science of curing, healing is less something to be thankful for than something to be expected, sexuality becomes less and less a practice of love and increasingly a matter of manuals and pills, the world becomes less something to be in awe of than something to be cleared, mined, harvested, or “improved.”
One of the more dramatic expressions of this hope, perhaps, come to light a few years ago. People began to talk about what they called “designer children,” who would not so much gifted to us by the mystery of life as built by genetic technology, “made” not only free from the tendency toward certain diseases but also genetically predisposed toward intelligence or athletic prowess or beauty—or toward any other attribute we may choose. Modernity has been about breaking down barriers to the achievement of our ambitions. And, to some extent, we are succeeding. We are making natural obstacles to human desire, whether they be natural genotypes or forests or the effects of aging, disappear before our very eyes. The rules of the world, to some degree, are becoming more and more irrelevant.
This miracle of Jesus looks a lot like those Gnostic miracles, ancient as well as modern. After all, what’s so theologically important about having wine for a wedding party? Why does Jesus do it? What’s the big deal about having quality wine at a wedding reception? (And, we should note, John makes clear that the wine Jesus made was quality.) The reason is so obvious that it may surprise us. And it is the very opposite reason that a Gnostic might give. It’s not because someone has asked for wine, and since nature’s rules don’t effect Jesus, he just snaps his fingers and it’s done. It’s not a matter of simply satisfying every human desire. No, there’s something about this context, this event, that is important enough for one of the seven signs John tells us about. As I say, it’s a pretty obvious thing. It is because weddings matter.
We know they matter to many of us, of course. That’s why so many people pull out all the stops for a wedding. Many of us have memories—mostly joyful—of our own weddings, or of the wedding of people who are important to us. Michelle’s and my wedding, on Epiphany of 1996, was pretty unforgettable, because, while we were getting married in Louisville, Kentucky, about a foot of snow was falling, and I don’t think a single plow was plowing! (Because it was Louisville, Kentucky!) It was a mess: a fraction of the people we expected actually people showed up, our hotel was a ghost town and the people working there didn’t want to be working there. My brothers from Florida were sliding around in their rental cars, and this Floridian wasn’t doing a lot better. But, still, it was one of the best and most important days in my life, and I’d do it all over again, just the same.
Any wedding is a unique celebration because it is a grand “yes” to life—yes, this partnership, with all of the problems that will probably arise within it, is worth entering into. Yes—mysteries of sexuality and procreation are worth embracing and affirming. Yes—life is good, and it ought to be continued. Yes, society, togetherness, partnerships are good, and ought to be blessed. And, so, Jesus’s odd little miracle is not just a miracle of convenience—it is his own affirmation and blessing of human community—of our yearning to be together and to go on together.
There is one little detail of this story that I’d like to single out. When Jesus was looking around for containers for this quality wine that he was about to make, he spotted somewhere in the corner some old, well-used, perhaps unwelcome jars that had probably been shoved aside hastily and rudely. These large jars were made to contain water for purification rites when people would confess their sins and asked to be washed clean from them. There’s no mystery why these jars would have been hastily pushed into the corners. Weddings are not a time for purification jars. Weddings are joyful occasions when we celebrate love and life, and purification rites, by contrast, point to sin and brokenness.
But I think the purification jars are important to the story, and they tell us something about what Jesus was up to. It tells us something that Jesus begins his ministry by filling purification jars with the finest wine. That “jarring” contrast, if you will excuse the pun, is perhaps the main point of the story. It is as if he is pointing ahead to the time when the mourning of purification will yield to the joy of celebration.
Rites of purification were the precursors to Christian baptism, and the drinking of wine at the wedding feast points to the joyful feast of the people of God which of which partake at the communion table. The journey that begins at baptism ends at the banquet feast. You might say that Jesus is the life of the party, from beginning to end.
The way of Jesus does not take us away from or out of the world. Instead, it leads us through miracles at wedding feasts, through diseases and healings, through death and resurrection.
Another word for “sign” is “sacrament,” and we are invited by this story to see a life that is marked by things like weddings, and diseases, and loss, as sacramental through and through. When we break bread together, at the communion table or the dinner table, when we are full of happy conversation or when we have nothing to say, we are invited to experience the living Christ. When we share a glass of wine or give a glass of water to someone who is thirsty, perhaps we can learn to see that Christ is still at work in the world. When we experience the warmth of friends or family, or when we are alone out in the beauty of nature, perhaps we can be opened to the reality of Christ among us. If Jesus makes a sign out of a bit of wine, perhaps all of life is sacramental—all of life is an expression of God’s love and God’s presence. As John says at the opening of his gospel, the word has been made flesh and dwelt among us. We need to practice keeping our eyes open at all times, at weddings, when we are alone, when there is need, when there is joy, when we are marking the beginning of a new session and a new board of deacons, that we may see its glory. Amen.
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!