Filled to the Brim
I Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
Maie Wilson Edmonds was my aunt. She was married to my dad’s brother, Uncle Bobby. She and I had a special bond. She and Uncle Bobby were very influential upon my decision to go to seminary, pursue ministry. When she heard I was getting serious with this guy I met at seminary and she had not met him yet, she was determined for that to change. Allan was spending the summer at camp in Panama City Beach. Aunt Maie along with my uncle, drove to the Florida panhandle to find him. She marched into the camp office and introduced herself. They had a nice long chat. After that she wrote me the sweetest letter giving her blessing of approval. I asked her to be our wedding director which she did. (Her gifts of humor, reverence and bossiness…) She stood at the back door, directing anyone who would take an order, always with a twinkle in her eye. She was more like a sergeant at arms than a doting aunt, but that’s who she was. She looked out for me and all those she loved with fierce devotion. On the eve of our wedding anniversary, I’m thinking of her. She died just a few years ago. Coincidentally, January 20 was also her birthday and she would have been 92 tomorrow.
What a fun dip into John’s gospel for this story of Jesus showing up just in time to a wedding celebration in Cana, a small and seemingly insignificant town in Galilee.
In John’s gospel, Galilee is the place where miracles happen. Every time Jesus is there, something miraculous happens – nets are overloaded with fish; a little boy at the brink of death is healed; an unclean spirit is cast out of a man; Peter’s mother-in-law is healed and so on… The first of these miracles, or “signs” as John calls them, happens here, in Cana. That’s the sign we are considering today.
A traditional Israelite wedding celebration is underway and by the time Jesus and his entourage arrive, the wine is running out. A wedding feast took place over seven days with close friends and family all gathered to celebrate the nuptials.[1] Normally, an Israelite family in the middle east would be thankful for clean water, bread, a little cheese and olive oil for their meals. But for a wedding celebration, it was different. The families of the bride and groom would have scrimped and saved to be able to provide meats and rich delicacies for the wedding feast. And the wine would have flowed freely!
We don’t know a lot of contexts for this wedding. We don’t know how Jesus’ family was connected to the hosts. We don’t know if these were close friends or family. The focus of this story and its inclusion in John is not about the happy couple.
We don’t get to learn anything about the bride and groom, how they met or anything about their love story.
You might think that it’s meant to show us something about Jesus and his relationship to his mother. She, after all, is the one who mentions the one juicy detail that we do get and that’s that this party is about to dry up. They have no more wine. The way Jesus responds to her, as a mother of sons, makes me roll my eyes a bit at the familiarity of a response that sounds like, “what do you expect me to do?” But scholars wouldn’t want us to interpret any disrespect.
“My hour has not yet come,” he says to her. Have they had this conversation before? Why does Jesus’ mother think he can do something about the wine running out? Is Mary concerned about the family’s social obligation in the community? Because they will be talked about, judged for not being good hosts if the wine runs out before the celebration concludes. “The mother of Jesus” as she is only called in John, speaks to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” I see this happening as she walks away from the moment to allow Jesus to do whatever he intends to do – not what she wills, but what God, the Father, wills. Jesus’ response is taken to mean that only God is directing Jesus’ interventions at this point, no one else, not even his mother.
So, when Jesus chooses to intervene, it's not about a wine shortage…, even though what happens next is an act of overflowing abundance.
Jesus instructed the servants to collect 6 large stone jars and fill them with water. Six. A number just shy of a divinely perfect seven. When the servants had filled them to the brim, scripture says, he told them to dip out a sample of it and take it to the Master of the Banquet. It’s fun to think of this Master of the Banquet as a wedding coordinator, like Franck (played by Martin Short) in the movie Father of the Bride. The Master of the Banquet makes sure that the guests have enough food and drink; he taste-tests everything before it is served; he makes sure all the rules of etiquette are followed. When the servant brings him a cup from the jar, he goes to find the bridegroom to tell him what a fine wine he has held until now. Everyone else would serve their finest wine first and then taper off the quality, probably watering it down as the party wore on. That’s one way to get the guests to leave when the party’s over, right? “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here” as the bartender says at closing time.
This Master of the Banquet is amazed, “You have saved the best until now.”
If he only knew that what he was drinking was being poured out of the stone jars that usually contained the water for ritual cleansing. Water that was saved and purposed for travelers to wash their dirty hands and dusty feet, so that they are clean for a religious occasion like a wedding feast.[2] Jesus has turned the contents of these six, huge & empty, though consecrated, vessels into barrels of fine wine. Let’s say more about the containers in a minute.
That Jesus turned the water into wine is more than a party favor. Jesus isn’t a bootlegger or bartender, either. In Israel, wine has long been a symbol of God’s messianic promise. Wine in abundance is part of how that promised day was expected to come. “The time is surely coming, says the Lord, when… the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel” (Amos 9:13-14). The abundant wine suddenly flowing at the wedding feast is a “sign” that the day “surely coming” has now arrived.[3]
It is the first sign that Jesus’ ministry has begun. This story is full to the brim with symbolism. The miracle on this day is a sign John says of what has come to BE. In John’s telling of the story, we need to look for clues to what he wants readers to take away from it. It is not an inaugural speech like we will hear in Luke, but it’s an inaugural act. Using six, large, empty vessels that had been set aside, Jesus casually and without making a scene calls a handful of servants to fill the jars with water. He never touched them, never spoke any powerful words over them. The wine simply came to be. The inaugural moment of Jesus ministry had arrived in an imperfect number of repurposed stone jars and in the hands of dutiful servants.
Brian McLaren does some wondering about the symbolism in the Wedding at Cana story in his book, We Make the Road by Walking.
In what ways are our lives – and our religions, our cultures (our churches) – like a wedding banquet that is running out of wine? What are we running out of? What are the stone containers in our day – huge but empty vessels used for religious purposes? What would it mean for those empty containers to be filled – with wine? And why so much wine? Can you imagine what 180 gallons of wine would mean in a small Galilean village? What might that superabundance signify? What might it mean for Jesus to repurpose old containers used to separate the clean from the unclean? And what might it mean for God to save the best for last?
This inaugural moment, this miracle moment is full of meaning. The time has arrived for Jesus to be the one who brings new wine, new practices and abundant possibilities. By repurposing the vessels used for cleansing rituals, don’t you think he might be suggesting that the rules can change? That the rituals and rules could be revised that allowed people into the Jewish community; because they are the same ones that also kept a whole bunch of people out. The idea that some could be clean and others were just dirty had been thrown out with the bath water. And what has come in its place? Gallons and gallons and gallons of new wine. New wine to share with new people. Gallons and gallons because with God there is no holding back. Grace and love overflow.
As you imagine those old stone containers, think of yourself as an empty vessel waiting to be filled, repurposed, renewed.
Bring your imperfection.
Bring your lostness, left-over on the side feelings.
Bring your nostalgia for what used to be.
Bring your baggage of ritualistic rule-following.
Pour it out. So that you can bring your emptiness.
Bring your longing.
Bring your thirst!
Jesus has made himself the master of the feast where the wine overflows for us, too.[4]
We stood in a receiving line for most of our wedding reception and it was a beautiful, fun, amazing party. And we more or less, missed it. You’ve been invited to the best wedding party you’ve ever seen. Don’t miss it. Jesus is pouring wine of a new covenant. Life-giving, grace-filled cups of salvation. The best was saved for last. The best is yet to be!
[1] Callahan, Allen Dwight, True to Our Native Land, indigenous voices commentary
[2] Sloyan, Gerard, Interpretation Commentary series, John.
[3] Callahan
[4] https://brianmclaren.net/q-r-wedding-in-cana/