The Wedding Feast at Cana

The Rev'd Dr Richard Smith

Second Sunday After Epiphany, Year C

January 17, 2016

Speaking as the parent of a teenager, I am so loving this Gospel story, especially the conversation it includes between a young man and his mother. The young man is, of course, Jesus, and he doesn’t know what time it is, but his mother does. He needs to listen to her. As the parent of a teenager, did I tell you how much I love this story?

First though, let me set the context for this passage. The opening words of John’s gospel are “In the beginning...,” the same words that open the Book of Genesis. John is writing a creation story. And in his creation story, the old world of death and tears and oppression are giving way to life and love and light.

“Of his fullness,” John writes of Jesus, “we have all received, grace upon grace.” This story is about that new creation, that grace, breaking loose.

It is the third day of a wedding feast, and the wine has run out. A Jewish wedding lasted seven days. The wine has run out before the wedding has. This isn’t just an embarrassment, it’s a disaster.

Wine isn’t just a social device to make a party work, it’s a sign of the harvest, of God’s abundance, of joy and gladness and hospitality. And so when this young couple and their families run short on wine they run short on blessing.

This is a story is a metaphor about a humanity that is falling apart and in peril. They have no wine. Humans have lost their connection with the source of life and their communion with each other. Without this connection, life cannot continue. This is a story about a looming catastrophe.

And in this catastrophe, Mary turns to her son. She knows he is the one to bring divine abundance into a world where human life is failing -- where people are lacking, falling sick, weeping, going blind, hungry, dying. She knows that Jesus is sent to prevent this world from perishing. John writes: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him.”

So Mary knows who to come to when the wine runs out, and so she says to her son, “They have no wine.” She expects him to do something about it.

“Woman,” Jesus says to her, and it sounds like an oddly formal way to address his mother, but the word he’s using is the one used for Eve in the earlier creation story in Genesis. Mary, in John’s new creation story, is the new Eve, the mother of the living who cares for her children and who's responsible for their well-being.

“Woman,” he says, “what concern is that to you or me? My hour has not yet come.”

He’s concerned about the timing. He suggests it’s not time for him to provide the wine.

Turns out, he doesn’t know what time it is. But his mother does.

A word about timing. All throughout John’s gospel, timing is everything. And there are two kinds of time that animate his imagination.

One is the kind of time with which we count and track the everyday events of our lives. It is measured in minutes and seconds, hours and days. It is the time we spend standing in lines, or clocking in at work, or waiting at the stoplight. It is mundane, ordinary time and it beats on relentlessly. This kind of time can be, as one writer puts it, “One damn thing after another.”

But there is another kind of time where all that is predictable fades and what emerges in its place is sheer possibility. This is God’s time, and sometimes it pokes through the ordinary canvas and clock of our lives to reveal a glimpse of the divine. This kind of time, God’s time, is meant to shape what we do with our ordinary time.

Tomorrow we remember someone who knew about this second kind of time. He called it “being on the mountaintop” where the glory of God had become clear.

In a speech he gave in Memphis not long before he was assassinated, Dr. King recalled how he had nearly died in 1958 when a deranged woman stabbed him in a Harlem bookstore. He told how how on his flight from Atlanta to Memphis that morning a bomb scare caused the pilot to announce to the passengers that, because Dr. King’s life had been threatened, a special guard had to be brought on board. King continued:

And then I got into Memphis, and some began to say the threats—or talk about the threats—that were out, what would happen to me from some of our white sick brothers. Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now, because I have been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody I would like to live—a long life—longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now; I just want to do God's will....So I'm happy tonight! I'm not worried about anything! I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

A second kind of time. Mountain top time when the glory of the Lord is revealed. God’s time that makes sense of the ordinary time we mark on the calendar. It’s what gave Dr. King a profound clarity and purpose about what he had to do, and fired him with courage in the remaining seconds and minutes and days of his life. It revealed what his remaining calendar time was about, what it meant, why it mattered.

At the wedding feast, Jesus says that his hour, his mountain top moment, has not yet come. He isn’t speaking of a time and date on his calendar; he’s talking about the time when God will reveal his glory through his cross, resurrection, and ascension, the time when the veil of the temple will be torn in two and God will be accessible to all, once and for all.

Mary knows better. She knows that this wedding feast is no ordinary moment. Because whenever there is need and Jesus is on the scene, resurrection and abundance are right around the corner, grace upon grace. She knows what time it is better than her son.

And after his comeback to her request, she doesn’t say anything to him, but I see her casting one of those maternal glances -- the kind my mom still gives to me now and then, and like I sometimes give to my own son...

Rather than argue with him, she turns to the servants and tells them simply and clearly, “Do whatever he tells you.” She knows her son will come around. He might protest, but eventually he’ll listen to his mother.

Well, you know the rest of the story. Jesus instructs the servants to fill six large stone basins with water, to draw some of that water, now turned to fine wine, and take it to the steward. The steward assumes that the host has saved the best wine for last.

Suddenly this couple has six huge basins – 180 gallons – of the finest wine, more than enough for the rest of the wedding celebration. No one could now leave this wedding thirsty, because the water of human inadequacy that leaves you empty and unsatisfied has given way to the wine of exhilaration, the old order has given way to a new creation, abundance and blessing and grace have overflowed.

Gerard Manley Hopkins once said that the world is charged with the grandeur of God. In every moment the new creation is lurking, waiting to break forth. Bread and wine can bear Christ’s body and blood. An ordinary hug can convey unbounded love and blessing. The smallest donation of clean socks or rain ponchos can make all the difference for one of the homeless who sleep here on weekday mornings . A smile at just the right time, can shed light into the darkest of places.

There really are no ordinary moments. Maybe it’s 8:45 on a Tuesday morning and all that’s in front of you is a pile of invoices. Or maybe it’s Thursday evening and time to take out the garbage. Or maybe it’s 7:30 Saturday morning and time, finally, to sleep in.

Yet within each of the seconds and minutes and hours of our days, a new creation is waiting to break forth, waiting for us to unleash it. Life and love and laughter -- grace -- is waiting to break loose in our lives and in our world. Can you see it?

These so-called “ordinary” moments of our lives, do we know how pregnant they are? Do we know how to seize them as Mary would have us do, as Martin Luther King did? Do we really know what time it is?