Water into Wine
Sermon by Jamie Howison on John 2:1-11
We have two very rich readings on the plate for the evening, and I want to focus largely on the story from the Gospel according to John. Before I jump in, I should just say that in the passage from 1st Corinthians, Paul is laying the groundwork for that great teaching he offers in 1st Corinthians 13. He’s writing back to the Corinthian church community that he himself had founded, because he’s received word that they’ve rather lost the compass when it comes to the matter of “spiritual gifts”, Gospel freedom, and life in community. Essentially he wants to call them back to a model in which what each person brings is valued as equal to what others bring, and to remind them that in the end what will matter is the love that they bear for one another. We’ll get there in a couple of weeks!
For tonight, though, there is this lovely story offered by John. Before we dig into the story, it is good to remind ourselves of the unique nature of this particular gospel.
Biblical scholars refer to Matthew, Mark, and Luke as the “synoptic gospels.” That word synoptic is from the Greek, meaning a “seeing all together,” because there is a common timeline to the three, and much by way of shared stories. John, on the other hand, is quite different. For one thing, in its final form this gospel dates to about 90A.D., whereas Mark is from the early 60s and both Matthew and Luke come within five or ten years of that date. John’s timeline is quite different, much of the material he includes is unique, and his long view—some sixty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus—includes a sense of Jesus who was, in a way, during his lifetime already being exalted to the right hand of the Father in the heavens. Not that this Jesus is any less human, mind you, for it is in John’s account that Jesus weeps over the death of Lazarus. And you know, if you were going to ask John if his account was either more or less historically grounded than the accounts of the synoptic gospels, he wouldn’t have even understood your question. That’s a very modern question to ask, you see, whereas these gospel writers were most interested in telling you the truth they’d come to see in Jesus, such that the specifics of timelines, which event fell where, and even who might have been at the crucifixion just didn’t worry them. Their real concern was in the question, “who was this Jesus”? and all the ink they spilled on the parchment was interested only in responding to that question.
John begins by saying, “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee.” Does that phrase, “the third day,” sound any particular notes for you? It should, because although John is really just beginning his gospel account, he is already actively anticipating the great “third day”; the resurrection day.
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.
They are in the town of Cana, which was the hometown of the disciple Nathanael, who has just joined this growing little company of Jesus followers. Cana is about six miles from Jesus’ own hometown of Nazareth, and the fact that his mother Mary was at the wedding suggests that there were strong lines of friendship or perhaps even family happening here. As John tells the story, Mary evidently has some significant connection to the family, because when “the wine gave out”—something that should never happen at a Jewish wedding—she turns to Jesus to inform him. His reply can strike us as abrupt, and maybe even a little rude. “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” Not “mother,” but “woman,” which seems an odd choice, yet it is the same word he will again use from the cross, when he commends her into the care of the disciple John: “Woman, here is your son… [and] Here is your mother.”
Yet with those words, “My time has not yet come,” we watch as John begins his artful way with words. The phrase points first to the time not yet being right for him to make a public manifestation of himself, but also to the time when he will offer himself as the Lamb of God for the sake of the world. And then we watch as Mary presses on, saying to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” And Jesus tells them to take the six stone water jars set aside for the Jewish rites of purification, and fill them with water. A lot of water, by the way, as John has noted that each jar held twenty or thirty gallons! And then he said to those servants “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward,” which they did, and “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)—and I love that little note, that the servants clearly knew who was responsible for the wine—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.”
Aside from those servants and these brand new disciples who have been watching, nobody has a clue about this miracle. The newly married couple are saved from the disgrace of running out of wine at their own wedding, the guests keep on celebrating, the steward is deeply impressed by the calibre of the wine…. and the festivities just go on. And yet John is careful to add that this was the first of Jesus’ signs, which revealed his glory to the little group that actually knew what had happened, “and his disciples believed in him.”
Water into wine. It is such an evocative image, isn’t it? Water from those jars set aside for the purification rites of Judaism, and it is poured out as abundant wine for all of the guests to share. In a sense it is a striking image of how the old covenant is brought to its fullness in the new covenant struck by Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. The line connecting the old and new is actually amplified in this image, because it begins with the purification jars and ends with those jars being the vessels of the richest of wines. The old is not thrown down or dismissed or ignored, but instead is transformed and renewed. John has given us a soaring image of what will come.
It is why, incidentally, we can’t ignore the texts and traditions of ancient Judaism, and the books of the Old Testament. The lines that connect the old to the new are both clear and fluid, and while there will be parts of the Old that leave us scratching our heads, we have to know that our newness, too, flows from something much older and deeper.
I am put to mind here of the writings of Makoto Fujimura, whose February 5 session with us has been postponed due to the current wave of the pandemic, but will take place in good time. Maybe that’s okay, because it gives us all the opportunity to contemplate at least part of what he will bring to us when we can gather. Two of our book groups have been working our way through his book Art + Faith, and both groups have now read a chapter in which he covers a Japanese art form called Kintsugi.
I wish I had a piece of Kintsugi to show to you, but I will make sure we have an image posted on the website with this sermon. That word comes from the Japanese kin for gold and tsugi, “to connect”. In his reflections, Mako offers the following:
A Kintsugi master mends the broken tea ware with Japanese lacquer and then covers that with gold… Kintsugi does not just “fix” or repair a broken vessel; rather, the technique makes the broken pottery even more beautiful than the original, as the Kintsugi master will take the broken work and create a restored piece that makes the broken parts even more visually sophisticated. No two works, done with such mastery, will look the same or break in the same way. So, too, the biblical passages of restoration…
When one contemplates a piece of Kintsugi, it is hard not to see what Mako is pointing to when he refers to the biblical passages of restoration, and I now find it hard to not see the connection to the story of the wedding feast at Cana. That which is plain like water, or preserved for older ritual practices like those jugs, becomes new wine… the best wine… celebratory wine! And that which is just a broken piece of pottery becomes more beautiful than ever through the binding, renewing work of the artist.
It strikes me that during this 22nd month of this covid pandemic, those images are more important than ever to keep in view. We live with a lot of plain water and chipped pottery these days—maybe metaphorically, and maybe quite literally—and so now more than ever we need to lean into such images as these, entrusting the broken pieces into the hands of the Master, open to seeing beauty in the broken places of our lives and our world. It all takes patience, hope, and a willingness to lean on one another. And so we shall.
