John 2:1-11, from the Second Sunday after the Epiphany.
I think John’s story of the miracle at Cana never really got the attention it deserved during my upbringing in conservative Baptist churches.
The teetotalling preachers and teachers who ran things probably had a tough time mustering enthusiasm for a story that depicted Jesus using divine power to help drunk people get even more drunk. The discussion always seemed to gravitate toward an improbable assertion that the wine referred to in the story was just grape juice, not the fermented demon brew for sale in the heavily regulated, closed-on-Sunday liquor stores around town.
But there is so much more here than a chemistry lesson. To recap: Some unnamed couple is tying the knot in Cana, a little town just north of Nazareth, and Jesus and his disciples are among the wedding party’s guests, as is Jesus’ mother, Mary. But the wine runs out before the party ends – an unmitigated disaster, given the prevailing hospitality standards in first-century Palestine. Mary brings the problem to Jesus, who respectfully tells her it’s not his problem, because it’s not yet his time. But in what has all the appearances of a rather funny, “You might be God, but I’m still your mother” moment, Mary tells the servants to follow the directions Jesus will (not “might”) give them.
Perhaps with a roll of his eyes, Jesus gestures toward six stone vats of water set up for the guests to use when washing their hands before eating, as Jewish law required. Jesus tells the servants to fill the jars to the brim, and the servants comply. Then he tells them to draw some out and take it to the chief steward for a taste test. They do that, too, which of course leads to yet another funny moment. The chief steward swigs what he does not know had been wash water only seconds ago and declares it to be the finest wine of the party. He likes it so much, in fact, that he discreetly scolds the groom for having failed to uncork it sooner, before everyone had gotten too sloshed to appreciate it.
All those sermons and Sunday School lessons that focused on what Jesus had made at the Cana wedding, grape juice or wine, tended to overlook what he had made it out of: water. And, in particular, wash water, a category of water nobody would want to drink. And just in case anyone would think there was any ingredient other than wash water involved, Jesus had the servants top off each of the jars, leaving no room to hope for anything else except the miraculous grace that Jesus would somehow infuse it with as the servants were carrying a sample of it to the head steward. And judging from what the steward said during his giddy assessment, few of the partiers would possess enough sobriety to appreciate what was about to fill their empty goblets. But fill their goblets it would, to overflowing, because each of those six brimming wash water vats held up to 30 gallons. Jesus hadn’t merely made great wine. He had made it in extravagant abundance.
Perhaps you can see more clearly now why the story of Cana’s wash water wine is the perfect beginning for Jesus’ work in the world.
As he had at Cana, he would carry out his redemptive mission almost secretly, urging the beneficiaries of his miracles to tell no one what had happened and teaching in parables so opaque that he often had to explain them afterward to his disciples.
He would describe an alternative kingdom in which the last would be first and the first would be last, a kingdom as seemingly upside down and backwards as the sight of party guests getting merrily drunk on the same water they had rinsed their hands in at the door.
He would prescribe a spiritual transformation completely dependent on the power of God, a vat brimming with nothing but fouled water turned into a vat brimming with nothing but the best of all wine, and no room in between for any added ingredient other than faith.
And he would pour 100-percent-proof salvation in lavish abundance out on the entire world, including those too drunk on inferior stuff to notice what was happening. He would be like a sower scattering seed on every patch of soil within range, be it hard, rocky, weedy or fertile. And as some patches in the field would end up barren despite the seed that had fallen on them, so some in the world would end up dying of thirst despite the deluge that had soaked them.
But only because they had refused to simply open their mouths and drink.
