John 2:1-11 • Wedding at Cana

Themes and Thoughts

Eschatological Abundance

Transformation in Christ... Keating
We are the water that Jesus is turning into wine and bringing joy to the world. A sign of the glory of Jesus. This is the work of the Spirit, and connects with the spiritual gifts in 1 Cor 12.

Keeping the Party Going... Joy and Celebration

Jesus Saves the Best for Last


Reveals Jesus' Glory
I want to preach Jesus. That is the focus of preaching. So how do I preach Jesus? How does this passage preach Jesus? What does it reveal about Jesus?

The turning of water into wine reveals the glory of Jesus, it reveals that Jesus is of God, that Jesus has come to usher in the new age, the kingdom of God, the new creation. The sign is not just revealing that Jesus is powerful, that Jesus can do things that other ordinary human beings can't do. It is a sign that God is at hand, and God is going to do something to transform the world and life as we know it. The prophets taught us to look for the fulfillment of God's promises of restoration. 

"Jesus' glory is revealed not in his sheer power to transform water into wine, but in the generous provision of superior wine for the wedding feast" (MMT 58). 

Looking at the Text

"They have no wine." 
"So what?" 
Jesus' response to his mother, and how this plays out in the rest of the Gospel. Look at the use of "Woman" as an address throughout John.

2:4     • "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come."
4:21   • "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship..."
8:10   • "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
19:26 • "Woman, here is your son."
20:13 • They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?"
20:15 • Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?"

"My hour has not yet come."

What is Jesus' hour? John 2:4 is the first reference to Jesus' hour. The last is 17:1, when Jesus prays, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you,..." Jesus hour refers to his death, and more specifically, to his death which will reveal his glory as "the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).

In John, Jesus' glory is being manifest throughout though it is often hidden, at least from the public eye, and certainly it is hidden from the eyes who do not see with faith. So in today's reading, only the servants and Jesus' disciples see his glory for only they are witness to the fact that what went into those six stone jars was water, and what came out was wine. It is much like the faith of those who saw Jesus go into the tomb dead, and three days later come out alive again. They know Jesus was dead; they know Jesus is now alive. But they cannot explain how. But simply because they cannot explain how, doesn't mean that they cannot, with confidence, proclaim that God raised Jesus from the dead. Nor does the lack of answers to the questions of "How?" mean that they cannot answer the questions of "Why?" and "So what?" 

Those who were there saw the water go in to the stone jars, and they saw the water-become-wine drawn out and taken to the chief steward. They could not explain how this happened. The text is not interested in that question. The only question the text is interested in, the only question John is interested in, is who did this. At Jesus' command, water was put in the jars. But there is no command of it becoming wine. It does. And of course it points back to Jesus. Who is this? And what does it signify?

The Simultaneous Hiding and Revealing of Jesus' Glory
Look who gets the glory, as it were. The bridegroom. Jesus is not yet ready to reveal his glory publicly? In other words, another gets the glory. This is the humility of God as revealed through the incarnate Word-become-flesh.

Another line. Jesus always talks about bringing glory to his Father. Is there any sense, at some level of Scripture, that God is the bridegroom? In the Isaiah 65 passage, "Your builder will marry you."  

Jesus' Glory and the Glory of Moses
After Moses visited the Lord when the Shikinah of the Lord had enveloped the tent of meeting, Jesus does not glow.



"You have kept the good wine until now."
Is the bridegroom being praised or chastised?
What is the relationship between the bridegroom and the manager of the banquet?


"Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee,... 
Supposedly there are seven signs, and while references are made to signs throughout John, only this event and the healing of the official's son is specifically declared his "second sign." At least with an ordinal. In 6:14, reference is made to the people seeing this sign he had done. In 12:18, reference to the raising of Lazarus is called a sign.

"...and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him." 
But notice that his glory is manifest in a very hidden way.
And notice who gets credit for this superior wine.

Jesus saves the best for last

Marianne Meye Thompson

"From beginning to end, the story focuses on the wine that Jesus—not the host—provides and on the origins, the quantity, and particularly the quality of this wine" (60).

Connects this with the abundance of bread following the feeding of the 5000

Read Marianne's Excurses 3: The Signs of the Gospel of John

Signs as pointers (maybe a bit more than pointers), but the point being (no pun intended) that this is not just a display of power. Even in the Synoptics where Jesus' "miracles" are described in terms like mighty deeds, his miracles are not ends in themselves, or rather, they are not simply demonstrations of power to show that he has power. They are signs of the Spirit, the inbreaking of the kingdom. In John, they indicate that God is at work in Jesus to do something specific related to the salvation of the world.

How many bottles of wine are we talking about

Thomas Keating

See his Epiphany 2 sermon. The baptism of Jesus is his identification with us. The wedding feast at Cana is our transformation into Christlikeness. The Holy Spirit is the New Wine that transforms water into the the heady, intoxicating wine of the kingdom. 

We are becoming the New Wine of the kingdom. We are the water that his being transformed. And we have a choice now of who we are going to present to the world. The old water of ... or the new wine of the Spirit...

And I would add, if we don't recognize the new wine in our life, if we don't see the new wine that we have become and are becoming, then we need to talk to God about this. We have no wine.

Feasting on the Word C.Epi2

Theological by Carol Lakey Hess
Talks about the extravagance of God in this story and the scandal it raises.
"God, we too are out of wine. Are you going to tell us, 'What's that got to do with me?'"

"This troubling text invites us to trust so much in God's generosity and abundance that we, like the perceptive mother of Jesus, nudge God with our observation: they have no wine. This is not fully satisfying, for..." (264)

Pastoral
Focuses upon joy. 

"James McBride Dabbs,..., remembers religion as the opposite of life in rural SC: 'Religion was a curious, quiet, and inconsequential moment in the vital existence of a country boy. It came around every week, but it didn't seem to have much to do with the rest of life, that is, with life.' The sign at Cana tells us that Jesus served a God who puts joy into life, who thinks it worth a miracle to keep the party going as we celebrate people" (262).

"God does not want our religion to be too holy to be happy in.... He carried a spirit of celebration with him wherever he went as he proclaimed a God of mercy and peace and joy. This joyous feast at Cana is still a sign to the church that we are to rejoice in the people of God and to toast the world with the amazing good news of grace."

Cana-Grace

Homiletical by Ernest Hess (any relation to Carol)
Like all biblical texts that proclaim present eschatological fulfillment and the pouring out of abundant blessings, the question, where is it in our lives?, needs to be honestly addressed. In a world where many suffer from poverty, disease, injustice, and hunger, how do we understand this story of extravagant abundance? These are important questions without simple answers. However, the text suggests that our three-dimensional understanding of life in this world, with its painful limitations, has been unpredictably invaded by grace and that when this happens, we may not recognize it" (265).