New Covenant—19 January 2025 (was 17 Jan 16)
John 2
On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
4 “Woman,[a] why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”
5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.[b]
7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.
8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”
They did so, 9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10 and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”
11 What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
I was saving these “wedding mishap” stories for my autobiography, but why wait when the lesson for the day fits squarely under the same theme?
Like the very first wedding I was part of—assisting my supervisor on a hot day in July—when one of the groomsmen fainted in the heat. If you think repeatedly slapping someone who has just fainted only happens in the movies, think again. Apparently it happens in northern Ontario too.
Or the wedding in the Thousand Islands, with numerous guests arriving by ferry, with the usual delays that occur when a crowd all try to get the same ferry at the same time. Time passed, and the prematurely opened bar didn’t add to the solemnity of the occasion. There is a moment when the rule that says you must be sober to get married is at risk of being violated and the minister will finally say “we have to start the service—right now!”
Or the wedding at which the brother of a famous Canadian got married, where everyone was required to sign a confidentiality agreement pledging that we wouldn’t reveal the time, the place, the identity of the famous Canadian or any mishaps that may or may not have happened. And that’s all I can say about that (it wasn’t Justin Trudeau).
Or my favourite story—we’ll call it “mishap averted”—where the Roman Catholic bride and the Jewish groom set the goal of a banquet hall wedding with a rabbi and a priest officiating. Finding a traveling rabbi was easy, but the priest proved impossible. The bride and groom finally decided to hire an actor, dress him up like a priest and hope for the best. As the bride was describing this madcap scheme to her hairdresser, a light went on in her head and the hairdresser said “wait, I know a guy—he’s a United Church minister. He can pretend to be a priest!” I did my very best.
Of course, wedding mishaps are as old as weddings themselves. If you ever find yourself seated beside a minister—say at a wedding—and the conversation becomes thin, simply ask for a funny wedding story. Ministers collect them like kids collect hockey cards. Y’all know what a hockey card is?
How appropriate then that the meat of John’s Gospel begins with a wedding mishap story:
On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” he said. “My hour has not yet come.”
This seeming protest in the face of the missing wine mishap is short-lived. Jesus follows his mother’s command and proceeds to turn water into wine. And this, of course, precipitates the moment when the sign is revealed and the master of the banquet says “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests are too drunk to notice; but you have saved the best till now.”
As we begin to look for meaning in the ‘miracle that follows the mishap’ we are caught between the suggestion that somehow the meaning is obvious and the equally convincing suggestion that the meaning is largely hidden—and it will take skilled interpreters to reveal it.
So the first suggestion is that perhaps it’s an allegory. Remember allegory? In an allegory, the literal meaning points to a more complex layer of meaning that may not be readily obvious. Think George Orwell's book “Animal Farm.” On one level it’s a delightful children's story about a group of animals who take over a farm and try to run the place on their own. But Animal Farm is also a detailed allegory representing the history of the first 30 years of the Soviet Union. It’s a book that any 10 year-old would enjoy, but a book that few 10 year-olds would read and say “this character, 'Old Major,' he must represent Vladimir Lenin.”
So some argue that the water represents the end of Jewish purification rituals, rendered null and void by the first sign of water into wine. Some interpreters highlight Mary in the story, and naming her the personification of the church. Or the wedding becomes the advent of a new era in Israel's history, with God as the bridegroom and the church as the bride. Or the water is baptism, the wine is communion, and the meaning-making goes on and on. Even the biblical literalists get in on it, arguing that any passage that portrays Jesus as a winemaker must always be symbolic and not literal. Apparently they make the same argument concerning debt forgiveness in Leviticus.
Back to the text, seems it’s a scholars' rite of passage to write a commentary on John's Gospel. That’s why they number in the hundreds. New Testament scholars will inevitably lend their voice to the choir of voices trying to find meaning in the signs presented throughout John. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the variety of interpretations and forget the very intuitive act of reading and trying to understand the story.
“Sometimes,” Freud said, “a cigar is just a cigar.” In other words, we sometimes get so caught up looking for symbolic meaning that we neglect to enjoy the story in front of us. Imagine Jesus goes to a party and people are having such a good time that the wine runs out. The Walmart is closed, and Mary—well aware of her son's unusual relationship with the physical world—asks him to fix the problem. As with any loving mother-son relationship, he gives her a bit of a hard time—but she ignores him (another feature of their relationship) and tells the servants to follow his directions, the thing she knows he will do. Water becomes wine and the party continues. As a clever end to the story the caterer stops by and says “why serve these drunks the good wine now, isn't it wasted on them?” It's easy to imagine wide grins on the faces of mother and son.
At some point we stopped enjoying scripture and became far too serious. Grim-faced interpreters don't laugh when Jonah gets eaten by a whale or wee Zacchaeus climbs a tree to get a better look. We forget to read joy into a joyous occasion such as the wedding at Cana and instead burden the text with all sorts of deep and vexing meaning. Well, no more.
Or at least, not as much. John is, after all, the “signs Gospel,” a Gospel that is filled with signs of the new age. And what is the new age? The new age is the beginning of a new relationship with God, a new way of being in God's world. Some will argue that the new age is still to come, that the Kingdom and its promises are yet to appear. But not John. For John the new age is here and we need only see the signs. Listen to part of his famous prologue:
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him...but to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
There goes John again, always talking about truth. Well, he wasn’t alone, and he certainly wasn’t alone in the ancient world. Even as I struggle to spit out this next bit of wisdom, you’re quietly thinking to yourself, ‘wine and truth, wine and truth. Wait a minute, didn’t Pliny the Elder say “In wine, there is truth”? In fact, he did.
Pliny the Elder was nearly a contemporary of Jesus, and sadly died when Mt. Vesuvius had other plans for Pompeii. Anyway, Pliny said “In wine, there is truth,” meaning that by the time you get to the Boone’s Farm phase of the wedding feast, people are generally more candid. This isn’t always a good thing, but may have some bearing on the Wedding at Cana.
Just as an aside, it seems the ancient Persians had their own version of Pliny's insight, making the decision whether to go to war while drunk, then revisiting the decision in the harsh light of morning. The Persian empire had a good run, so I suppose it worked. Fast-forward a few centuries and we meet the Vikings, whose variation of the practice skipped the next morning after part and rushed headlong into battle. It explains a lot.
Ignoring the Vikings, the use of intoxication (which I in no way endorse) was considered one way to tackle fundamental problems of reality and existence. Wine was considered an aid, something that might facilitate the apprehension of truth. Therefore, “In wine, there is truth.”
Back to our wedding, the link between wine and truth may have had some bearing on the construction of the story, with the added element of a parable that Jesus enjoyed telling, and also seems to speak to Cana:
“No one,” Jesus said, “pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.”
Taken together, the good wine is served first, then the inferior, and you never put new wine in old wineskins.
Jesus, then, is the good wine, and he is the new wine that is new to every generation. The good wine is the best source of truth, the new wine that will allow us to overcome the old ways of being, the ways of sin and sorrow. God has waited to serve the good wine until now, because now is the moment that reconciliation with God is possible.
If Jesus is the new wine, then it remains a story about a relationship, between you and me and everyone at the banquet, where we can see God in a new way, and become guests at this great occasion called new life. No longer shall we fear God, or live with the inferior wine of being distant from God, because God is as close as the bread we break and the wine we drink.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, full of grace and truth.
And we have seen his glory, described in stories of joyfulness and humanity.
And we have seen his glory, revealed in moments of compassion and release.
And we have seen his glory, shown in moments of healing and new life.
Thanks be to God.
posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 4:39 AM
0 comments
