Epiphany 2
Beloved. Because Easter is earlier this year, we have a shorter Epiphany season. But what a powerful Epiphany Gospel we have today. If you remember, Epiphany means revelation/ manifestation; and in the Epiphany season we are seeing that the Baby born of the Virgin that first Christmas really is both true man and true God. We have a beautiful example of that in today’s Gospel in which Jesus turns the water into wine. At the end of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit has St. John write: This, the beginning of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him. Jesus’ three year earthly ministry began at His baptism, when He was baptized by St. John the Baptizer in the Jordan River and what happens here in Cana of Galilee, just a short time after His baptism and beginning His public ministry? –Jesus began to reveal His glory; He began revealing who He really is—the true God. Notice, St. John calls this first miracle of Jesus after beginning His public ministry the beginning of his miraculous signs. A sign—and what do signs do? They point: this way to this city, x number of miles. And this, the beginning of his miraculous signs points to what? –Jesus; it points to Him and says the Kingdom of God has come in Jesus. Jesus revealed his glory. And why did Jesus reveal His glory/what is the purpose of this the beginning of his miraculous signs? Again our text: and his disciples believed in him. The great miracle of turning water into wine was a means to an end. Yes, it helped/ served the wedding people; but the purpose of the miracle was to confirm the faith disciples had in Jesus, that He truly is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. And almost 2000 years on, this miracle, heard and reflected upon again has the exact same purpose for us—that we may be confirmed in our faith.
And then there is that interesting section at the beginning of the text that sets everything up. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no wine.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does that have to do with you and me? My time has not come yet.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” This trips up so many readers of the holy text because they think that Jesus is being harsh to His mother or disobeying her. But that could hardly be the case since Jesus is sinless and could not sin. Many get tripped up because Jesus addresses His mother as Woman, as if that is disrespectful. Perhaps, here that may sound “harsh” to modern ears but it certainly doesn’t sound “harsh” when, on the cross, Jesus commends the care of Mother Mary to St. John [John19.26-7]: When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple who He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” The He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” Perhaps it may just have been the usual form of address back then—a form that today sounds harsh; or perhaps Jesus is pointing to something more as He addressed St. Mary: Woman. Is it, that maybe Jesus is pointing us back to the first promise of the Savior given to Adam and Eve? When God is cursing the devil, what does He say [Gn. 3.15]? I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and Seed; He shall crush your head and you shall bruise His heel. The Seed/Offspring/Descendant of the woman would crush Satan underfoot. So by here—at Cana at the beginning of His public ministry and then again from the cross at its end—does Jesus call Mary, Woman, to point out that she is the woman who would give birth to the Savior who would crush the devil? And if she is the Woman who gave birth to the Savior, then Jesus is the Savior! So this simple term of address, Woman, what does that have to do with you and me? may actually be Jesus claiming His divinity/ claiming He is the Savior.
This little exchange between Jesus and Mother Mary may sound a bit strange as well, as if there is some sort of disconnect. When she tells Jesus, “They have no wine”, Jesus seemingly snubs His Mother: “Woman, what does that have to do with you and me? My time has not come yet.” But then she right away tells the servants, as if she understood what He was saying, that it was not a rebuff: “Do whatever he tells you.” What are we to make of that? If Jesus’ seeming brush-off of His Mother is not in the text, then it simply reads that St. Mary informs Jesus that there isn’t wine and then she tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them.
So what do we have here? “Woman, what does that have to do with you and me? My time has not come yet.” Mary mentions/ asks for earthly wine/ a temporal favor; Jesus, though, is talking about eternal joys and coming to give us the chalice of salvation. So when Mary tells Jesus “They have no wine”, Jesus points her to the real purpose of His coming. And so certain is she that Jesus will act even in this seemingly mundane thing,that she tells the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.” And why will He act? Because what Jesus would do would be a sign—a sign that points to Him as the long-promised Savior of the world, the Seed of the Woman. To put it differently, when Mary says to Jesus “They have no wine”, He in effect says: “I will do it”—that’s why she could tell the servants “Do whatever he tells you”—“but I won’t do it as an earthly favor. Instead I will do it as a sign that points to Me as the One promised of God, the Savior of the world, who has come to destroy the devil and all his works.”
Our text begins: Three days later, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there. Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding. Not only was Jesus invited to the wedding, but He came and since as the all-knowing God He knew what would happen, He came for the express purpose of doing this miracle in order to reveal His glory—for that Epiphany. Jesus’ purpose wasn’t to save the groom and bride some embarrassment; instead, it was to show that He is the true God come into the flesh, come into this world so that He might bring us, His Church, into the heavenly wedding banquet eternally.
So when Jesus comes to this wedding, He seemingly came a guest, Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding, but in reality by turning the water into wine, Jesus is no longer guest, but rather He has become the Jewish Bridegroom, the one who is to provide the wine for the feast. Six stone water jars, which the Jews used for ceremonial cleansing, were standing there, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus told them, “Fill the jars with water.” So they filled them to the brim. Then he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the head waiter.” By His actions of providing wine, Jesus shows that He accepts the role of the Bridegroom. And why is this important? –Because in the Old Testament, the Lord pictured Himself as the Bridegroom and the people, the Israelites, as His bride. In the OT, for example, idolatry is often pictured/ described as adultery. The whole OT book of the Song of Solomon is all about the Lord and His Bride—the church. This imagery of the people of God, the Church, being the bride and the Lord being the bridegroom, is also picked up in the NT. In His parable, for example of the wise and foolish virgins [Mt. 25.1-13], Jesus depicts Himself as the Bridegroom leading the faithful into the heavenly wedding banquet. The blessed apostle, St. Paul, picks up this theme of the Lord as Bridegroom and the Church as bride: Husbands, love your wives, in the same way as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, by cleansing her with the washing of water in connection with the Word. He did this so that he could present her to himself as a glorious church, having no stain or wrinkle or any such thing, but so that she would be holy and blameless. Long story short—as Luther points out in the prayer for marriage we pray during Matins: You created man and woman and have ordained them for the bond of marriage, making them fruitful and picturing in that the sacramental union of Your dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Church, His Bride. Marriage—in particular the marriage of Christians—is an icon/ picture to the whole world of the relation between Jesus and His Church. To be sure, our marriages are imperfect with much sin attached and far from that perfect relation of love and submission that exists between Jesus and His bride, the Church, but they still reflect it to the world, even be it ever so dimly. Is it any wonder that marriage, that reflection of God in the world, that ordinance of God, that institution that goes back even before the fall into sin, that it is so despised by the devil and so under attack? Is it any surprise that the devil and his allies want to change and redefine marriage so that it is no longer what God instituted? After all, that way it cannot be an icon/image before all of God’s relationship with His Church.
Again, this miracle of water into wine was not by chance or fluke; it wasn’t a “throw-away” miracle; it wasn’t even to annoy Baptists and others who think any alcohol is a sin. Its purpose was to show that Jesus is the Lord, the God of the OT; that the Bridegroom of His people has now come.
Jesus did that not only by providing the wine and showing that He is the Bridegroom, the true Bridegroom, the heavenly Bridegroom of His people but also by the amount of wine He produced. Six stone water jars, which the Jews used for ceremonial cleansing, were standing there, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus told them, “Fill the jars with water.” So they filled them to the brim. Then he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the head waiter.” So about 120-180 gallons of water were turned into wine. Such abundance! That’s exactly the kind of abundance that the OT prophets talked about. In their prophecies, they used images of agricultural abundance to describe the rich spiritual abundance that the Messiah would bring about: forgiveness of sin, eternal life, peace with God, etc. For example, St. Amos the prophet writes about the rich spiritual abundance the Messiah would bring using imagery rich abundance and harvests [Amos 9.13]: Look, days are coming, declares the Lord, when the plowman will overtake the reaper, and the one who stomps on the grapes will overtake the one sowing the seed. The mountains will drip sweet wine, and all the hills will flow with it. Here at Cana Jesus literally fulfilled these images of abundance of wine to show that He is the Messiah.
Not only is He the Messiah—but this miracle also points out who this Messiah is: the very God Himself, the God of Creation who made everything [Gn.1.31] very good. When the master of the banquet tasted the water that had now become wine, he did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew). The master of the banquet called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when the guests have had plenty to drink, then the cheaper wine. You saved the good wine until now!” The very God who made everything, out of nothing, who merely spoke and it was—it was a small thing for Him to turn water into wine. And the very fact that this miracle/ sign took place at a wedding turns our thoughts back to God’s creation of Adam and Eve and His instituting marriage, to Eden. The same God who was at Eden, who instituted marriage, who is the almighty Creator is here at this wedding at Cana. It is Jesus. He revealed this glory as He turned the water into the best wine.
The water into wine at Cana then also pointed forward to something greater. Remember Jesus’ words to the Virgin Mother: “Woman, what does that have to do with you and me? My time has not come yet.” Jesus’ passion was His time. It was yet to come. At that time, on the cross, with His suffering and death, He would obtain for us the wine of salvation—a wine that brings true joy, gives true hope and is there for us richly and abundantly. Jesus came to offer us the chalice of eternal salvation. His time did come; He did bring it about for us. Now with the wine of the Blessed Sacrament, He gives us the best wine—His blood—that washes away our sin and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. Jesus is the Bridegroom of the Church—He provides the wine. INJ