Revelation 19.6-10, John 2.1-11
The Third Sunday of Epiphany, 24th January 2021 - online
It was good while it lasted - until the wine ran out.
The party we were having - until the wine ran out.
We were young and wild and carefree - until the wine ran out.
We dined and danced and drank some more - until the wine ran out.
What happens when we notice that our wine is running out? When, with our glasses quarter-full, we find ourselves shaking the last drops from our bottles, looking around for fresh supplies but seeing only other glasses emptying, every other bottle being drained? And it dawning on us that there is no more wine to be found….
Will this end our party - now that the wine’s run out?
How can we be happy - now that the wine’s run out?
Where will we find pleasure - now that the wine’s run out?
Comfort and enjoyment - now that the wine’s run out?
The wine running out - is that a metaphor for us all as we age, and develop a gnawing sense that the best times in our lives are behind us?
Or is it a parable about the state of our religion, whose early followers thought would end soon with the rapid return of the Messiah to the world - but two thousand long years later we are all still waiting, and wondering if we took a wrong turn somewhere?
Is the wine running out a way of talking about our world which for the past two centuries or more has dined out lavishly on the riches of nature, drank deeply from every well of water, oil and wine available, drained creation’s cellars dry - and only now is noticing the ruinous effect our excessive consumption of everything is having on everything?
We put our trust in health and youth; but that wine will run out.
We practice age-old rituals; but that wine will run out.
We squeeze all we can get from life; but that wine will run out.
Insurance, shares and life assurance; that wine will run out.
If we think that all these privileges are our entitlement and will keep on coming - then we deceive ourselves. But if we’re able to accept our finitude and recognise our limits, then that puts us not at the end, but rather, open to the possibility of a new beginning. When we allow ourselves to sense that something other can happen with us when our old options seem to be draining away, as we realise that rather than facing the end of a hopeless story, we’re opening the page to a fresh chapter.
We can take this view because we know what happened at the Wedding Feast at Cana so very, very well. Jesus’ first miracle, turning water into wine: it’s a joyous tale which everybody loves. It works at the level of a brilliant human story: as one writer has put it, the miracle at Cana is there in the bible ‘Just to remind us of how a very ordinary person took some very ordinary drink among some very ordinary people and enabled them all to be happy’. [1]
And it also works at a symbolic level. For the six stone water-jars which Jesus had filled with water weren’t just any old jars. They were there for the Jewish rites of purification, for ritual washing, for their religion was pre-occupied with the problem of impurity. They weren’t modest wine containers, they were massive, of a size more suitable to the temple than for a home in Cana. Odd that they were there, in the story - until you realise that ‘this story, is really about the collision between the ministry of Jesus and the conventional religion of his time’:
The stone jars - notice that they need filling; they are depleted. They signify the old ways which were emptying away. And notice how Jesus is not rejecting the jars and what they stood for; he is filling them. You could say that he is filling the rituals with meaning and then transforming them. The devout Jews of the time clung to their old rituals, not only because they ordered life but also because they gave them an identity. But the hidden message of this miracle story is that Jesus helps us not to reject out of hand our old ways, but when these old ways lose their power to help and save us, he can refill them and transform them into something even better than before. [2]
It’s a beginning, not an ending - after our wine runs out.
It’s a miracle, not a funeral - after our wine runs out.
It’s renewing, not depleting - after our wine runs out.
It’s a world of new experience - after our wine runs out.
The message in this miracle is that we needn’t spend our time looking back aghast at what seems to be draining away from us. But rather, if we ask Jesus’ help - and we can do that easily, in prayer, day by day - then he can prepare us to be filled - filled with new insights into who we are, filled with new commitments to better ways of being alongside others on this earth. Our bodies weakened with age maybe, but our spirits full. Our old sources of security dissolving in these times, perhaps, but a new sense of God’s provision filling us.
‘Now Jesus lived and gave his love / to make our life and loving new,’ wrote hymnwriter Brian Wren. [3] It’s no surprise that Jesus’ ministry started at a wedding. For the world he invites us into is one of loving commitment from him to us and back again, a relationship of joy which bears all changes, through all the ages.
‘There is a road that leads to Cana’, says the writer Brian Zahnd. ‘The place where the miracles begin. The place where Jesus turns water into wine. There is a kind of Christianity that looks like a wedding feast. It’s why I still say “come with me. Come with me, come to Cana, come to where Jesus turns water into wine.”’ [4]
Notes
[1] Wild Goose Worship Group, Present on Earth: Worship resources on the life of Jesus, p.50.
[2] Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary Epiphany 2C: Notes on Gil Bailie, “The Gospel of John,” tape #2.
[3] Brian Wren, As Man And Woman We Were Made.
[4] Brian Zahnd, Water to Wine: Some of My Story, p.172, quoted in Paul Nuechterlein,Girardian Lectionary Epiphany 2C.
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