Wedding at Cana

As a pastor, my focus is on the wedding as a service of worship. I try to steer a wide birth around extraneous matters, such as where to seat the fourth wife of the groom’s father, and the appropriate bribe to offer a four-year-old ring-bearer to get him to come out from under a pew and surrender the rings.

Strictly speaking, these are not theological questions.

Last summer brought a change in perspective. Wedding planning is a different kettle of fish when you’re the father of the groom. I saw for the first time how important seating charts really are, requiring skills exceeding those of a seasoned diplomat at the State Department. And then there are the logistical questions. How many North Dakotans will fit in a Honda CRV? How do you put a up a tent in the courtyard without driving a stake through the sprinkler system? How many giant electric fans can run off a fourteen-amp circuit without setting the Education Building on fire?

These are not theological questions, either. These are questions of life and death. Or so they can seem at the time. I have, therefore, nothing but empathy for the groom (or was it his father?) in today’s Gospel lesson.

The wedding at Cana in Galilee is going well. The toasts, if not eloquent, are at least not embarrassing. The band is decent – a combo called Caleb and the Canaanites. The food is holding up – even with the last-minute addition of Mary, her son Jesus, and his twelve hungry-looking disciples. (That fisherman Peter looks as though he could eat twelve helpings all by himself.)

Yes, all is going very well. This will be a wedding Cana will remember for a long time.

Then . . . disaster. The steward pours the last drop of a rather decent merlot into the glass of the bride’s second cousin and nods to his assistant to fetch another case. The assistant mouths "That’s it. There isn’t any more!" The steward turns the color of cabernet sauvignon and whispers something to the head waiter. The head waiter whispers to the cook, the cook to the conga player in Caleb and the Canaanites, and eventually, the word gets to Mary (who is bound to have been some kind of relative). Mary pulls her boy Jesus aside and whispers into his ear, "They have no wine!"

Jesus whispers back "So what?" (Or words to that effect.) "What do you want me to do about it? My hour has not yet come."

Remember, friends, this is the Gospel according to St. John, not America’s Funniest Videos. This is the Gospel that begins with the most profound verses of theological poetry ever written: "In the beginning was the Word. And the world was with God. And the Word was God . . ."

John’s Gospel is heavy stuff. The "hour" to which Jesus refers is, of course, his death by crucifixion. In the light of what is eventually going to happen to Jesus, getting through a wedding reception without a glass of wine is the least of his worries. This is the Word made flesh who’s talking here, the only-begotten of the Father before all worlds. His public ministry hasn’t even begun. He has yet to heal the first leper, cast out the first demon, overturn the first table of moneychangers. Why do you suppose this Gospel writer allows Mary to trouble Jesus with this trifle? "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?"

Given the prologue to John’s Gospel, we might expect Jesus’ first public act to begin with a bang, not a whimper – with dividing the Red Sea, not re-supplying the red wine. If so, we are already misreading John’s Gospel. If the Word really has become flesh, if God really has pitched God’s tent among us, then why in the world not start in the world -- with an anxious mother, a panic-stricken sommelier, and an imminent social disaster? The language of John’s Gospel is glorious, but his message, after all, is down-to-earth. If Jesus is going to reveal his glory, he might as well start here.

It’s easy for us pastors to become cynical about weddings – of if not cynical, at least blasé. How many times can you hear Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D played on the organ without thinking to yourself, "Oh Boy, here it comes again: Taco Bell’s Cannon."

Yet those musical war horses are chosen because brides and grooms want their weddings to "sound right." You can hardly blame them for that, even if you might wish their musical education ran a bit deeper. Even if they are not particularly sophisticated musically – or theologically – most couples can express the hope that what happens at their wedding will be blessed by God, will somehow be looked upon favorably by the Divine. Despite the consumerism and narcissism that threaten the typical wedding, few couples are so self-absorbed that they completely miss the import of the occasion.

Every church needs a wedding policy to keep florists from driving ten-penny nails into the pews and photographers from poking their lenses into the liturgy, but churches should never get so rule-bound that they squeeze the joy out of covenant-making. Whatever else they are, weddings are testimony to God’s love for things fleshly – for skin on skin and lips against lips, for hugs and tears, for hands that let go and hands that cleave, for fingers that fumble with a ring and fingers that reach for the tissues.

God doesn’t consider such matters trivial. God, after all, is the one who decreed, "It’s not good that the man should be alone . . ." We’re made for making covenant, we human creatures. Nobody understands that better than the God who made us this way. If we’re going to err at weddings, we ought to err on the side of generosity.

And that, it seems, is exactly what Jesus does. The first "sign," as John calls it, of God’s presence with us in the flesh is totally and completely over the top. Six ceremonial water jars – filled right to the brim with water. That’s 180 gallons of water, my friends. That’s a lot of water, but by the time it gets delivered to the chief steward, it’s not water anymore. It’s 180 gallons of the good stuff – the really good stuff.

The chief steward can’t believe it. "You’ve kept the good wine until now," he tells the groom. The groom looks even more bewildered than usual (and believe me, I’ve seen a lot of bewildered grooms). Caleb and the Canaanites strike up a rousing version of Hava nagila, and the wedding is on again!

John doesn’t say so, but I’m pretty sure I see Jesus somewhere on the dance floor right after that. He dances rather well for the Word made flesh, wouldn’t you say?

Through the ages, preachers have offered all sorts of imaginative interpretations of this story. According to one, those seven jars, which were meant for Jewish rites of purification, have now been put to another use. Thus Jesus rejects the Jewish law!

According to another, Mary represents the church, who says to us "Do whatever he tells you."

I had a Southern Baptists girlfriend in high school whose pastor said that Jesus must have turned the water into wine, because the Bible says so, but he didn’t drink any of it himself, or allow his disciples as much as a sip. (Every party has a pooper, that’s why we invited Jesus.)

Who knows for sure what John has in mind by telling us this strange and quite possibly hilarious story about the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry? Perhaps, for once, John is not trying to communicate on several levels at the same time.

Perhaps he’s telling us that when God’s word becomes flesh, all sorts of wonderful and unexpectedly generous things start to happen. God opens up a vintage where the grapes of generosity are stored, and the grapes of wrath are set aside. God joins in a celebration of life lived in the flesh, with all its mysteries, delights, and contradictions. God not only endures another rendition of Taco Bell’s Cannon, God joins the procession and hums along.

Nothings delights more than discovering God’s delight in the likes of you and me. Nothing is more surprising than the gospel of Jesus Christ, the word made flesh. Drink deep, beloved. Taste and see that the Lord is good.