Exodus 33:12-33; Ephesians 5:22-33; St John 2:1-11
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
On the third day our Lord went to a wedding in Cana of Galilee where, as His first sign, He gave good wine to drunks.
This is now the third day since He called Nathaniel. It is probably the forty-third day since His baptism. He was baptized and then immediately driven into the wilderness by God the Holy Spirit for fasting and temptation by the devil. When that was complete He was ministered to by angels and began His public ministry. He began by preaching and calling disciples. Then He went to a wedding and showed His glory so that His disciples believed in Him.
The third day is significant. St John could have written, the next day or Wednesday or the day after that, but he, by the Holy Spirit, wrote, the third day. He wants us to se the connection between our Lord’s first sign and His last sign. Between turning the water to wine and His death and resurrection. St John wants you to notice that this takes place at a wedding outside of Judah. Even as Christ’s wedding, so to speak, will take place outside of Jerusalem upon the Cross.
He is the true Bridegroom, as St Paul says in the Epistle. He has come to end the divorce: the divorce between men and women, between Jew and Gentile, between neighbors and brothers, between soul and body. Above all, between God and man. We shall be reunited with God as we were meant to be, at harmony and peace with ourselves, with each other, and with Him. Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word. In Christ’s wedding Himself to our sin in order to betroth us to Himself by water and blood, to give us His righteousness, He restores the orders of creation. He undoes Babel’s curse and Adam’s curse. He is the true Bridegroom, so He provides the wine.
There is so much here that we usually miss the most significant thing.
A. St Mary, the Blessed Virgin, exemplifying the Church in prayer — as with all faithful
women in the Scriptures - Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth, Mary Magdalene - the Mother of our Lord is a picture of the Bride of Christ, the Church
1. She turns to Jesus in her problem
2. She prays to Him in confidence that He hears and answers
3. And even though the answer is ‘No’ she still trusts that He is good and that He will provide. Do whatever He tells you. Last words in NT.
B. The stone jars for purification
1. Levitical law of washing for nighttime discharge - this didn’t require six stone jars of twenty to thirty gallons each.
2. These jars are not to fulfill the Levitical law, but for the guests to ceremonially wash their hands before eating.
a. Pharisees cared more for the outward keeping of the ceremony than the inward keeping of the Law
b. Make creeping things clean by washing (joke)
c. Argument with them over washing and tradition - Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat? He replied, “Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this is what defiles a person.” (Mt 15)
3. Our Lord’s first sign and the beginning of His public ministry - replaces a phony tradition of and replaces it with abundant wine. The Law and the command were set up to make people clean, but they misused it to justify their own self-righteousness.
- One response to that is the call of John the Baptist: repent.
- Another response is the divine response: forgiveness. Jesus eats with sinners. He gives good wine to drunks.
a. Its not that He overlooks sin or turns a blind eye, but that He bears the sin and trespass of the Law in Himself. He is the Lamb of God. He is the heavenly Bridegroom. He loves His Bride as His own Body. He cleanses her by Holy Baptism and Holy Absolution. He presents her to Himself without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.
b. This, husbands, is how you love your wives, as Christ loved the Church. Rather than reprimanding with the stern Law, Christ Jesus bears the slight, the sin, the trespass in Himself, sacrifices, and forgives. This, husbands, is gracious lordship.
c. To such compassion and care, wives, you respond as the Church to Christ, in joyful submission, not as subservient or in passive aggression, but in willingness. Cleaving to him as of one flesh with your own. You are called to respect, that is, honor, your husband, which is actually a nobler thing than love. For honor includes love, but also modesty, humility, and submission to a majesty hidden within.
d. In His Passion and by His death, Christ restores this blessed ordering of creation. He sanctifies the gift of marriage with His own leaving of His Father and mother and holding fast to His Bride the Church as His one flesh union. This is what the Church desires to share with a world lost and broken by sin, redefining marriage along the lines of selfish love, without regard for the fruit of marriage - children - or the Word and will of the Lord. To loose our defense of marriage is to loose our presentation of the Gospel. So says St Paul. There is a time for the repentance of John the Baptist. A time for the beauty and splendor and blessing of the Gospel realignment of the orders of creation.
C. The steward - the master of the feast - takes on a satanic role (as that of the world that views the gospel and its gifts as worthless and even vulgar).
1. Drunk Freely - Intoxicated. Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now. His point is simple: there is no good reason to waste good wine on people who are drunk. He is calling the bridegroom an idiot, criminally negligent and wasteful.
2. Pay attention, because out Lord is revealing Himself. He is showing His glory. Our text says, He manifested His glory. Thats right. But in Greek it reads, He epiphanied His glory. This is where we get the name of the season: Jesus turning water to wine and giving it to drunks at a wedding.
How does this show our Lord’s glory? Not by His power in the conventional sense. This sign is not a demonstration that our Lord has control over nature or is powerful. His true glory is not in His ability to turn water into wine. He does that all the time. After all, every drop of wine on earth was once water in a grape. All He has done here is speed things up.
But if His glory is not in His power, then what is it? It is that He gives wine to drunks. He gives good, wonderful gifts to those who in no way deserve them or have the ability to appreciate them. To those who will most certainly abuse them. He bestows upon you, intoxicated with sin, His grace upon grace, overflowing and abundantly.
And He always hides these signs of His power and glory under weakness and shame. He hides the picture of the relationship He has to His Church in the simple yet profound truth of one man and one woman marriage. And only this. Foolishness and even bigotry in the eyes of the world. He hides the eternal adoption and inheritance of His Father in water and Word. A splash and a Name. Almost divine silliness. He hides His Body, broken for you, in bread and His Blood, poured out for the forgiveness of your sins, in wine. A morsel and a sip. Even other Christians consider the real presence to be a farce.
But this mystery is profound. And it is how your heavenly Bridegroom nourishes and cherishes you, His Body, by giving you His own Body to eat and Blood to drink for the forgiveness of all your sins. For the great glory of the Lord that was hidden from the prophet Moses as He was concealed in the cleft of the rock is seen before the eyes of the world as He epiphanies Himself, laid bare upon the Rock of Atonement, lifted up in death. And the world scorns and rejects it, mocks and ridicules it. But in Christ you see not only the back of YHWH, but His very face and heart.
And you, beloved, have found favor in His sight. He has manifested His glory and you believe in Him, on account of the work of His Spirit. He gathers His elect. He is not desperate, not trying to make it work of gain a profit. He will not force Himself upon them or argue them into the kingdom.
The church is always failing and in decline this side of glory. Only the devil propers fully. Here Christians always suffer, for they go the way of their Master to the Cross, even in their vocations as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. And as those who desire, but do not have a godly marriage. Yet in the midst of that suffering our Lord brings joy, feasting, and the Holy Spirit. He reveals Himself to disciples and they believe in Him. He makes hearts glad. On the third day our Lord went to a wedding in Cana of Galilee where, as His first sign, He gave good wine to drunks. Oh taste and see that the Lord is good!
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
On the third day our Lord went to a wedding in Cana of Galilee where, as His first sign, He gave good wine to drunks.
This is now the third day since He called Nathaniel. It is probably the forty-third day since His baptism. He was baptized and then immediately driven into the wilderness by God the Holy Spirit for fasting and temptation by the devil. When that was complete He was ministered to by angels and began His public ministry. He began by preaching and calling disciples. Then He went to a wedding and showed His glory so that His disciples believed in Him.
The third day is significant. St John could have written, the next day or Wednesday or the day after that, but he, by the Holy Spirit, wrote, the third day. He wants us to se the connection between our Lord’s first sign and His last sign. Between turning the water to wine and His death and resurrection. St John wants you to notice that this takes place at a wedding outside of Judah. Even as Christ’s wedding, so to speak, will take place outside of Jerusalem upon the Cross.
He is the true Bridegroom, as St Paul says in the Epistle. He has come to end the divorce: the divorce between men and women, between Jew and Gentile, between neighbors and brothers, between soul and body. Above all, between God and man. We shall be reunited with God as we were meant to be, at harmony and peace with ourselves, with each other, and with Him. Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word. In Christ’s wedding Himself to our sin in order to betroth us to Himself by water and blood, to give us His righteousness, He restores the orders of creation. He undoes Babel’s curse and Adam’s curse. He is the true Bridegroom, so He provides the wine.
There is so much here that we usually miss the most significant thing.
- Lord’s first sign
- Not merely an indication of chronology
- But a primacy. Chief sign. This sign defines all other signs and His entire ministry
- Not John the Baptist - not an ascetic. He fasted in the wilderness. That is over. He conquered. Now the Bridegroom has come, the feast is at hand. And He gives really good wine to drunks. This is a picture of the Gospel.
A. St Mary, the Blessed Virgin, exemplifying the Church in prayer — as with all faithful
women in the Scriptures - Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth, Mary Magdalene - the Mother of our Lord is a picture of the Bride of Christ, the Church
1. She turns to Jesus in her problem
2. She prays to Him in confidence that He hears and answers
3. And even though the answer is ‘No’ she still trusts that He is good and that He will provide. Do whatever He tells you. Last words in NT.
B. The stone jars for purification
1. Levitical law of washing for nighttime discharge - this didn’t require six stone jars of twenty to thirty gallons each.
2. These jars are not to fulfill the Levitical law, but for the guests to ceremonially wash their hands before eating.
a. Pharisees cared more for the outward keeping of the ceremony than the inward keeping of the Law
b. Make creeping things clean by washing (joke)
c. Argument with them over washing and tradition - Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat? He replied, “Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this is what defiles a person.” (Mt 15)
3. Our Lord’s first sign and the beginning of His public ministry - replaces a phony tradition of and replaces it with abundant wine. The Law and the command were set up to make people clean, but they misused it to justify their own self-righteousness.
- One response to that is the call of John the Baptist: repent.
- Another response is the divine response: forgiveness. Jesus eats with sinners. He gives good wine to drunks.
a. Its not that He overlooks sin or turns a blind eye, but that He bears the sin and trespass of the Law in Himself. He is the Lamb of God. He is the heavenly Bridegroom. He loves His Bride as His own Body. He cleanses her by Holy Baptism and Holy Absolution. He presents her to Himself without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.
b. This, husbands, is how you love your wives, as Christ loved the Church. Rather than reprimanding with the stern Law, Christ Jesus bears the slight, the sin, the trespass in Himself, sacrifices, and forgives. This, husbands, is gracious lordship.
c. To such compassion and care, wives, you respond as the Church to Christ, in joyful submission, not as subservient or in passive aggression, but in willingness. Cleaving to him as of one flesh with your own. You are called to respect, that is, honor, your husband, which is actually a nobler thing than love. For honor includes love, but also modesty, humility, and submission to a majesty hidden within.
d. In His Passion and by His death, Christ restores this blessed ordering of creation. He sanctifies the gift of marriage with His own leaving of His Father and mother and holding fast to His Bride the Church as His one flesh union. This is what the Church desires to share with a world lost and broken by sin, redefining marriage along the lines of selfish love, without regard for the fruit of marriage - children - or the Word and will of the Lord. To loose our defense of marriage is to loose our presentation of the Gospel. So says St Paul. There is a time for the repentance of John the Baptist. A time for the beauty and splendor and blessing of the Gospel realignment of the orders of creation.
C. The steward - the master of the feast - takes on a satanic role (as that of the world that views the gospel and its gifts as worthless and even vulgar).
1. Drunk Freely - Intoxicated. Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now. His point is simple: there is no good reason to waste good wine on people who are drunk. He is calling the bridegroom an idiot, criminally negligent and wasteful.
2. Pay attention, because out Lord is revealing Himself. He is showing His glory. Our text says, He manifested His glory. Thats right. But in Greek it reads, He epiphanied His glory. This is where we get the name of the season: Jesus turning water to wine and giving it to drunks at a wedding.
How does this show our Lord’s glory? Not by His power in the conventional sense. This sign is not a demonstration that our Lord has control over nature or is powerful. His true glory is not in His ability to turn water into wine. He does that all the time. After all, every drop of wine on earth was once water in a grape. All He has done here is speed things up.
But if His glory is not in His power, then what is it? It is that He gives wine to drunks. He gives good, wonderful gifts to those who in no way deserve them or have the ability to appreciate them. To those who will most certainly abuse them. He bestows upon you, intoxicated with sin, His grace upon grace, overflowing and abundantly.
And He always hides these signs of His power and glory under weakness and shame. He hides the picture of the relationship He has to His Church in the simple yet profound truth of one man and one woman marriage. And only this. Foolishness and even bigotry in the eyes of the world. He hides the eternal adoption and inheritance of His Father in water and Word. A splash and a Name. Almost divine silliness. He hides His Body, broken for you, in bread and His Blood, poured out for the forgiveness of your sins, in wine. A morsel and a sip. Even other Christians consider the real presence to be a farce.
But this mystery is profound. And it is how your heavenly Bridegroom nourishes and cherishes you, His Body, by giving you His own Body to eat and Blood to drink for the forgiveness of all your sins. For the great glory of the Lord that was hidden from the prophet Moses as He was concealed in the cleft of the rock is seen before the eyes of the world as He epiphanies Himself, laid bare upon the Rock of Atonement, lifted up in death. And the world scorns and rejects it, mocks and ridicules it. But in Christ you see not only the back of YHWH, but His very face and heart.
And you, beloved, have found favor in His sight. He has manifested His glory and you believe in Him, on account of the work of His Spirit. He gathers His elect. He is not desperate, not trying to make it work of gain a profit. He will not force Himself upon them or argue them into the kingdom.
The church is always failing and in decline this side of glory. Only the devil propers fully. Here Christians always suffer, for they go the way of their Master to the Cross, even in their vocations as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. And as those who desire, but do not have a godly marriage. Yet in the midst of that suffering our Lord brings joy, feasting, and the Holy Spirit. He reveals Himself to disciples and they believe in Him. He makes hearts glad. On the third day our Lord went to a wedding in Cana of Galilee where, as His first sign, He gave good wine to drunks. Oh taste and see that the Lord is good!
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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