New Wine in Old Jars

 

Jan 14, 2007        Rev. David C. Huffman      John 2:1-11

 

   One of the great challenges of parenting is knowing when to stop. When people stand before the altar and get married, I quote Jesus who said that when a man marries he leaves his parents and cleaves to his wife. Although he didn’t explicitly say it, I am sure that he meant the same for a woman. Interestingly, the word cleave in English can mean either to cling to or to cut asunder – hence the word, cleaver. This really is a double entendre, since marriage causes us to cut the cord to our parents and to establish a strong bond to our spouse, giving us a new priority of relationships, and replacing our primary allegiance to our family of birth with our new family of husband and wife.

   All this is easier said than done and presents an interesting challenge to both parents and children. Now, that our older daughter Katie has her driver’s license, I am learning what wise people have always told me: parenthood is a series of letting go of control and authority as our children learn how to become adults. As I say, it is far easier said than done. The first time I saw Katie drive out of our driveway alone, I experienced a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had never experienced, and it was not altogether pleasant. That’s an understatement; I was terrified! All I can say is thank God for prayer and driver’s training.

I

   Having said this, I think I might know a little bit of how Mary felt in our New Testament passage. Jesus and his mother, brothers, and disciples were guests at a wedding, in Cana, a village not far from their home in Nazareth. Mary, in many ways the prototypical Jewish mother – in the best sense of that word – was quick to notice that their hosts had run out of wine. So she did what any good Jewish mother would have done: she went to her son and told him about it. Notice, she didn’t say, “Jesus, the wine has run out, why don’t you be a good boy and take care of it?” She just said, “The wine has run out.” Have you ever noticed how family members can order other family members what to do with very few words?”

   Jesus certainly noticed, so he replied, “O woman, what does this have to do with us?” Now, I see some of you wincing out there. First of all, this doesn’t sound like a very polite or charitable way for a son to speak to his mother, let alone the Son of God. What’s going on here? I suspect it is Jesus’ humanity coming out. After all, we believe that Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine, so perhaps this is his human side coming out. Maybe, he, like us, resented his mother bossing him around at age 30. When your parents come to your house, do you find yourself running around like a banshee making sure everything is spic and span? I do, and I am sure that this is the result of 18 years of hearing my mother say, “Have you cleaned your room?” Old habits are hard to break. So, Jesus’ gut response is to say, “Mom, this is not our party; it’s not our place to do anything about that; I’m sure they can handle it.”

   But actually he didn’t say Mom, did he? He called his mother “woman.” Not exactly a term of endearment; in fact, he probably chose this impersonal word to create some distant between him and his mother. Although Jesus wasn’t married, the D’ Vinci Code notwithstanding, he was a grown man, and certainly it was appropriate to have cleaved his relationship with his parents somewhat. But what we really learn here is that Jesus’ hour had not yet come. That is, the time had not arrived for him to begin his public ministry. Some believe that Jesus is firmly telling his mother that he now takes his orders from his heavenly father, not her. Mary, who had been pondering in her heart what it meant to be the mother of the Messiah for 30 years, had learned enough to defer to Jesus’ wisdom, so she turned to his disciples and said, “Do whatever he tells you.”

   I would like to think she said this in a respectful, trusting manner, instead of the way many of us might have said it, “Okay, have it your way; do whatever he tells you. I’m staying out of this!” But interestingly, when Mary bowed out; Jesus did exactly what she had suggested. He stepped in and fixed the situation. He told his disciples to fill to the brim the six large stone jars that contained water for ritual purification and to take some to the wine steward. When the steward tasted what they had brought him, it had become very good wine, which astonished him, because most people, understandably, serve the good wine first, when the palette is more discriminating, and then bring out the cheaper wine when everyone tasting ability has gotten a little impaired. But this host had saved the good wine to the last.

II

   And everyone lived happily ever after. I love this story. It is in fact the first miracle that John records in his gospel. One reason I love it is that it takes place at a wedding, one of the great occasions in life. Weddings are those events where a young couple who have pledged their life and love to one another for as long as they both shall live are surrounded by family and friends. Weddings include both a solemn religious service and a wonderful party full of good food, drink, dancing and pure fun. And so Jesus begins his ministry not in the temple or at a synagogue, or a seminary, but at a private wedding, among friends and family. And he didn’t do anything big, like heal the blind or the lame or raise anybody from the dead. He simply bailed out a young couple who were about to be embarrassed because they hadn’t bought enough wine for their guests – even if it was his mother’s idea.

   But there is a lot more going on beneath the surface in this story. John always uses symbolic language to describe Jesus’ teachings and ministry. First of all, notice where the water came from. Not from a well or spring but from large jars used to store water that was used for hand washing before meals, a very important Jewish religious custom. Notice how much water there was: 120 to 150 gallons – far too much water for even a large wedding party. Also, notice that the only people who knew that Jesus had performed a miracle were Mary and the disciples. Jesus did this miracle privately, not for the benefit of the people there. It was their party, not his. He didn’t want to upstage their wedding reception. His time had not yet arrived, he told Mary. So, he did this out of compassion and perhaps to show his disciples who he was, but not to the public. That would come later.

   Why so much water? Well, commentators believe that John is trying to show with symbolic language that Jesus is the new covenant that Jeremiah had prophesied. The stone jars represent God’s covenant with Israel, but Jesus is the New Covenant, who came not to abolish the old but to fulfill or complete it. The water stood for the old covenant’s rules and regulations about cleanliness, but the wine stood for the superabundant grace of God that would come as a result of the death and resurrection of Jesus. And it was so plentiful that it would be offered not just to the Jews but to all people.

III

   Which brings us to our last question: what does this story have to do with us? I think it teaches us several things. First of all, that God chose to deal with the human dilemma not from his throne in the highest heaven, but up close and personal through Jesus of Nazareth, a carpenter’s son who went to church and school and weddings just like you and me. God chose to save us from our sins through a human being with flesh and blood and hopes and dreams just like us. In fact one of the terms for Jesus in the Bible (and there are 26) is Emmanuel, which means God with us. Jesus was God in the flesh in our world, who understood the joys and the pains of human life – because he had experienced them. That gives me comfort. It also means that our relationship to God is personal.

   Second, wine tastes a lot better than water. It has a lot more pizzazz, strength, and oomph. And that is John’s way of describing the great transformation that happens to us when we encounter the grace of God. If we meet Jesus in our lives and accept his offer of God’s grace and forgiveness, we are transformed from a finite human being with problems, aches and pains, limitations and disappointments into a child of God who knows the joy and the peace that come with knowing God. When we fall in love we run around in euphoria and say “I’m a new person,” and we are. Love changes us. And so does God’s grace; it is like water being changed to wine, or five loaves of bread and two fish being changed into enough food to feed 5,000 people, or the blind being able to see and the lame being able to walk and the poor having good news that God cares about their poverty.

   That’s what this passage has to do with us. If we have met the Son of God and received God’s grace through faith, then we are transformed, converted from our old self into a new self, and we have a whole new way of looking at the world. This week I had the privilege of attending Mike Moody’s father’s funeral service in Charlotte. Mike and his brother had some wonderful things to say about their father, and how radically transformed he was after recommitting his life to Christ 43 years ago. His good friend, a pastor who led the service, said that Doug Moody had discovered the truth of the gospel: that God has created us for love and service and that none of us finds true happiness until we discover this. As a result, Doug Moody’s life was a walking sermon. He lived what he believed.

   We live in a world full of lies and half truths. Turn on your television set or pick up a magazine or just read the billboards on the highway and you can get the idea that unless we live in big homes, drive fast cars, and wear fancy clothes then our lives are incomplete. Nothing could be further from the truth, yet so many people apparently fall for it.    Jesus said I came that you might have life and have it abundantly. Are you living abundantly? Am I? I ask myself that question every day. Every day I get out of bed, I say, “thank you God for another day, let me live it for you and your people.” Someone sent me an email this week that sums up what I have been trying to say today. A native American father took his young twelve year old son into the woods for a coming of age ritual. He sat him down on a stump deep in the woods, blindfolded him and told him he would have to sit there all night alone. He would come get him in the morning. This was part of his learning to become a man. So the young brave sat their blindfolded. As the sun went down and it got dark, the sounds of the animals in the woods began to unnerve him. But remained brave and stayed there, even though he wanted to take off the blindfold and run back to his family’s tent. When the sun rose, he took off his blindfold and saw his father sitting about ten yards away where he had been sitting all night.

   Isn’t this a parable about God and us? Many times we need God and can’t see him, but God is always there just a few feet away in case we need him. Emmanuel. Thanks be to God.