Water into Wine

John 2:1-11

The Wedding at Cana

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Jesus as a wedding guest turned out to be a boon for everybody--more wine!!--BETTER WINE!! Yet we all know that the miracle performed was not simply Party City stores' dream come true. What was revealed was Jesus' power of transformation--taking the utterly ordinary and making it extraordinary.

Nothing is more ordinary than water. It is the true gluten free, calorie free, fat free, additive free, TASTE free food. 

But, as with so many utterly ordinary things, we cannot survive without it. I believe most diets still recommend 64 ounces of water a day for proper health. That's half a gallon of water just be in good form. It does not take a desert or drought for us to miss water, though. Most of us awaken with a dry mouth and parched throat. Many of us use the first moments of the day to rinse out the mouth and soothe our throats with a glass of water. But it's water. It has no real perks in drinking it. So, we immediately move on to the coffee, juice, or something else with some flavor. We begin to simply take the water for granted. We don't really think about it. 

Then along came an imaginative marketer. 

They realized that you could bottle the ordinary water, then resell it for triple its worth. The first stage of transformation.

Now Jesus is not a clever marketer, but the same work of transformation is part of the embodiment of grace revealed in him. He chose to begin that revelation by doing something with no real import except to the host and guests at a wedding. The first sign did not alter the world, bring more justice and peace to it, or deeply alter the general flow of culture to be more compassionate. Instead, like bottling ordinary water, it made people pay more attention to what was right in front of them.

That paying attention is vital. To change the world, we have to see the world. To see the world, we have to acknowledge the things and, most importantly, the people right before us. 

There is a tremendous amount of talk about the state of the church at the moment. We seem to have collectively lost our way, becoming a fortress of dwindling numbers, trying to defend ourselves from the world around us, refusing to accept a rising tide of acceptance and affirmation of lifestyles, gender, sexuality, and pluralism that seems to be the general state of affairs. We see that defensiveness in the recent move by the world Anglican communion that chose to isolate the American Episcopal Church over the issue of gay ordination. We see that in our own denomination as congregations dismiss themselves because they will not accept a more open approach to the sweep of humanity around them. We hide inside our scriptures (selectively) and our dogmas, ignoring Jesus' own move to reinterpret scripture and dogma through the higher, more profound standard of love that is other-centered and self-emptying. 

So, Jesus turned water into wine.

Pay attention.

See what happens when love takes something ordinary and transcends its ordinariness to become something holy. Profoundly, we re-enact this miracle each communion, taking ordinary bread and ordinary juice, declaring them to be the communication of Jesus himself to and for us. Yet, no less profoundly, we do so when we actually stop and pay attention to the ordinary people, places, and activities around us in any given moment, seeing the humanity in them, and then accepting, affirming, and acting on their worth because we see God in them. 

All creation and all within in it are inherently holy because God brought everything into being and then blessed it as good, choosing to dwell with it through the Spirit.

Water into wine--everyday it occurs when we see the holiness before us. We need not fear the world; we need to love the world. We need not retreat from the world; we need to embrace the world. There we will find God waiting for us, working with us, and leading us onward.

What good news for us today!