So shall your God rejoice over you!

John relates the story of Jesus and his mother at a wedding in Cana of Galilee [John 2: 1-11]. Cana is in the mountains just north of their hometown of Nazareth, and west of the Sea of Galilee. It’s an odd story which demands a lot from our imagination. Imagine, like Jesus and his mother, you are invited to a wedding feast – a wedding reception – that lasts for several days. Despite being a story about a wedding, it is really about God – and God’s future for all people – a God who Isaiah declares, “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” [Isaiah 62:5]

Imagine you are Jesus’s mother. Curiously she is never named in John’s Gospel, perhaps to focus on the relationship between Jesus, the Word, and his Father, capital “F.” If you’re invited it most likely involves your clan. You notice that they are running out of wine. This will reflect poorly on the entire family if this happens. Nothing in the Gospel of John so far suggests that Jesus can do anything about this. Yet, his mother says to Jesus, “They have no wine.”

Or, imagine you are Jesus. He seems annoyed by his mother’s insistence and addresses her in a tone that I would have never imagined using with my own mother! "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come." Why is he so curt with his mother? Why does he seem so annoyed? His mother, however, still seems to think he can remedy the situation. She turns to the servants and says: “Do whatever he tells you.”

In the end, however, Jesus obeys his mother, despite always saying he is to be about “his father’s business.” After all, his next action, his second sign, occurs only a few days later in the Jerusalem Temple. He moves rather quickly from Cana to Capernaum, which is North of the Sea of Galilee, and then suddenly way down south to Jerusalem where he is tossing over tables and driving animals out of the Temple precinct, so concerned is he about the house where “his father’s business” takes place – which is all about sacrificing said animals. Back in Cana, Jesus suddenly reverses himself and seems to think it is time after all. His hour has come.

Suddenly, he instructs the servants to haul 180 gallons of water to fill six 30-gallon jars. These jars are for “purification,” which means washing their hands before the wedding feast. There must be a lot of guests to need 180 gallons of water to wash their hands! Then he instructs them to take a cup of water to the Chief Steward, who declares to the bridegroom, “Wow! This is really, really good wine! Usually after everyone is drunk you serve cheap wine, but this stuff is great!” Not to mention there is lots of it! Something like 888 bottles of good wine!

Now imagine you are the bridegroom and hear the Chief Steward praising your really, really good wine and you wonder, “Just what he is talking about!” You have no idea. Where did this come from? And why does he think I have anything to do with its sudden appearance? The narrator concludes, “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

It’s the first thing Jesus does, the first sign, and no one even sees it happen. No one knows how it happened! But happen it did! Leaving at least a few questions. Among them: What is the take-away from this extraordinary “sign”? And in a storyline which includes signs like healing people, raising the dead Lazarus, welcoming strangers, feeding thousands of people on a few loaves of bread and a few fish, appearing to people after he is dead, why is this the first sign?

Maybe, suggests my friend, colleague and now missionary, The Reverend Amy Richter, Jesus recalls a vision the prophet Isaiah had some seven hundred years earlier in a similar situation. Then, Israel was in Exile in Babylon. Now, they are in Exile at home under Roman occupation – home was no longer home. Isaiah who says that one day God will intervene, and “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.  And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” [Isaiah 25:6-9]

“So, when Jesus makes gallons and gallons of wine at a wedding reception [in the mountains],” writes Amy, “it is a sign, pointing to the scriptural promises that God will bring all people to God’s own self, that God will pour down God’s love and the abundance of God’s joy on all people, that the perfection that lies in God’s great future is real. But more – that the future abundance and grace and joy has begun in Jesus Christ. The future is now, the glory and grace of God are available now.” For all people.  [The First Sign, The Reverend Dr. Amy Richter]

Amy goes on to suggest that Jesus’s sign announces that God’s future is breaking in now. God’s future is available in the present. In this life. We don’t have to wait to experience it. And we can participate in this future that is here in Christ Jesus right now. How? By following his mother’s instructions to the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.” What does he tell us to do? Love God. Love neighbors, even strangers and enemies. Share what you have with others. Share your money, your time, your compassion, your care. Heal people. Raise the dead. Help those who are blind to see. Give thanks to my Father for all good things. And at his Last Supper he says to us, “You will do the things that I do, and greater things than these… Rise up, let us be on our way!” [John 14:12]

Oh yes, and he says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” The very last sign Jesus leaves his disciples, and that would be us, is a loaf of bread and a cup of - wine. At his Last Supper he passes around a cup of wine – “for all peoples.” It’s the first sign he gives us. It is the last sign he leaves us. The community which gathers around him calls this Eucharist, which means thanksgiving. As we look into the cup of wine week in and week out, we are to remember that first sign, and all his signs, and give thanks – thanks for the signs that say the future is now for those of us, who like his mother, reply, “Let it be to me according to your word.”

His first word to those he calls to be his disciples is always, “Follow me… Rise up, let us be on our way.” We are those people who, like Jesus and Isaiah before him, know what God’s future looks like! We have heard the vision of how God plans to wrap this all up; we have seen the sign of 180 gallons of wine that announces: Yes, God’s future is now for those who look into that cup that shimmers with his life blood; who do remember and say, Yes, yes, I will rise up and follow!

Whenever any one of us looks into that cup and says, “Yes!” the words of Isaiah are fulfilled in our hearing: “…as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”