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“…the water…was made wine”

᛭ INI ᛭

(1. Orientation: In Christ God chooses the weak.)

The Lord is true to His Word. His Word tells us who He is. It tells us also what He likes to do, how He likes to do things. You heard it last week in our Epistle.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. (1-Cor 1)

It’s how He called Abraham, the childless, 75-year-old, Pagan! Not much to work with there… So also David: 8th runt child, who ascended the throne after he’d become a fugitive general over a rag-tag band of misfits. “Everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him. So he became captain over them.” (1-Sam 22) Not a great claim at all for a monarch…

(2. Disorientation: At Cana, Christ comes to a wedding in need.)

The LORD does it this way in Cana—not only what He does, but why He’s there in the first place! The wedding, and the kind of wedding that could’ve become family legend had Christ not been there. He doesn’t just come to any wedding. He doesn’t just go because He’s invited. He goes because it’s at this particular wedding in Cana of Galilee that the LORD chooses to reveal His glory.

The LORD reveals His glory at a wedding that doesn’t have everything put together. It’s a wedding that’s running short, where the Bridegroom doesn’t have everything finished and prepared. The Blessèd Virgin tells Christ: “They’re out of wine!” A disaster for any host!

And the LORD chooses “what is low and despised” to reveal Himself at such a running-short kind of wedding. He chooses plain water. He takes that water and magnifies it, glorifies it. Water that gives life become wine that gives joy and gladness, as the Psalmist says. “He gives wine to gladden the heart of man,” (Ps 104) and to gladden even “the guests [who] have well drunk” as we heard in John 2. Simple and plain made a blessing and good by the LORD.

And here’s the thing, no one knows! Oh, I’m sure they notice that the wine was fantastic, but where it came from, they didn’t. Just when you think that the LORD would show up and give the first toast, followed up with a whiz-bang miracle for all to see, He doesn’t. He suffers His glory to be revealed not in the open but hidden, not at perfection but in want and lack. The MC doesn’t know. But the servants (the lowly servants) and His disciples know. (ΙΗϹ showing up with plus 12 sounds like a wedding, right?)

(3. Reorientation: In the beginning, Christ created marriage, which is greater than the sum of its parts.)

Doing much with little is the mark of who Christ is: the Creator of the Universe—Co-Creator with His Father and the Holy Spirit. He creates from nothing. He creates and orders and fashions from the simplest of things. He speaks to waters many times. “Let there be light and there was light.” “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters.” “Let dry land appear.” “Let the waters swarm with living creatures.” (Gen 1) See, turning water into wine is easy after that, and it marks Him as the Creator.

After that He continues creating from lowly things. He forms man from the dusty clay of the ground, and breaths into His nostrils the breath of life. He creates “bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh,” (Gen 2) by taking a piece from Adam’s side, “a rib, and forms the woman and brought her to Adam.” (Gen 2) In doing so He creates something else. This helps us understand why Christ shows up at the wedding at all. He creates marriage!

Look at marriage that He creates! It’s greater than the sum of its parts. You get the man of dust (Adam) married to Eve, the woman of man’s rib . She’s not some add on, but rather, “It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Eve made just for Adam, Adam just for Eve.

Dust man not good on his own, rib woman not good on her own. Simple man, simple woman made good, even “very good.” Because one joined to one becomes not two, but rather one. Something new, something joyful and life-giving. “And ‘the two shall become one flesh.’ And so they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one put asunder.” (Mt 19)

(4. Insight: Christ accursed death, Bridegroom for the Bride, brings life and forgiveness to everyone: married, divorced, and single.)

Yet the marriage of Adam and Eve gets you something more than the first life-long couple. You get a picture of something far deeper. It’s as Paul says, “‘The two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church.” (Eph 5)

Christ is the true Husband, the Church true Bride. Inspired Paul says that’s what Adam and Eve are really all about! (No wonder that He must rescue a wedding as His first miracle!) This isn’t a nice idea; it’s real—real history, real Adam and Eve, real Christ and Church, a real creation, from things like dust and rib, and a real salvation, with flesh and blood, cross and death.

At Calvary Christ is most husband for His Bride. For just as Eve was created from the rib from Adam’s side, so the Church is created, sustained, and cleansed by the “blood and water that came out” (Jn 19) from Christ’s side. His death creates a living Bride, even as Christ the true second Adam goes into the dust of death.

His death is a curse: “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.” (Gal 3) His curse is her blessing; His death is her life. Talk about choosing something plain and making it good! Christ hints at His own death at Cana. For they aren’t just running short of wine, but time, Christ’s time: “My hour has not yet come,” He says. Christ’s hour is His suffering and death.

This sets the pattern for a proper married life. Life and love and forgiveness from the cross that is the spouse—beginning with husband, flowing to wife, and back again. But more importantly Christ’s death for His church is redemption. He redeems His Bride, and all who our members of His body, the Church. In fact, “Christ is the atoning sacrifice that soothes God’s wrath over our sins, but not our sins only, even the sins of the whole world.” (1-Jn 2) So, His suffering and death truly fulfills all the demands of the Law first written on stone, just as the “six stone water jars for the purification rites” were “filled to brim.”

He redeems us not just from how we or how the world makes a mockery of marriage with its destruction or avoidance—couples living as if married when not, couples divorcing, and all the other unseemly things people do to “sin against their own bodies” (1-Cor 7), as Paul says. Grinding the 6th Commandment to dust. He redeems us also from each and every other sin and evil desire that flows from our hearts and mouths and hands. For all your sins, Christ goes to death to forgive and redeem you.

(5. Consequence: Blessed bread and wine are Christ’s body and blood that we might be true members of His body, the Church, living in faith toward God and love toward one another.)

And you are made “bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh” (Eph 5) by being brought into “one body by the Spirit” (1-Cor 12) in Holy Baptism. Plain water made good by God’s Word and Promise. So also simple bread and wine are blessed to be Christ’s body and blood by His own words. (The holiest and best words of the whole divine Service!) Received in faith Calvary’s forgiveness is delivered in this ordinary sign/sacrament.

Received in faith in strengthens us to be “members of His body” (Eph 5) by “partaking of the one bread” of Christ’s flesh we are “one body” (1-Cor 10)—one blood also by the chalice of Christ’s blood. Strengthen by this Sacrament in faith and love, “we no longer live for ourselves but for him who died and rose for us.” (2-Cor 9) Communion enlivens you for this as “we carry this treasure in earthen vessels” (2-Cor) And so Communion gives forgiveness and life to those who receive with true Spirit-worked faith and repentance, and prepares all the faithful for the resurrection unto the Marriage Feast of the Lamb in His kingdom which has no end. (All with just blessed bread and wine…)

CHRIST TAKES WHAT IS PLAIN AND MAKES IT GOOD. He does this to shame the wise and strong. Christ took what was plain at Cana water and made it good—good wine. So He created from plain water and word in the beginning, even a man from dust and woman from a rib. And by His ignominious death He saved a bride to make her glorious. CHRIST TAKES WHAT IS PLAIN AND MAKES IT GOOD. Even water to cleanse your conscience, even bread and wine to be His body and blood—both water and wine for your forgiveness, life, and salvation.

᛭ INI ᛭