Water to Wine to Worship

IntroductionWe are in the gospel of John, the story of amazing love. This story is structured around seven signs.Now notice the book of John doesn’t call them miracles, but rather signs. Why were they called signs? Because Jesus’ miracles were not just bare, naked exercises in supernatural power, they were commercials, supernatural commercials. They were commercials advertising the truth of who Jesus was.Jesus presumably performed hundreds of miracles in his ministry but the book of John hand-selects just seven signs for this reason:Well today we come to the first miracle. Everything we have read in chapter one is preparing us. If you think about how chapter 1 is structured, it’s building all sorts of suspense and tension.That suspense and tension is created by on the one hand revealing these declarations of power that make your eyes water. In the beginning was the Word. And you remember in verse 14 we are told that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So, the Word is Jesus. So, we’ll just read these opening verses with that substitution.So, the opening lines tells us that galaxies, supernova, black holes, the raw elements of the universe, DNA, subatomic structures, the human brain, the human emotions, the human race were all created by Jesus. Not by him, not through him, but IN HIM was life.So, John begins with the eternal non-beginning of a non-created God who existed outside of pre-created space, infinite in power, wisdom and holiness. He’s giving us frightening views into the omnipotent. That kind of power is like a hurricane that tears at the untouched corners of our imagination. So that’s creating tension in this direction.But then there’s this pull in the opposite direction. We are finally introduced to this omnipotent Word-Messiah but everything we read about Him is underwhelming. His herald is a humble man in the desert, dressed in camel skins eating grasshoppers, baptizing people in the Jordan River. When John does identify the omnipotent Word become flesh, he’s just undergone a 40-day fast and undoubtedly looks like a skeleton with skin on him. John introduces him not as the Lion of Judah but as the Lamb of God, this sacrificial animal destined to end up dead on an altar. Two disciples follow him.He collects a few more and then chapter one closes.Now if this were a fictional story, it would be a tremendous work because you have all this tension, this provocative dramatic irony. In literature, dramatic irony is where we as readers know who a character is but those in the story do not. If you know the story of Homer’s Odyssey, it’s the same tension we experience when we read of Odysseus disguised as a beggar. It’s the same kind of tension we experience when you watch superman. The world thinks this is just a bumbling fool, but we know what happens when Clark Kent takes off those glasses. That’s dramatic irony.This is a story just like that with two significant differences: the dramatic irony is greater, and the story is true. So, when we get to John chapter 2 we are just bent over with anticipation of how Jesus is going to reveal to that first century context who he is.How is he going to show the world his power and demonstrate that this poor Galilean from the backwaters of Nazareth is in fact God come in the flesh? Is he going to call down fire from heaven? Is he going to part the Mediterranean Sea? Is he going to cause the sun to stand still in the sky? Men in the Old Testament did all those things. Jesus must be prepared to do something even greater than that!By what means will he reveal himself?The answer is shocking. His debut miracle happens in the back kitchen in the presence of a half dozen or so witnesses where he turns water to wine. His debut miracle is a solution to a mere social oversight. What you have here is not a very big deal.Now it’s not a very big deal in terms of the public splash that is made. But it is a big deal in terms of what it says about Jesus. Let’s jump in here and take a look at what we can learn about Jesus and what he wants us to believe. We will first just tell the story and then we’ll pull out 3 points of application.The Glory of GodWe are told there is a wedding in Cana. Weddings in almost every culture are big events. Lots of effort goes into the planning, organizing, formalizing. And it all makes sense. You look forward to this one day your entire life and for the majority of people it only happen once. So, getting it right, making it special, pulling out all the stops is important. In the Jewish culture of the first century, it was the same, even more important to them than it is to us. Joy in the OT is a result of having children, and children happen in the context of marriage and a wedding makes all of that possible. This multi-day event was cause for celebration.And so, the days of celebration were designed to free the attendants from the cares of life so they could join in celebration. In a culture that was largely hand to mouth, food and drink were always being rationed, a wedding was the one place where you could eat to your fill, drink without that constant nagging fear that you were stealing tomorrow’s portion.But we discover that part way through the evening’s celebration the wine runs out. The reason it ran out could have been any number of things. Maybe the groom was poor and couldn’t afford much wine? Maybe in preparation one jar fell and they lost it and couldn’t get more. Maybe it was poor planning?Who knows? But for whatever reason, they ran out. This would have been a social embarrassment of significant proportion.Now we all understand the idea of this kind of mistake. Imagine having a special Thanksgiving family reunion and people are flying in from all over the place. You have all the tables set, the candles are lit, the music is playing softly, and everything is ready, and you go to pull the turkey out of the oven and you realize that the oven breaker blew and your turkey is stone cold frozen.That would be kind of awkward. We could understand those feelings. As much as that would be an embarrassment to us, Middle Eastern cultures, even today, are much more concerned about hospitality than even we are. It is not just an embarrassment, but it nears an insult to not be properly cared for as a guest. There is some evidence that a groom could be sued for this kind of negligence.Now we are not told who the bride and groom are but apparently Mary was either directly involved with the catering of the event or she volunteers to takes some personal responsibility for the lack of wine. So, she turns to Jesus and informs him of the problem.“Jesus, we don’t have any wine.”Now what she expected Jesus to do at this point is a subject of nagging curiosity in my mind and it’s impossible to know for sure. Was she simply passing on the news? Okay. Are you just informing me? Maybe in the same way we would report a notable thing that happened on Sunday morning? Did you hear that the pipes burst in the men’s bathroom? There’s not an expectation to do anything about it. Or is there a bit of implication in the statement? If I say to my kids, “Looks like the garbage hasn’t been taken out.” That’s not just a statement of fact. Yes, I’m trying to guilt all parties present. I’m implying that they ought to do something about it. Or further still was she straight up expecting him to do a miracle?The text says very explicitly at the end that this was Jesus’ first miracle. So, Mary didn’t have firsthand experience with an undisclosed bag of tricks. The most likely explanation is that Mary very simply had become accustom to relying on Jesus’ resourcefulness and was simply asking for help on a normal human level.Something like, Jesus, we ran out of wine. Do you have any ideas how we can get some more? And she perhaps asked him the same way you or I would have asked someone we trusted.Jesus’ response is not what anyone would have expected and creates even more confusion.This response of Jesus is perplexing on so many levels. It’s hard to translate this exactly. To our ears this is sharply offensive. It lands on our ears partly correct and partly incorrect. So, here’s a couple things to say about the phrase. This is certainly not the way a son would normally address a mother he loved. That’s for sure. It’s awkwardly formal. But it’s also true that for Jesus to address his mom as woman is not offensive either. If my son said to my wife, “Woman, make me lunch,” he’d be finding a new home. It doesn’t have that kind of negative meaning. Probably the closest sense is something like ‘ma’am.’ It’s respectful but he’s very deliberately avoiding the word mom. He’s avoiding mother.If we translated it very literally, it might be something like what ma’am means to me and to you. It’s an idiom and it’s designed to distance the two parties. The tone is not rude but it abrupt. In other words, what do we have in common (so far as the wine problem is concerned)?Now if that is not difficult enough to understand, Jesus smears an already-fogged windshield by saying, “My hour has not yet come.” What do you make of this? It seems like he is saying, “Ma’am, don’t expect me to do a miracle because my hour has not yet come.” In other words, “I can’t fix this problem because my miracle working ministry has not yet begun.”But that’s a strange response because 10 minutes later he does a miracle. So, I’m not sure that the phrase, “My hour has not yet come” can mean, “my hour of miracle working power has not begun.”Here’s the other, even more compelling, reason I don’t think it works. This phrase, “My hour has not yet come” becomes kind of a technical phrase in the book of John. Besides, it’s used 6 other times and every other time it clearly refers to his death.For example, in chapter 7, they sought to arrest him, but his hour had not yet come. In 8:20 same thing. They try to arrest him, but his hour had not yet come. In 12:23 he speaks of the hour for the son to be glorified and then he talks about the grain of wheat going into the ground to die. All the examples are just like this.So what hour is he referring to? The hour of his death. To make it mean anything other than that would be awfully strange and forced. But how in the world is this an answer to Mary’s question?Jesus, we are out of wine. “Ma’am, you’re not understanding the relationship between us. The hour of my death has not yet come.” What kind of response is that? Who said anything about dying? I was just wondering if Walgreen’s carried wine.And Mary, perhaps surprised, off balance, slightly injured, who has learned to totally and completely surrender her will to His responds, “Do whatever he says.” Mary is able to shake off the gentle rebuke and returns to simple faith.Jesus knows what he is about to do and while that sentence does not make sense to Mary now, ten minutes later it will make much more sense and 3 1/2 years later it will make all the sense in the world. In ten minutes, Mary will know that Jesus has started his public ministry and she will understand that they will never be able to relate in the same way. When Simeon in the temple prophesied, he said, and a sword will pierce your heart, this was certainly part of what he meant. But it’s such a gracious way to convey that message.These kind of stone jars would have been expensive. How do I know? Well, you try carving a jar out of solid rock. Perhaps they were borrowed for the feast.The stone jars were significant because according to the Mishna they would not absorb impurities. If it was a ceramic jar and if a mouse fell in and died, then you’d have to shatter the vase, but if it was a stone jar, all you’d have to do is replace the water.And they were fixtures in the wedding as part of a ritual purification process. Imagine walking into the wedding, you dip a cup in, wash your hands and then you’re good to go. That’s why these were here.Jesus says, fill them to the top. So, the servants go draw water from a nearby cistern and you can imagine them saying to themselves, what is he doing? Why are we filling these pots? They know there is a wine problem and he’s asking us to fill the jars with water. And he’s doing it unapologetically; authoritatively even.Now keep in mind his newly minted disciples are right there. And without a doubt, these disciples have their guard up. They’ve only been hanging out for less than a week. How much do you trust a guy who you’ve only known for a week? There are any number of things Jesus could do at this point that would be deal breakers. I mean, the disciples here are just as curious, skeptical, weirded out as everyone else is.The master of the feast was usually a family member but could even be a hired guy who functioned kind of like a DJ or an MC functions in our weddings. He’s probably gregarious, spontaneous, a fun personality. He’s the life of the party. And presumably the master of the feast, wants to say a blessing (kind of like a toast), and has asked for more wine and a servant runs to go fetch it.Now let’s just imagine this moment from the point of view of the servant carrying the glass. You are the servant.You head back to the kitchen and there’s no wine. And you can’t believe it. How could there be none left? And the master of the feast is just waiting for you; it’s starting to get awkward. And so, if we put this in modern terms, you watch one of the kitchen helpers take a bottle of Aquafina, open it up and pour it into the cup and hand it to you and say, this will have to do. And so, you are walking up in total embarrassment but what is your option? You are hoping he will be able to do the toast, pretend like it’s white wine, and then somehow hide his reaction when he tastes it and discovers it’s just water!That’s what this servant is doing. He himself drew the water. He knows what’s in those jars. He pulled it out of the well with his own hands.Now what would you do if you handed the master of the feast that glass? If you knew what was in that glass, your eyes would be fixed on the eyes of the master of ceremonies. You’d be noticing every non-verbal cue. You’d be just wincing as you waited for that look of surprise and disappointment. You’d be preparing yourself for shouts of displeasure.When a recipe calls for sugar and you accidentally add salt. The reaction of disgust is totally uncontrollable. You just spit it out in disgust. If you are expecting wine and then it’s water, you’d get some reaction for sure. You’d look into the glass; you’d be smacking your lips. What is this? I asked for wine. But instead, his eyes light up. He did get a surprise. He was expecting average wine and he got superb wine. You know that look of delighted surprise in the eyes. You can’t hide it. And the steward is just bewildered.Are you serious? How could he possibly be reacting like that? Is he just covering? Man, he’s good. But then he does something you just can’t explain. He gathers everyone around and makes this speech about how great the wine is. Ladies and Gentlemen, what a bride! What a groom! Most people start with $200 bottles and work down to the $9 dollar bottles. I’ve never been to a wedding where halfway through they break out the $1000 bottles. This is unbelievable wine. Thank you, bride and groom, for your generosity!"If he were just covering, he certainly would not have called everyone together to make a big deal of it. Now that he’s drawn attention to it, everyone is going to make a run for the good wine. What just happened? I literally saw the guy pour water out of an Aquafina bottle.And so, you run back to the vats of water that you had just poured and sure enough you draw out a glass and it’s robust, rich, powerful wine - the best you’ve ever tasted.Now I want to spend just a moment thinking about what this miracle says about Jesus. Because if we don’t think about it, we are going to miss the point.The Glory of God ManifestedTo get at this, let me ask you this question. Why did Jesus primarily come to earth? If we answer that question instinctively, we will answer too simplistically. Our instinctive response is “Why of course, he came to die. He came to solve the sin problem.”Now that’s true and there could be no doctrine I love more than that of the doctrine of redemption. That being said, the answer the Bible gives is more expansive than that. Jesus came to earth to show us his glory. Solving the sin problem was just one aspect of exposing his glorious nature.If you think about the life of Christ, his ministry for three years had nothing to do with his death. If he came simply to die, what was he doing for those three years? Jesus doesn’t even mention his death until 6 months before it happens. Jesus does come to die but it’s a subset of a much greater purpose.The miracle ends by saying this was Jesus’ first miracle - designed to manifest his glory.Let’s meditate on how significant this is. When Moses said, “I pray, show me your glory” (Ex. 33:18) how did God respond?God said, “You cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live” (Ex. 33:20). So apparently the glory of the Lord cannot be seen.And yet John says, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (Jn. 1:18, 1:14). Jesus will say in chapter 14, he who has seen me has seen the Father.This miracle was the first sign that manifested his glory.Really, this is the miracle which displays the glory of God? How? What does the water to wine miracle teach us about experiencing the glory of God?Let’s think about it.God gets glory when we ask for help.I love the delicacy of this point. It’s so nuanced and so important to get it right. Mary approached Jesus and told Him, “Jesus the wine has run out.” When she did so she received a mild rebuke. What are we to make of that? That Jesus does not want us asking? That our relationship with him is not such that we should ask? Not at all.We have in this passage the beautiful asking of Mary. Jesus we are out of wine. The fact that she felt comfortable asking that says so much. Jesus the creator of all things, cares about a mundane detail like this? What a beautiful thing.Imagine what it would be like to be the president of the United States and you are headed off first to a meeting to sign a nuclear arms treaty with Iran and then after that you are headed off to sign a trade agreement with China that will affect the flow of billions of dollars of imported goods and then after that you are headed to make a speech to 100,000 people for the state of the union address.Right before you head out the door your 4-year-old daughter comes up to you and says, “Daddy, I can’t find my stuffed unicorn.”As a president you’ve got bigger fish to fry. As a daddy those fish can all wait. He stops because he cares. He cares about the details of his daughter’s life. That unicorn is important to her. And while of course the unicorn is nothing compared to the larger things he has to manage, because he loves her in a special way, because it’s important to her, it’s important to him.Jesus loves for us to ask about things that are important to us. Would he rather we ask someone else? He loves it when we ask.But there is a wrong way to ask. There can be wrong, even playfully innocent wrong ways in which we ask, incorrectly. I think that’s what’s going on here. Mary is not to be faulted but she does need corrected. There can be a way in which the ignorance of the asker needs to be informed.Many of you were at the Christmas Tree lighting event we had this year. So, here’s kind of a funny story. We have a few hundred people outside all waiting for the lights to turn on. Now we had designed it so that the lights could all be turned on from a phone. And my phone had the app on it. So here we are doing this chanting countdown. 10,9,8… I’ve got my finger hovering over the button….3,2,1… And literally when it hit one my dad calls me. Of course, he had no idea. But it really wasn’t a good time to call. Had he known, he would have never called. But how could he have known?In a similar way, Mary was asking for help with the wine. But she had no idea what’s going on. She had no idea. The God of the Universe was about to Manifest his glory for the first time in history. The God of the universe was about to fulfill the long-awaited prophecies given to generations who lived and died waiting for his advent. The Word of Power was about to manifest the glory of sovereignty over even the atomic elements of water.She was just asking if Walgreens sold wine. She would get what she asked for, but it would be in a way that would totally and completely blow her mind.God wants us to ask, but he also wants us to be open to being redirected. We pray, God, get me out of this situation. It’s so uncomfortable. God wants us to ask. But we need to be prepared for him to say, “You have no idea what’s going on here. No idea. Hang tight.”Why this for Jesus’ first miracle? And particularly, answer for me this: why did he choose something so frivolous? I looked up the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold, and it sold for $558,000 dollars. That’s expensive. If someone bought me that bottle of wine, I’d be flat out furious. That money is precious. I’d rather pay off my mortgage with that money. I’d rather buy a new car. I’d rather pay for my kids’ college. Why utterly waste it on something that is gone in just minutes?And a similar question could be raised here. Jesus, with all the needs in the world, the lepers, the people dying, the cripples, why waste your miracle-working power on wine? Couldn’t these guys sacrifice a little social embarrassment to free you up to do the real work of ministry?Ahh, but this teaches us something so important. Let’s not miss it. It’s so important. What is the real work of ministry?Yes, helping the poor is important. Yes, preaching the gospel is important. Yes, solving the world’s problems is important: the climate problem, environmental problems, social problems, economic problems, racial problems. All super important. But what happens if suddenly you find one day that they’ve all been fixed? What then? Does life cease to have meaning if there are no problems to solve? What’s the purpose of life then?Run your mind back to the first question in the Westminster catechism. What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever.To enjoy God is to enjoy his gifts, to celebrate life as if it were a wedding day. To enjoy all his gifts the way he intended it, ah! Friends, this is the glory of God.God gives us good gifts to enjoy. He does.What does that mean to taste? It means to experience it. It’s the difference between having a rational belief that honey is sweet and having the actual sense of its sweetness.If a man born blind asks, “What is the difference between green and red? Is it like the difference between the voice of man compared to the voice of a woman?” What’s the answer? "You’d say, well, kind of but…unfortunately the answer is no. You just have to experience it.What Jesus is offering us is the chance to experience God through his gifts. We see that this is his intent merely by the way the miracle is done. Look at the way Jesus provides for the need.Let me ask you this, who is supposed to be the focus of a wedding? The bride. It’s her day. And it’s so like Jesus to provide for this need, to care for the detail, but to do in such a way as to not detract from the bride. It demonstrates care, propriety, balance, appropriateness, modesty, restraint. It’s all so beautiful.Jesus wanted them to enjoy the wine in the context of the wedding and not steal the show. He would get his glory, yes, but it would be through the enjoyment of his gifts. You see God is interested in the flourishing of our whole person - our physical, mental, spiritual, social well-being. He gets glory when we flourish. It’s a beautiful reality that our joy and God’s glory are not at odds with one another.Now, I want to come back to the strangeness of Jesus’ response to Mary. Mary says to Jesus, we have run out of wine. And Jesus says, the hour of my death has not yet come.What kind of response is that? What’s behind that? Jesus often is looking behind the obvious physical thing to a deeper spiritual reality. When the disciples run off to go get food, Jesus says, I have food you don’t know about. And they are thinking, did he hide a lunch somewhere? No, you bonehead, he’s going about his father’s work. That’s his food.So when Mary says, you need to provide us with wine, with life, with the fruit of the vine, Jesus in his characteristic manner, runs that request out to its conclusion. Yes, he’s going to say in John 10, I came that you might have life and have it abundantly. I am the true vine.What did wine represent in the Ancient Near Eastern culture? It was the ultimate symbol of life. Everything pleasant in life came from the vine. Wine represented life.But for him to really provide that life he’s going to have to die. He’s going to have to look into a cup, not of wine but of the father’s wrath. He’s going to have to swallow that down to the last bitter dregs.On that last supper, that upper room Passover meal, he’s going to lift up the cup, the fruit of the vine and what is he going to say? “This is by blood, given for you.”To give you life, I’m going to have to give my life. Yes, I can and will fix this temporary problem of wine at a wedding but there’s an ultimate problem that awaits. And in beginning his public ministry, it was the beginning of the end. He set in motion wheels that could not be unturned.And this is what we are remembering today in communion.CommunionIn Christianity, we are invited to a feast of life. But that feast of abundant life, everlasting life, qualitatively beautiful life came at the price of the son of life.Yes, the price was high, but the gift is to be enjoyed and celebrated! As Christians we are not invited to obey a set of rules. We are invited to a feast. We are invited to not just know about the goodness and holiness and power of God but to experience the loveliness and the beauty and the kindness of it and the gloriousness of those things.I hear people all the time reject Christianity because they want to have fun. I can hear Jesus’ response. I almost don’t care if you reject me, but if you do so, please do it intelligently. You don’t even know what you’re rejecting. Do you dare say to me, ‘I reject Christianity because I want to have fun’? You don’t even know who I am. You don’t even know what you’ve rejected. I am Lord of the feast. I come to make the world run with wine. You don’t even know. There are reasons to reject me, but this is not one of them.Jesus Christ says the kingdom of God is a banquet. “I am Lord of the feast. I come to bring festival joy. Where my face turns, the trees laugh and sing for joy. Where my feet pass, the desert blooms. Where I raise my royal scepter there is inevitably, inexorably, inescapably joy.” He says the kingdom of God is about festival joy.