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5. The Miracle at Cana
When a wedding runs out of wine, Jesus performs a sign that points to more than just a wedding toast.
Encounters with Jesus
5. The Miracle At Cana Dan Bidwell, Senior Pastor John 2:1-11 Sunday 15 May 2022
A few years ago when I was teaching in Africa, in Rwanda, I was invited to a wedding. I didn’t know the bride or the groom – the bride was the sister of the CEO of the aid agency I was working with. He invited me and the other lecturers to the wedding and to the reception.
Now I don’t know how it works here, but every other wedding I’ve been invited to, you get a special invitation in the mail, and it has your name on it, and you have to RSVP by a certain date. Sometimes you just get invited to the wedding, and not the reception. No matter what, it is the bride and groom who send out the invites.
Not so in Rwanda, apparently. The wedding is much more of a public affair. In fact, when we arrived at the church we found that it was actually 3 couples getting married all at the same time, literally on stage, all saying their vows in unison. This was completely normal, we were told.
And then we went to the wedding reception. Now we were a bit worried, because, you know, wedding receptions normally have seating charts, and catering, and we didn’t know anyone except our friend the CEO. Catering is also really expensive, and the kind of meal you normally get at a wedding reception would cost a week’s salary for the average Rwandan.
Turns out we didn’t need to worry. The reception venue was a large open-air hall, with a church band, and some wooden chairs placed around the outside. No tables, no place cards, no wedding favors... And no meal. Each guest had the cultural understanding that they would receive one bottle of soda, and one piece of wedding cake. And that’s how weddings work in Rwanda. That’s still a cost of about $2 per person – a whole day’s wage spent for each of the 200 or so guests who showed up.
Weddings. They’re a big deal, and they have been for a long time – that’s the setting for our Bible passage today. Jesus is invited to a wedding, and what he does becomes one of his most famous miracles, and perhaps the most misunderstood.
So why don’t we pray that God would help us to understand, as we open the Bible now. Will you pray with me?
1
Our heavenly Father, give us ears to hear and minds to understand what we read in the Bible this morning. Help us not just to see the miracle, but to see the reason behind it. Help us to encounter Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen
Well, we are in the middle of our sermon series called Encounters with God. It’s all about people who met Jesus, and how they were changed by the encounter.
Our encounter today takes place at a wedding. (v1)
1 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was
there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. (John 2:1-2)
Jesus is invited to a wedding. We don’t know whose wedding it was, but Jesus’ mother had been invited, and so had Jesus and his disciples. And that’s because weddings were a much more public affair than they are these days – a bit like the wedding I went to in Rwanda. A wedding wasn’t just a celebration for the bride and groom and their friends, it was a celebration for the whole town.
Pastor Tim Keller shares the reason why:
“The purpose of a marriage was not primarily the happiness of the two individuals but instead to bind the community together and to raise the next generation. In other words, the purpose of marriage was the good of the commonwealth. The bigger, the stronger, and the more numerous the families of a town, the better its economy, the greater the military security, the more everyone flourished. [...] Each wedding was a public feast for the whole town because marriage was about the whole community.” Tim Keller1
Ancient wedding feasts would go on sometimes for a week or more.
But this wedding had a problem – (v3) – the wine ran out, and from the sounds of it, the wine ran out early in the week-long feast.
I think when you host a party, that’s one of the biggest fears, isn’t it? Running out of food, running out of drinks. If you’re anything like my wife and I, you over-cater like mad, and then you stay up late worrying about it, so the day of the party you run to the store and pick up enough extra to feed an army. That said, we have been in situations where we were praying for loaves and fishes, because it didn’t feel like we would have enough...
Come back to the story. That worst fear came true for the groom and his bride. The wine had run out at their wedding feast. Perhaps they didn’t account for as many guests, perhaps their
1 Timothy Keller, Encounters with Jesus, p58-9
2
budget was tight. Whatever the reason, can you imagine the shame for that couple if this was how their wedding feast ended? Can you imagine what the people of their small town would say? In their shame and honor culture, this was a major problem...
Jesus’ mother hears about it, and she approaches Jesus. (v3)
3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” 4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. (John 2:3-4)
It’s a good question, isn’t it? Why does Jesus’ mother come to tell him about the wine? Why does she involve Jesus?
Well, remember our series is called Encounters with Jesus. Mary had had encounters with Jesus ever since his birth. In fact, even before his birth, Mary had been visited by the angel Gabriel who told her that her son would be the Son of the Most High, that he would be given the throne of David, that he would reign forever (Luke 2:32-33 paraphrase). Mary knew that Jesus was very special, and destined for greatness. She had watched him grow up, for thirty years, wondering when his hour would come... Could this be the moment?
Not yet, says Jesus: (v4)
4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.” (John 2:4)
BTW, some people think Jesus sounds a little harsh here, calling his mother ‘Woman.’ However according to ancient language experts, this doesn’t denote any disrespect. It’s just culturally different. But Jesus’ hour had not yet come. What did that mean? We’re going to come back to it in just a couple of minutes. But back to the story now...
Jesus’ mother wasn’t deterred. She gets hold of some of the wine servers – the servants. (v5) 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” (John 2:5)
Mary clearly expects Jesus to do something. Perhaps she has seen him do things before. Perhaps she had noticed that things just happened around Jesus as he was growing up. Or maybe they didn’t. Perhaps it was that Mary had been waiting thirty years for all those promises of the Lord to come true. And now she was seeing it – Jesus had been baptized just 3 days earlier by his cousin, Mary’s nephew, John the Baptist. John’s birth had been announced by angels just like Jesus – Mary had visited John’s mother Elizabeth when they were both pregnant and the babies had jumped inside their wombs. Now the cousins were back together again – was God on the move? Was something going to happen?
3
“Do whatever he tells you,” Mary told the servants. Well, Jesus does something. Reading from v6:
6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. 8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”
They did so, 9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew.
This is the miracle that is so well known. Jesus turns water into wine. Lots of wine.
I did the math, and using the measurement in v6, conservatively this is the equivalent of 120 to 180 gallons of wine, somewhere between 700 and 1000 bottles or maybe more.
And it is good wine.
Verse 9: the master of the banquet tastes the water that had been turned in to wine. He did not realize where it came from.
This master of the banquet, I guess he’s like the wedding planner. I assume he knew that they were running out of wine. I know we have some wedding planners in the room. It’s not good when something runs out at the wedding reception, is it, especially the wine? I imagine he sent the servants out in to the back room to see if there was more wine, hiding behind the smoked salmon. And they come back with these big jars of wine, and it tastes great.
In fact, it’s such good wine that he calls the bridegroom aside, and he says: (v10)
“Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” (John 2:10)
Now, remember we are looking at encounters with Jesus. The master of the banquet, he doesn’t really have an encounter with Jesus, does he? In v9 it says that he didn’t realize where the wine had come from. In v10, he assumes that the bridegroom had supplied the wine, and he congratulates him for his generosity in providing good wine when so many others would have brought out the cheap stuff.
So the master of the banquet doesn’t have an encounter with Jesus. Not at that moment, anyway. He just enjoys the unseen blessings that Jesus provides to the world. Jesus brings
4
unseen blessings to the world. And isn’t that true of so many people? Jesus said that God sends the rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. We all enjoy countless blessings that God pours out on us, whether we see them or not. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people recognized the blessings that God is pouring out on them?
So the banquet master didn’t have an encounter with Jesus, but the servants did. Did you notice that in v9? The servants who had drawn the water knew exactly what had happened. I imagine they went home and told everybody they knew about the man who had turned water into wine.
There is a kind of irony in the servants being the witnesses of Jesus’ first miracle. Servants are unseen, unimportant, uninfluential. And yet Jesus entrusts them with a secret that he is not yet willing to reveal to the world. His hour hadn’t come yet, as he said in v4.
It tells you something about Jesus’ character. Jesus identifies with servants more than he identifies with the powerful and influential. Rather than bringing glory to himself, in this first miracle he lifts up the lowly. He allows a bridegroom to retain his honor. He allows this bridegroom to enjoy his wedding.
And I think that’s the key to understanding this first miracle, or ‘sign’ that Jesus does.
Come back to that theme I spoke about earlier – honor and shame. The culture of the people in our Bible story, it was an honor and shame culture. In an honor and shame culture, honor is key. You do everything you can to bring honor to your family, your tribe, your village, your nation. If you do something that brings shame to yourself, then that shame reflects on your family, and brings shame to them.
The bridegroom in our story, he was at risk of bringing shame to himself, to his new bride, to his family and her family... It could have caused serious consequences for the man and his family, all because there wasn’t enough wine at their wedding.
But Jesus quietly makes the problem go away. He covers up the shame of the bridegroom, so that nobody ever knew that it was him who fixed the problem. Jesus selflessly allows this man to enjoy his wedding.2
At the surface level, this miracle could be seen as Jesus turning water into wine and allowing a party to continue.
2 In fact, instead of shame, the bridegroom receives honor because of the quality of the wine. His shame is turned into joy... Isaiah 61:7 Instead of your shame, you will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace, you will rejoice in your inheritance [...] and everlasting joy will be yours.
5
A Deeper Truth
But when we look at the clues hidden in the text, the miracle signifies something much deeper. It points to a deeper truth about the covering of shame that is core to Jesus’ mission.
The first clue is in v4, when Jesus says, “My hour has not yet come.”
I love it when you get to the end of a movie, and you realize that the writers have left you a trail of breadcrumbs throughout the film, little clues that suddenly make sense when you get to the ending.
Well in John’s gospel, this concept of ‘the hour’ comes up eight times. And when we get to the end of John, we understand that the hour is the hour of Jesus’ crucifixion. The hour of his death. An hour that many hoped would bring shame to Jesus and his followers. But Jesus says the hour of his crucifixion is also the hour of his glorification – the two concepts are inextricably linked.
So when Jesus says to his mother that his hour has not yet come, he’s saying that it’s not time for him to reveal the end game of his mission just yet...
But it doesn’t stop him from sharing the next clue, which his right there in v6. The jars that Jesus chooses to perform his miracle, they were the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing.
Every Jewish household would have had one of these jars in their home, set aside exclusively for the purpose of ceremonial washing. The idea behind ceremonial washing is that we do certain things in life that render us unclean before God – and ceremonial washing is all about washing away those stains, those sins, washing away the guilt.
But of course ceremonial washing can never truly wash away guilt. Shakespeare makes that point in Macbeth, when Lady Macbeth sends herself mad attempting to wash away the blood of Duncan, the King, who she has had assassinated. “Out, damned spot...” she famously says. The blood is physically washed away, of course, but metaphorically she can’t wash his blood from her hands.
And that’s true of all the things we’ve done that cause us guilt, and shame – both large and small. We can’t undo them on our own, even if we wanted to. Like Adam and Eve, we might try to hide from God or cover our shame with threadbare excuses, but deep down we know there is nothing we can do to atone, nothing can really make up for the wrong that we have done.
That’s why ceremonial washing was only one part of the Old Testament cleansing process. The sacrificial system ultimately culminated in the shedding of blood. God’s people would bring a
6
bull or a lamb or a goat to the temple, and its blood was poured out to represent the penalty of sin. Its blood was poured out instead of the blood of the guilty person.
But just like washing your hands can’t remove blood-guilt, nor can the sacrifice of an animal. As it says in Hebrews 10:4,
It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. (Hebrews 10:4)
The whole sacrificial system was a clue pointing towards the one true sacrifice – Jesus. Jesus whose hour would come, whose blood would be poured out for the forgiveness of sins, God himself covering our sin and shame by his blood.
And that brings us to the third clue. The wine. When we put together the clue about the cross, and the clue about being washed clean, it is easy to link the wine to Jesus’ blood. In just a little while, we’ll share communion together, which is a way of remembering Jesus’ blood poured out for us for the forgiveness of sins.
But that’s only one of the ways wine is symbolized in the Bible. I think Jesus has another image in his mind, which is from the book of Isaiah. It’s an image of heaven, and the eternal destiny for all who put their hope in God.
This is Isaiah 25 starting at v6:
6 On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
Heaven is pictured as a feast, a banquet, just like the wedding banquet that Jesus was at. In Isaiah, it’s the Lord who prepares the feast. In John 2, it’s Jesus who provides the finest of wine. There is a clear parallel between Jesus and the Lord. Jesus is the true banquet master, and he invites his people to the eternal feast.
And whatever shame we might carry, whatever guilt, whatever disgrace, the Bible is clear that Jesus can deal with that. That’s what the cross, and the blood was all about. Jesus will cover our guilt, and he will cover our shame so that we can join the banquet, and we can sit at the side of Jesus, unashamed, dining and feasting as part of his family, an invited guest, forever and ever.
Let me read you the next part of Isaiah 25, from v7 on:
7 On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
7
the sheet that covers all nations;
8
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth. The Lord has spoken.
God himself will remove our disgrace, when we put our trust in Jesus.
Jesus could have done a very public miracle, but instead he quietly showed his disciples what kind of savior he would be. A savior who washes us clean of our guilt, a savior who covers our shame, a savior who invites us to the banquet that lasts forever.
That’s what you get when you encounter Jesus at the wedding at Cana. Will you pray with me?
he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
8
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When a wedding runs out of wine, Jesus performs a sign that points to more than just a wedding toast.
Encounters with Jesus
5. The Miracle At Cana Dan Bidwell, Senior Pastor John 2:1-11 Sunday 15 May 2022
A few years ago when I was teaching in Africa, in Rwanda, I was invited to a wedding. I didn’t know the bride or the groom – the bride was the sister of the CEO of the aid agency I was working with. He invited me and the other lecturers to the wedding and to the reception.
Now I don’t know how it works here, but every other wedding I’ve been invited to, you get a special invitation in the mail, and it has your name on it, and you have to RSVP by a certain date. Sometimes you just get invited to the wedding, and not the reception. No matter what, it is the bride and groom who send out the invites.
Not so in Rwanda, apparently. The wedding is much more of a public affair. In fact, when we arrived at the church we found that it was actually 3 couples getting married all at the same time, literally on stage, all saying their vows in unison. This was completely normal, we were told.
And then we went to the wedding reception. Now we were a bit worried, because, you know, wedding receptions normally have seating charts, and catering, and we didn’t know anyone except our friend the CEO. Catering is also really expensive, and the kind of meal you normally get at a wedding reception would cost a week’s salary for the average Rwandan.
Turns out we didn’t need to worry. The reception venue was a large open-air hall, with a church band, and some wooden chairs placed around the outside. No tables, no place cards, no wedding favors... And no meal. Each guest had the cultural understanding that they would receive one bottle of soda, and one piece of wedding cake. And that’s how weddings work in Rwanda. That’s still a cost of about $2 per person – a whole day’s wage spent for each of the 200 or so guests who showed up.
Weddings. They’re a big deal, and they have been for a long time – that’s the setting for our Bible passage today. Jesus is invited to a wedding, and what he does becomes one of his most famous miracles, and perhaps the most misunderstood.
So why don’t we pray that God would help us to understand, as we open the Bible now. Will you pray with me?
1
Our heavenly Father, give us ears to hear and minds to understand what we read in the Bible this morning. Help us not just to see the miracle, but to see the reason behind it. Help us to encounter Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen
Well, we are in the middle of our sermon series called Encounters with God. It’s all about people who met Jesus, and how they were changed by the encounter.
Our encounter today takes place at a wedding. (v1)
1 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was
there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. (John 2:1-2)
Jesus is invited to a wedding. We don’t know whose wedding it was, but Jesus’ mother had been invited, and so had Jesus and his disciples. And that’s because weddings were a much more public affair than they are these days – a bit like the wedding I went to in Rwanda. A wedding wasn’t just a celebration for the bride and groom and their friends, it was a celebration for the whole town.
Pastor Tim Keller shares the reason why:
“The purpose of a marriage was not primarily the happiness of the two individuals but instead to bind the community together and to raise the next generation. In other words, the purpose of marriage was the good of the commonwealth. The bigger, the stronger, and the more numerous the families of a town, the better its economy, the greater the military security, the more everyone flourished. [...] Each wedding was a public feast for the whole town because marriage was about the whole community.” Tim Keller1
Ancient wedding feasts would go on sometimes for a week or more.
But this wedding had a problem – (v3) – the wine ran out, and from the sounds of it, the wine ran out early in the week-long feast.
I think when you host a party, that’s one of the biggest fears, isn’t it? Running out of food, running out of drinks. If you’re anything like my wife and I, you over-cater like mad, and then you stay up late worrying about it, so the day of the party you run to the store and pick up enough extra to feed an army. That said, we have been in situations where we were praying for loaves and fishes, because it didn’t feel like we would have enough...
Come back to the story. That worst fear came true for the groom and his bride. The wine had run out at their wedding feast. Perhaps they didn’t account for as many guests, perhaps their
1 Timothy Keller, Encounters with Jesus, p58-9
2
budget was tight. Whatever the reason, can you imagine the shame for that couple if this was how their wedding feast ended? Can you imagine what the people of their small town would say? In their shame and honor culture, this was a major problem...
Jesus’ mother hears about it, and she approaches Jesus. (v3)
3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” 4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. (John 2:3-4)
It’s a good question, isn’t it? Why does Jesus’ mother come to tell him about the wine? Why does she involve Jesus?
Well, remember our series is called Encounters with Jesus. Mary had had encounters with Jesus ever since his birth. In fact, even before his birth, Mary had been visited by the angel Gabriel who told her that her son would be the Son of the Most High, that he would be given the throne of David, that he would reign forever (Luke 2:32-33 paraphrase). Mary knew that Jesus was very special, and destined for greatness. She had watched him grow up, for thirty years, wondering when his hour would come... Could this be the moment?
Not yet, says Jesus: (v4)
4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.” (John 2:4)
BTW, some people think Jesus sounds a little harsh here, calling his mother ‘Woman.’ However according to ancient language experts, this doesn’t denote any disrespect. It’s just culturally different. But Jesus’ hour had not yet come. What did that mean? We’re going to come back to it in just a couple of minutes. But back to the story now...
Jesus’ mother wasn’t deterred. She gets hold of some of the wine servers – the servants. (v5) 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” (John 2:5)
Mary clearly expects Jesus to do something. Perhaps she has seen him do things before. Perhaps she had noticed that things just happened around Jesus as he was growing up. Or maybe they didn’t. Perhaps it was that Mary had been waiting thirty years for all those promises of the Lord to come true. And now she was seeing it – Jesus had been baptized just 3 days earlier by his cousin, Mary’s nephew, John the Baptist. John’s birth had been announced by angels just like Jesus – Mary had visited John’s mother Elizabeth when they were both pregnant and the babies had jumped inside their wombs. Now the cousins were back together again – was God on the move? Was something going to happen?
3
“Do whatever he tells you,” Mary told the servants. Well, Jesus does something. Reading from v6:
6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. 8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”
They did so, 9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew.
This is the miracle that is so well known. Jesus turns water into wine. Lots of wine.
I did the math, and using the measurement in v6, conservatively this is the equivalent of 120 to 180 gallons of wine, somewhere between 700 and 1000 bottles or maybe more.
And it is good wine.
Verse 9: the master of the banquet tastes the water that had been turned in to wine. He did not realize where it came from.
This master of the banquet, I guess he’s like the wedding planner. I assume he knew that they were running out of wine. I know we have some wedding planners in the room. It’s not good when something runs out at the wedding reception, is it, especially the wine? I imagine he sent the servants out in to the back room to see if there was more wine, hiding behind the smoked salmon. And they come back with these big jars of wine, and it tastes great.
In fact, it’s such good wine that he calls the bridegroom aside, and he says: (v10)
“Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” (John 2:10)
Now, remember we are looking at encounters with Jesus. The master of the banquet, he doesn’t really have an encounter with Jesus, does he? In v9 it says that he didn’t realize where the wine had come from. In v10, he assumes that the bridegroom had supplied the wine, and he congratulates him for his generosity in providing good wine when so many others would have brought out the cheap stuff.
So the master of the banquet doesn’t have an encounter with Jesus. Not at that moment, anyway. He just enjoys the unseen blessings that Jesus provides to the world. Jesus brings
4
unseen blessings to the world. And isn’t that true of so many people? Jesus said that God sends the rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. We all enjoy countless blessings that God pours out on us, whether we see them or not. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people recognized the blessings that God is pouring out on them?
So the banquet master didn’t have an encounter with Jesus, but the servants did. Did you notice that in v9? The servants who had drawn the water knew exactly what had happened. I imagine they went home and told everybody they knew about the man who had turned water into wine.
There is a kind of irony in the servants being the witnesses of Jesus’ first miracle. Servants are unseen, unimportant, uninfluential. And yet Jesus entrusts them with a secret that he is not yet willing to reveal to the world. His hour hadn’t come yet, as he said in v4.
It tells you something about Jesus’ character. Jesus identifies with servants more than he identifies with the powerful and influential. Rather than bringing glory to himself, in this first miracle he lifts up the lowly. He allows a bridegroom to retain his honor. He allows this bridegroom to enjoy his wedding.
And I think that’s the key to understanding this first miracle, or ‘sign’ that Jesus does.
Come back to that theme I spoke about earlier – honor and shame. The culture of the people in our Bible story, it was an honor and shame culture. In an honor and shame culture, honor is key. You do everything you can to bring honor to your family, your tribe, your village, your nation. If you do something that brings shame to yourself, then that shame reflects on your family, and brings shame to them.
The bridegroom in our story, he was at risk of bringing shame to himself, to his new bride, to his family and her family... It could have caused serious consequences for the man and his family, all because there wasn’t enough wine at their wedding.
But Jesus quietly makes the problem go away. He covers up the shame of the bridegroom, so that nobody ever knew that it was him who fixed the problem. Jesus selflessly allows this man to enjoy his wedding.2
At the surface level, this miracle could be seen as Jesus turning water into wine and allowing a party to continue.
2 In fact, instead of shame, the bridegroom receives honor because of the quality of the wine. His shame is turned into joy... Isaiah 61:7 Instead of your shame, you will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace, you will rejoice in your inheritance [...] and everlasting joy will be yours.
5
A Deeper Truth
But when we look at the clues hidden in the text, the miracle signifies something much deeper. It points to a deeper truth about the covering of shame that is core to Jesus’ mission.
The first clue is in v4, when Jesus says, “My hour has not yet come.”
I love it when you get to the end of a movie, and you realize that the writers have left you a trail of breadcrumbs throughout the film, little clues that suddenly make sense when you get to the ending.
Well in John’s gospel, this concept of ‘the hour’ comes up eight times. And when we get to the end of John, we understand that the hour is the hour of Jesus’ crucifixion. The hour of his death. An hour that many hoped would bring shame to Jesus and his followers. But Jesus says the hour of his crucifixion is also the hour of his glorification – the two concepts are inextricably linked.
So when Jesus says to his mother that his hour has not yet come, he’s saying that it’s not time for him to reveal the end game of his mission just yet...
But it doesn’t stop him from sharing the next clue, which his right there in v6. The jars that Jesus chooses to perform his miracle, they were the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing.
Every Jewish household would have had one of these jars in their home, set aside exclusively for the purpose of ceremonial washing. The idea behind ceremonial washing is that we do certain things in life that render us unclean before God – and ceremonial washing is all about washing away those stains, those sins, washing away the guilt.
But of course ceremonial washing can never truly wash away guilt. Shakespeare makes that point in Macbeth, when Lady Macbeth sends herself mad attempting to wash away the blood of Duncan, the King, who she has had assassinated. “Out, damned spot...” she famously says. The blood is physically washed away, of course, but metaphorically she can’t wash his blood from her hands.
And that’s true of all the things we’ve done that cause us guilt, and shame – both large and small. We can’t undo them on our own, even if we wanted to. Like Adam and Eve, we might try to hide from God or cover our shame with threadbare excuses, but deep down we know there is nothing we can do to atone, nothing can really make up for the wrong that we have done.
That’s why ceremonial washing was only one part of the Old Testament cleansing process. The sacrificial system ultimately culminated in the shedding of blood. God’s people would bring a
6
bull or a lamb or a goat to the temple, and its blood was poured out to represent the penalty of sin. Its blood was poured out instead of the blood of the guilty person.
But just like washing your hands can’t remove blood-guilt, nor can the sacrifice of an animal. As it says in Hebrews 10:4,
It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. (Hebrews 10:4)
The whole sacrificial system was a clue pointing towards the one true sacrifice – Jesus. Jesus whose hour would come, whose blood would be poured out for the forgiveness of sins, God himself covering our sin and shame by his blood.
And that brings us to the third clue. The wine. When we put together the clue about the cross, and the clue about being washed clean, it is easy to link the wine to Jesus’ blood. In just a little while, we’ll share communion together, which is a way of remembering Jesus’ blood poured out for us for the forgiveness of sins.
But that’s only one of the ways wine is symbolized in the Bible. I think Jesus has another image in his mind, which is from the book of Isaiah. It’s an image of heaven, and the eternal destiny for all who put their hope in God.
This is Isaiah 25 starting at v6:
6 On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
Heaven is pictured as a feast, a banquet, just like the wedding banquet that Jesus was at. In Isaiah, it’s the Lord who prepares the feast. In John 2, it’s Jesus who provides the finest of wine. There is a clear parallel between Jesus and the Lord. Jesus is the true banquet master, and he invites his people to the eternal feast.
And whatever shame we might carry, whatever guilt, whatever disgrace, the Bible is clear that Jesus can deal with that. That’s what the cross, and the blood was all about. Jesus will cover our guilt, and he will cover our shame so that we can join the banquet, and we can sit at the side of Jesus, unashamed, dining and feasting as part of his family, an invited guest, forever and ever.
Let me read you the next part of Isaiah 25, from v7 on:
7 On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
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the sheet that covers all nations;
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from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth. The Lord has spoken.
God himself will remove our disgrace, when we put our trust in Jesus.
Jesus could have done a very public miracle, but instead he quietly showed his disciples what kind of savior he would be. A savior who washes us clean of our guilt, a savior who covers our shame, a savior who invites us to the banquet that lasts forever.
That’s what you get when you encounter Jesus at the wedding at Cana. Will you pray with me?
he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
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