Sermon Tone Analysis

*Wedding at Cana*

\\ John 2:1-12

 

June 15, 2008

 

 

The German composer Johannes Brahms was invited to the home of a great wine connoisseur for dinner.

After dinner, the connoisseur had some of his choicest bottles brought up from the cellar.

He dusted off one cherished and well-aged bottle and carefully dispensed a few ounces into the composer's glass.

"I want you to know," the host said as he poured, "that this is the finest bottle I own."

Brahms lifted the glass to the light, examined its clarity, inhaled the bouquet, then took a sip.

The connoisseur waited for Brahms' comment — but Brahms set the glass down without a word.

"That wine is the Brahms of my cellar," the host added, intending to compliment both the wine and his distinguished guest.

"How do you like it?"

"You'd better bring out your Beethoven," Brahms replied.

As we open chapter 2 of John's gospel, we find the well-known event when Jesus took ordinary well-water and miraculously transformed it into wine — and not just any old wine, but a wine worthy to be called the Brahms, Beethoven, and Bach of anyone's cellar!

As famous as this story is, there are new depths of meaning in this story that we can apply to our lives today.

Please turn in your Bible to John, chapter 2 and we’ll read from verse 1 through to 12: /On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; and both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding.

When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said~* to Him, "They have no wine."

And Jesus said~* to her, "Woman, what does that have to do with us?

My hour has not yet come."

His mother said~* to the servants, "Whatever He says to you, do it."

Now there were six stone waterpots set there for the Jewish custom of purification, containing twenty or thirty gallons each.

Jesus said~* to them, "Fill the waterpots with water."

So they filled them up to the brim.

And He said~* to them, "Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter."

So they took it to him.

When the headwaiter tasted the water which had become wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called~* the bridegroom, and said~* to him, "Every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely, then he serves the poorer wine; but you have kept the good wine until now."

This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.

After this He went down to Capernaum, He and His mother and His brothers and His disciples; and they stayed there a few days./

Thus begins the story of the first miracle of Jesus.

The scene has shifted from Judea, where John the Baptist was baptizing in the river Jordan, to the town of Cana, seventy miles north, in the region of Galilee.

Jesus and His disciples have walked this entire distance with Jesus’ mother Mary, to attend a wedding feast..

John begins his account of this miracle with the words, "On the third day . . .

."

It is rather significant that John mentions the "third day."

John is referring, of course, to the third day after Jesus left Judea.

It was a two-day walk to Galilee, and they would have arrived on the morning of the third day.

John made particular mention of the third day because it had symbolic meaning.

Remember that John the apostle wrote his gospel much later than the other gospels were written — some thirty or forty years after these events took place.

By then he had opportunity to review the events that he and the other gospel writers had been teaching and preaching about for all those years and to select from his memories those things that were the most significant or those things not mentioned in the other gospel writings.

John’s content is 92% unique.

There is a great economy of language in John's writing, and we can be sure that if he includes a fact or detail in his gospel, he does so for a reason.

John's reference to the third day is not literal.

It alludes to the three days between the crucifixion and the resurrection.

Even in the prophetic Scriptures of the Old Testament there is a reference to the third day as the day Israel would be spiritually healed and returned to her Lord.*

*Here, then, is the first hint of the significance of the first miracle — the miracle when Jesus changed water into wine.

It was to be a miracle of transformation, a miracle of new life.

The occasion of this miracle was a wedding — a Middle Eastern wedding.

Weddings in the Middle East are very different from our Western affairs.

In Western weddings, the bride is the prominent figure.

When she enters, clad in all her glory, the whole congregation stands and the organ thunders, "Here comes the bride" and every eye is focused on her.

But in Middle Eastern weddings, the theme is, Here Comes the Groom!

The groom is the featured attraction, and the bride merely shows up for the wedding.

Not only is the groom the featured person, but he also pays for the whole affair!

(As the father of three daughters, I have been trying to introduce that custom into our culture, but it has not taken hold yet!)

Some Middle Eastern weddings go on for two or three days, or even a week, and the relatives on both sides of the family join together for a big, long, loud — and expensive!

— celebration.

That is the kind of wedding John is talking about here.

As Mary figures rather prominently in this story, it may well be that this was the wedding of one of Jesus' younger brothers or sisters.

It may have even caused a bit of a complication when Jesus showed up at the wedding with five disciples who weren't on the guest list!

He had just called these men to himself, and they had then walked two days from Judea.

Obviously, Jesus had no way to phone or fax word that He was bringing a few friends to the party.

So they just showed up.

As is usually true in the culture of the Middle East, no one seems to mind a few extra guests.

Hospitality is a cardinal virtue in that society, and people are always willing to put a little more water in the wine and see that any unexpected guests are well cared for.

So the disciples arrived with Jesus as unexpected — but welcome — guests.

That explains, of course, why the wine ran out.

A two- or three-day celebration calls for a fair amount of wine, and five or six extra people can put a strain on the supply.

Mary seized the occasion to say — very significantly!

— to her son Jesus, "They have no wine."

She does not ask Him to do anything about it.

She simply informs Him that the wine has run out.

Some Bible scholars suggest that what she meant is that Jesus and His disciples ought to leave.

In other words, Mary may have been hinting that the disciples were unwanted additions to the marriage feast, that they had strained the hospitality of their hosts and ought to leave.

Others say that Mary did not expect any miracle at this time because Jesus had never done any miracles before.

And that, of course, is quite true.

There are apocryphal gospels (that is, fanciful accounts of Jesus' life which were not accepted into the canon of Scripture, and with good reason) and some of these apocryphal gospels speak of Jesus doing miracles as a boy.

In one story, for example, the boy Jesus and His friends were making toy pigeons out of clay.

But when Jesus finished His pigeons and waved His hands, they flew off into the sky.

There is no question that this and other such apocryphal stories are pure fantasy, for John clearly says, in verse 11, that this is the first miracle Jesus performed.

However, as other Bible scholars imply, this account demonstrates that Mary expected Jesus to do /something /to help.

Personally, I believe she did in fact expect Him to do something startling and supernatural.

Certainly, by this time, Mary's expectations of Jesus had been greatly awakened.

She had probably been told of what happened in Judea — how Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, how the heavens opened and a dove lighted on Jesus' head, and how a voice uttered those remarkable words, "This is my beloved Son." (Jn 1:32 & Matt 3:17) She remembered the promises that were given to her by an angel, when she was told that her son would be the Messiah.(Luke

1:26-38)

If you had been a guest at the wedding in Cana, do you think you would have known what was going on?

Would you have had the eyes and the heart to see?

Or would it have been just another wedding?

Not that weddings were drab affairs.

A wedding was a significant event, just as it is today, especially if you are the parents of the bride and you are paying all or most of the tab.

Take my word for it: there are no inexpensive weddings.

Many have tried.

It cannot be done.

But don't feel sorry for yourself about the high cost of modern weddings.

The wedding in Cana must have been far worse on somebody's checking account.

This wedding in Cana probably lasted seven days.

Seven days of eating and drinking.

Think of what that must have meant to a peasant farmer whose daily fare consisted of some bread, olive oil, cheese and water because that's all he could afford.

It must have taken that poor guy years and years of sacrifice and savings to put on a wedding, because a wedding was a time when there was meat and food for a week.

A wedding was a time of feasting.

The dull, drab diet of bread and cheese was replaced this week with a banquet of meat -- and wine.

But every wedding has a crisis.

It's got to, or it wouldn't be a wedding.

One father writes, “In my daughter's wedding -- scheduled in a non-air-conditioned seminary chapel in upstate New York because summer is delightful in Rochester -- the temperature hit 104 degrees on our big weekend.