Sermon Transcript
On the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, They have no wine. And Jesus said to her, Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.
His mother said to the servants, Do whatever he tells you. Now, there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish Jewish rites of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons. Jesus said to the servants, Fill the jars with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.
So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew, the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.
This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him. After this, he went down to Capernaum with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days. One uh common thread throughout really all cultures for the whole history of the world, uh is how we celebrate with festival and feasting.
It uh transcends economic status, family of origin, tradition, religion, languages, every nation, tribe, and tongue marks uh significant moments or significant times of the year with joyous gatherings uh that look remarkably similar no matter the continent, um and almost no matter what the particular celebration is.
You know, in our country, I’d say the true uh US festival that is mostly unique to us, though we don’t want to forget Canada, is Thanksgiving. You know, that originated as a harvest celebration. Harvest celebrations have been common throughout the history of the world. But for Thanksgiving, uh many people, what do we do?
Travel long distances, gather with extended family, prepare an excessive amount of food, right? Sit around a table, maybe tell stories, express gratitude for one another in some way, even if it’s just a hug. You know, we demonstrate somehow we’re glad to be there. And then we eat leftovers for days.
There is an uh overwhelming amount of abundance. And abundance is part of the point. Like overflow is the objective. You know, at Thanksgiving, no one says, let’s prepare precisely enough food just to meet everyone’s uh caloric needs. We don’t We make a feast. It has a festival ring to it. Similar to maybe Lunar New Year, where families travel long distances to be together.
An extravagant meal is prepared. The table is filled with foods that symbolize abundance and blessing. Gifts are exchanged in in particular red envelopes, right? But in some way or another, there is an expression of gratitude for the start of another year. Like Thanksgiving, it’s warmth, it’s togetherness, it’s celebration, it’s so much food. It’s an overflow. It’s fat and calf imagery.
You know, bring out the best we have, the special stuff, the thing we’ve been saving. It’s a common thread for really all humans and not just for significant or not just for seasons of the year, but also for significant events. Maybe most notably or obviously at weddings, right? Which again, weddings look remarkably similar across cultures.
West African community uh communities, a wedding is not complete until the whole village eats. Rice is stirred in vast pots, whole animals are prepared. The food is not so much portioned as poured out because the joy of the couple belongs to everyone. You know, Indian weddings often involve multiple days celebration, numerous meals, lots of singing, dancing, music, communal celebration between the families, people wear special clothes.
The whole event is an expression of joy, in particular for the two people coming together, starting a new family, but then sharing that joy with the with the community. It’s like a festival. Um for weddings in other countries, you know, the magnitude may go up or down, but it generally looks very similar. You know, in like our country, right? Weddings use typically have an excessive amount of food.
People do it up as big as they can. There’s often dancing, always laughter, togetherness. This is what humans do. It seems we almost need to do it. We are drawn to it. Festival rings true with our souls. In fact, if we’ve been in a season without such a festival, if we haven’t gathered and laughed and eaten the best kind of foods in quite a while, you know, maybe last Christmas was a lonely Christmas and nothing as significant has happened since then. If we can’t remember the last time that we felt
connected to others in a joyous overflow. If we haven’t done that in a while, something in us starts to die. We need to celebrate something with someone, sometimes. We need the warmth, we need the connection, we need the overflow. We were made for that. God intends for us to have this kind of joyous festival. Um we we quasi have one after church today.
Stick around for it. Even if you didn’t bring food, stick around for it. We got plenty for you. But for now, we are in the fourth week of our series in the book of John, looking at Jesus’ many miracles. And we’ve said each week that Jesus’ miracles are not only a display of his power, nor were they only evidence of his divine claims, even though they were both those things.
They were also something else. They were something more. Jesus’ miracles help set right what has gone wrong. They’re little windows into the way that the world should be, and they’re little windows into the way the world will be when Jesus one day redeems everything. On some future day when the world is fully restored, there will be no need for miracles anymore because everything will be perfect.
Nothing will need to be set back right because everything will be right. And in the meantime, miracles give us a foretaste of that goodness to come. And today, we’re studying one of Jesus’ most famous miracles when he turns water into wine. You’ve heard of that one? You know, even if you’ve never been in church before, I wouldn’t be surprised if you knew something about it.
Uh one time I I I even saw an a magician do an illusion which he called water to wine. He mixed two different clear liquids together, and then those two liquids turned red. Hence, water to wine. Of course, it wasn’t really water, and it wasn’t really wine. It was probably both toxic chemicals that happened to turn red when you put them together.
But water to wine is in our vernacular. People might use it as an expression, perhaps really without knowing where it originated. Well, it originated at a wedding in a town called Cana about 30 AD when Jesus literally turned real water into real wine. Apparently, very good wine. And an excessive amount of it.
John records it was between 120 and 180 gallons of the best wine anybody at the wedding had ever tasted. Miraculous, you might say. Now, before we get into this, does that surprise you? When you think of significant religious figures, Buddha, Muhammad, Gandhi, Jesus, okay? Do you think of them as the guys who provide 150 gallons of wine for a wedding?
Do you think they have more important things to do? Would it maybe be beneath them? Well, Jesus did it. And on a deeper level, you know, the Christian understanding is that Jesus is God. So let me ask you this, when you think of God, do you think of him as bringing a truck full of the best wine anyone has ever had to a party?
Is that your image of God when you think of God? What are we to make of this? Especially if we grew up in maybe a religious setting that, we’ll say, was more strict. Maybe you grew up somewhere, you know, in a church context that was skeptical of parties in general. Maybe the message you inherited from being around those people, even if nobody said it, somehow you got the idea, in order to be a faithful saint, you need to be stoic with a frown on your face.
It’s the plot of Footloose, basically. No dancing, no fun of any kind. If it’s fun, God wouldn’t want you to do it. It must be wrong if it’s fun. Some of us might have grown up in that context. But then here comes Jesus, showing up at a wedding, providing all this wine when the guests had run out. It’s, whatever it is, it’s not the plot of Footloose.
That’s for sure. We know that immediately. But what does it tell us? The passage is dripping with symbolism. And as we work through it, we will see their problem is really humanity’s problem. The people at the wedding really mirror us. Then we will see what Jesus provides, which is more than just wine.
And finally, we’ll see the cost of providing it. Their problem’s humanity’s problem, what Jesus provides to fix that problem, and then the cost he paid to provide it. So first, their problem is humanity’s problem. It’s the wine ran out. Or we could say scarcity. Let’s start with their problem and then show how their problem lines up with ours.
Now, at first glance, we might be tempted to think, what’s the big deal that they ran out of wine? Who cares, really? You know, in the grand scheme of things, nobody’s physically hurt, nobody’s sick, no one’s impoverished. So why fix this? Especially, I mean, even if Jesus hadn’t provided it, they probably would have still had a pretty fine evening.
There was, there was food, undoubtedly, likely dancing. Everybody in the town gets to see everybody. Two people still got married. So, hooray, right? I mean, when Beth and I got married, our wedding had no wine because we couldn’t afford it, but it was still a nice time. So what’s the big deal if this wedding ran out?
You know, now some people might say, and it’s partially true, that in their culture, it would have been a big embarrassment for the host. A wedding ceremony just wasn’t between two individuals, it’s a community event, often lasting several days, like we might think of India, Africa, European countries.
You know, hospitality is enormously important to invite people to your home, probably where the wedding was, and then fail to provide for them. That was a serious social failure. They would, you know, they spent months preparing, and finally the event’s happening, and someone says, we ran out. And in an honor and shame culture, it would have felt devastating for them.
That’s true. So then people assume Jesus was helping them save face. But that’s not really what’s happening. It might be a side effect, but it’s not the main event. Like we said before, Jesus’ miracles are in some way to put the world a little bit back together. They are not to put someone’s pride back together.
That would be counterproductive, really. If this family had been trusting in their social standing to give them their sense of worth, and now that’s in jeopardy, it would not have ultimately been helpful to their souls if Jesus rescued them from their social faux pas. Jesus wants us to have a stronger sense of self than that.
He’s not going to help them double down on finding their meaning and significance in what other people think of them. I mean, if we live and breathe by what other people think of us, that’s a house of cards. It’s always going to fall. We’re always going to be devastated, or frequently will be. And Jesus isn’t going to help anyone build a house of cards.
That wouldn’t be loving. He’s not going to enable their unhealthy habits of where they find their meaning and significance. So something deeper here is going on. And we have a clue in this interchange between Jesus and his mother. Mary tells Jesus, they are out of wine. And Jesus says, what does that have to do with me?
My hour has not yet come. My hour has not yet come. Which at a minimum, and there’ll be more later, but at a minimum implies eventually his hour will come. Eventually, he will be the one on the hook for providing the wine. That day is not this day, but it will happen. What day is he alluding to? When is the time that he will be on the hook for providing the wine?
What is he talking about? Well, he’s thinking of his own wedding, when he is the groom and it is his responsibility to provide everything. Now, if you’re new to Christianity and Jesus’ wedding sounds strange, let’s clue you in. The biblical story, actually, one of the images, one of the very common images that we have in scripture between God and us and our relationship with him, is that God loves us, he loves his people like a groom loves his bride.
And so at the end of the biblical story, and we’ll dive deeper into this today, but at the end of the biblical story is a feast. It’s a wedding supper. It’s a celebration that God and us are together and there is an abundance of food. That’s the end of the story. That’s the restoration that Jesus will bring us into.
That’s what we’re made for. And it’s what we had at the beginning of time that we lost. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But the point for right now is that we don’t have that today. We don’t have an overabundance today. This world is not an endless feast. This world is marked by scarcity and hardship everywhere.
There is not plenty for everyone. These are global issues. And in the most severe cases, of course, this problem shows up as hunger and starvation. But for all of us, in one way or another, the wine runs out. We’re not filled with the abundance of the festival. There’s always some amount of scarcity.
There’s always some amount of lack. And we know it’s a problem. In our hearts, we do not accept, well, scarcity and lack is the way the world is. I guess we just have to deal with it. No, we don’t accept that. We believe, we feel that people ought to have plenty. It’s actually why we keep trying different economic systems, because we think one of them eventually will be the answer.
None of them have worked yet. You know, but if we didn’t perceive scarcity, if we didn’t perceive not having enough as a problem, we wouldn’t keep trying to fix it. The fact that we’re trying to fix it shows that we know that it’s a problem. Pay attention to that. Pay attention to that instinct. It is telling you something.
If you believe that all the people of the world ought to have enough, if you believe that there shouldn’t be hunger and starvation, lack of housing, if you think there’s something wrong with that, not just inconvenient or something you got to deal with, if you think there’s something wrong with it, if you think the people of the world should have enough to feel joyous and whole, if you think that, if you’re not a Christian, you’re closer to being a Christian than you might think. Because you’ve
basically just rejected the narrative of like mindless evolution. The narrative of mindless evolution is, from their own lips, every life form that exists has come to be through a process of violent competition over scarce resources. Whoever survives are the ones that had better adaptations that enabled them to acquire more resources, more so than the little guy.
And the little guy died because he didn’t have the adaptations to get as many resources. And that’s the way it works. Evolution would say life is, what life is, what it, how it has come to be, the its essence, life is a cold process of competition, scarcity, and death. It’s always been that way. It’s how we got here.
So there’s nothing wrong with it. I mean, we may not like it, but we can’t say that it’s wrong. The the the mindless evolution narrative of the world is a little like what Scrooge says in Christmas Carol. Remember Scrooge? Before he meets all the ghosts, he says, if the poor are going to die, let them go ahead and do it.
Decrease the surplus population. Remember? From an evolutionary perspective, there is nothing wrong with that. That’s what life is. The poor, the weak, the under-resourced die. Great. Get on with it so the rest of us can advance. There’s nothing wrong with scarcity. It makes the strong stronger, eliminates the weak.
Okay, that is one narrative about the world. It’s one possibility of the story that we’re living in. But you know in your heart that’s not right. Even Scrooge’s heart knows that’s not right. Later, he meets the Ghost of Christmas Future, remember? And the Ghost of Christmas Future shows him Tiny Tim’s crutch in the corner. And Scrooge begs, he pleads. He says, please tell me Tiny Tim didn’t die.
You know, and then the Ghost of Christmas Future throws Scrooge’s words back in his own face. He says, well, if Tiny Tim’s going to die, let him go on and do it. Make more room for the rest of us. And Scrooge breaks down. He gets on his knees. He pleads, tell me these things can change. I mean, even Scrooge knows that scarcity is wrong.
We know the wine shouldn’t run out. The party shouldn’t end. We were made for abundance. Our hearts know it. And it is the Christian narrative. The Bible would say light, the essence of life isn’t scarcity. It’s abundance, or it should be. And if you believe that, you’re closer to Christianity than you might think.
The biblical storyline is we had this abundance in the beginning, but then we lost it. And the reason we lost that abundance is really because of our sin. We ruined what ought to be. In many ways, not just scarcity versus abundance, but in every way, our sin ruined things. But in terms of scarcity and abundance, you can think of our sin ruining it through things like greed, hoarding power for ourselves, laziness.
That’s why we don’t have abundance. It’s us. I mean, collectively, not you individually, but us as a collective human race, that’s why we don’t have it. And it doesn’t matter what economic system we use. As long as we collectively still have greed, hunger for power, laziness, we’re never going to have abundance.
Conversely, if there were no sin, if humans had never sinned, ever, then we could use any economic system we would want and it would work fine. The problem is us. We have caused the wine to run out. But then Jesus shows up. And what does he do? He provides. He provides abundance in the moment and also a foretaste of the feast to come.
Jesus restores at this one wedding what God has always intended for humanity to enjoy: an overflow, a silly amount of excess, 150 gallons of the best anyone’s ever tasted. Right. Now, a small side note, abundance doesn’t equal consumption. By providing wine, Jesus is not advocating for overconsumption of wine.
Just like if your fridge is always full, on the one hand, you would praise God, but on the other hand, just because your fridge is always full, it doesn’t mean you should eat your entire fridge every day. Right? Abundance and consumption are different things. God’s intention for us is abundance. And what Jesus did at this wedding is a momentary window into what we had at the beginning and what we will have in eternity.
In the beginning, have you ever thought about this? Have you ever thought about the food, the excess that our first ancestors were able to enjoy before everything was ruined? They lived in the garden, the Garden of Eden it’s called. And they were responsible for cultivating the ground, so they didn’t lay around and do nothing.
I mean, laziness wasn’t part of their equation. But but but since there was no work, I mean, since there was no sin, their their work, their labor, it wasn’t laborsome. Creation wasn’t fighting against them. They weren’t fighting against against creation. It’s a harmonious interplay between cultivation and production. And what produce it would have been.
Like the most top-shelf, organic, farm-to-table goods. You’ve had something like that? I remember first, and I think actually still the only time I ate a vine-ripened banana. I was on a mission trip to Ghana, Africa, and the place we were staying had these banana trees. So I could just go up and grab a ripe banana straight from the stalk.
And I don’t usually love bananas. They’re fine. I’ll eat them. But these bananas, one of the best things I’ve ever tasted because it was not picked green and shipped halfway around the world. It was just there. It was ready. It was ripe. It activated taste buds I didn’t even know existed. Now, imagine our earliest ancestors, they have access to that all the time.
It’s way better than farm to table. It’s vine to mouth. And it’s all they could eat. It’s like they had a lifetime pass to the buffet. They lived at the buffet. I mean, some of us do that for vacation. We go to an all-inclusive resort and we spend a good bit of time at the buffet. That was the abundance at the beginning. And that is an image of the world to come.
The Bible is very clear about what waits for us in eternity, and it is a feast. It is a wedding reception of sorts between God and his people, who he loves like a bride, that he will delight in and celebrate with forever. This is from Isaiah 25, for instance. On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine, well refined.
Rich food, full of marrow, wine. So for those of us who are wondering, will there be steak in heaven? There you go. There must be something. I mean, rich food full of marrow, there’s some kind of meat of something, and wine. Apparently really great wine, reminiscent of that wedding in Cana. I imagine for the people who were at that wedding in Cana, when someday they feast in eternity, I imagine they’re going to say, I’ve tasted this before.
I was once at a wedding where Jesus showed up, and this is exactly the wine that he brought. But unlike that wedding in Cana in 30 AD with a limited guest list, notice who’s invited to this celebration that Isaiah describes. He says it is a feast for all peoples, which means the invitation is wide, the table is long, there is room, and there is so much food, it doesn’t matter how many people show up, there will still be excess.
This is the picture over and over again in the Bible. You might remember Jesus tells a parable of the great banquet, Luke 14. Jesus says a man prepared a large dinner and he sends out his servants to tell all the invited guests, hey, dinner’s ready. But then one by one, all the invited guests say they can’t come.
So therefore, the master tells his servant, well, if they’re not going to come, bring the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame from the streets of the city. Go out to the highways and byways, right? The hedges. Keep bringing people in to this feast. The invitation is, whoever so wills may come. And for whoever wills, it will never end.
Unlike our celebrations that always end, even the most lavish ones, right? Like those cultures where the the the event lasts for a few days or weeks or longer. Our celebrations always end, but Jesus’ won’t. And the reason it won’t is because anything that might spoil it will be eliminated. This is continuing from the same passage in Isaiah 25.
He will swallow up death forever. And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces. And the reproach of his people he will take away from the earth. The Lord has spoken. So why won’t his party end? Because there will never be a funeral. There will never never even be a hospital bed. Every grave will be emptied. Every tear wiped away.
Any reproach is removed. There’s nothing against us. Anything that might interrupt the celebration will be gone and it’ll be forever. This is what Jesus was giving a glimpse of at Cana. For just a moment, an ordinary wedding in an ordinary little town, Jesus pulled back the curtain and he gave a few people of the taste of the world to come.
That wedding pointed forward to the wedding, the feast, the table that has the richest food, the finest wine, the deepest laughter, the most joyous reunions, the endless abundance, and the presence of God. None of which will ever run out. That’s what he’s restoring us to. That’s what this uh Cana wedding was a foretaste of.
Now lastly, what is the cost of this party? This endless wedding feast festival that everyone is invited to. What’s the cost? Is it free? Is there an admission price? The answer is, uh just like the weddings we attend, it depends. On the one hand, it’s free. On the other hand, it’s extraordinarily expensive.
The difference is, are you the one invited to the celebration? Or are you the one hosting it? If you’re invited, it’s free. Just like weddings we go to. Another place in Isaiah, this is a chapter 55, Isaiah writes, Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. He who has no money, come buy and eat.
Come buy wine and milk without money and without price. It’s free for us. But that doesn’t mean it’s free. And someone pays. In this case, it’s Jesus. Um, so what is the cost? It’s Jesus’ sacrifice. Um, our eternal celebration is made possible only because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. And there is a clear reference to that in this passage. Um going back to what Jesus says at the beginning of the account.
Remember, Mary comes to Jesus and they say, they have no wine. And Jesus responds by saying, what does that have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. Um and yes, eventually that means that his hour will come. There will be a wedding feast that is his responsibility. It means that. But there’s more to his response than only that. Because throughout John’s gospel, when Jesus refers to the hour, he’s referring to the moment when he will give his life.
So for example, when the crowd could not seize him, it’s because his hour had not come. When Jesus is about to be arrested and he prays, should I be spared from this hour? And he says, no, this hour is the whole reason I came. On the night before his crucifixion, John narrates, Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father.
It’s throughout John, the hour refers to when Jesus is betrayed, when he’s arrested, when he will be crucified. That’s the hour. It’s him giving his life. And that’s what comes to mind for Jesus when his mother says, they ran out of wine. He thought about his hour. He thought about his death. Which might seem odd. Right, Mary says they’re out of wine and Jesus says, it’s not time for me to die.
What? Who said anything about you dying? That seems unrelated, but it’s not. Jesus knows in order for him to provide for his wedding feast, it’s going to cost him everything. When he was at that wedding in Cana and he’s looking at this bride and groom, just like we might do at a wedding, he’s thinking about his bride. But he’s thinking about what it’ll take for them to be together.
So when Mary says, will you provide the wine? He says, not yet. It’s not time for me to pay yet. But he knows the hour will come when he will bear the cost. On the cross, he will endure the ultimate scarcity so we can have the ultimate abundance. He will lose everything so we can have everything. He will say, I thirst on the cross so that we will never thirst again.
This is the price of the feast. So when the day comes and we are sitting around that future table, you know, we’re surrounded by peoples of every nation, tribe, tongue, generation, and and we’re delighting in every bite, delighting in every drink, every laugh, every moment. The warmness, the joy, the festival, the ambiance of it all, one of the reasons that we will give thanks is because we will know what Jesus what it cost Jesus to provide it for us. Cost him everything.
He wanted to do it because he wanted it to you to be there. Wanted you to be part of his people that he’s celebrating with for eternity. So if you you’ve never trusted in him, if you’ve never said, I want to be at that wedding feast with you. If you’ve never told him that, tell him that now. Say, Jesus, I want to be included in that festival.
I know I know I’ve contributed to the breaking of the world. I’m sorry. But I want to be part of the world when you put it back together. Tell him that. Say, forgive me, include me, I’m yours. If you’ve never told him that before, tell him that today. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for the abundance that you want for us and that you will provide in eternity, that you will restore us to the goodness that we had at the beginning.
Thank you for Jesus who comes to rescue us so that we can be part of that festival that never ends, that joyous celebration, Lord. I pray the um the delight of that day would fill our hearts today and carry us um until we can experience fully in your kingdom when it comes. We pray those things in Jesus name.
Amen. Dan, again, thank you so much uh for that message. Uh can we all stand and let’s sing in response?
