A Divine Slight of Hand

John 2:1-11

By

Reverend Litton J. Logan

January 14, 2007

Scriptures:

John 2:1--12 (NRSV)

¹On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. ²Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. ³When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” ⁴And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” ⁵His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” ⁶Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. ⁷Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. ⁸He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. ⁹When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom ¹⁰and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” ¹¹Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

¹²After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples; and they remained there a few days.

Sermon:

          I like magicians and illusionist.  I think it is amazing to watch people like David Copperfield with their elaborate illusions, which seemingly make airplanes and buildings disappear.  I especially like the Masked Magician Lance Burton and the First Lady of Magic Melinda.  Magicians and their slight of hand tricks and their ability to divert an audience’s attention and pull rabbits out of hats and things like that enthrall me.  I liken my fascination with magicians and illusionist to my passion for fly-fishing.  I never cease to be amazed that by placing a fly that I have sat in my den and tied in a certain place, in a certain way in a stream or a river where I believe there is a fish I catch that fish.  It is almost like magic for me to do this.

          I likewise experience feelings of magical awe, wonder, and surprise each time I hear this morning’s passages from John’s Gospel.  In these scriptures, we see a bit of divine slight of hand at work, a subtle hooking of one’s attention.  One must look very closely at out passages in John because the writer distracts us with a miracle story—John’s story of Jesus’ coming out--while something far more important is going on. 

          John’s story, altogether more positive and hopeful, carries the same dynamics of bringing us up short as the true story about the medical student doing a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center.  A woman called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants. The student quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be no need to bring her daughter into the hospital. She calmed down and at the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants. The student then told her that she had better bring her daughter into the emergency room right away.

          John struggles to show the unique nature of Jesus as the Son of God and to contradict all attempts to cast Jesus into some Greek or Gnostic divine, human hybrid or simply a prophet of God.  Jesus’ source of power is not something tacked on to his humanity for John. John understands that some preexisting and essential aspect of God is incarnate in Jesus.  In the opening eighteen versus of John, we hear that the very reason, logos, of God underlying all created reality became flesh.  Later we will hear that God’s love became incarnated in human flesh.

          Ostensibly, in today’s scriptures we have Jesus and his emergence as the mighty Son of God marked by a sign or a miracle.  Although Jesus’ fullest revelation of himself will not occur until Calvary, we nonetheless see the emerging understanding of Jesus as the unique Son of God in his disciples occasioned by this miracle at Cana.  In addition, I submit that the miracle at Cana is a subtle distraction. I hasten to point out that for John; God is the central character of his Gospel, not Jesus, as we modern day readers frequently want to make him. Therefore, one must watch for God’s slight of hand in these passages.

          I once watched a magician pulling what appeared to be an endless stream of beautiful scarves out of an upraised fist.  He deposited these scarves into what we had been shown was an empty top hat that he had been placed on a table.  When he got all the scarves into the hat, he took his magic wand, swirled it in the air, and tapped the hat three times.  He then reached into the hat and pulled out a Lion cub.  The audience had been so caught up in the scarf trick that we never anticipated the Lion cub.  Maybe we had expected a rabbit or even some doves to come out of the hat but not a Lion cub.

          This is the idea I wish for you to hold on to this morning—the idea of expecting the miraculous but not the miracle you expected--as I look at this miracle of turning water into wine at the Wedding Feast in Cana.

Years ago, when Johnny Carson was the host of The Tonight Show he interviewed an eight-year-old boy.  The young man was asked to appear because he had rescued two friends in a coalmine outside his hometown in West Virginia. As Johnny questioned the boy, it became apparent to him and the audience that the young man was a Christian. So, Johnny asked him if he attended Sunday school. When the boy said he did Johnny inquired, "What are you learning in Sunday school?" "Last week," came his reply, "our lesson was about when Jesus went to a wedding and turned water into wine." The audience roared, but Johnny tried to keep a straight face. Then he said, "And what did you learn from that story?" The boy squirmed in his chair. It was apparent he hadn't thought about this. But then he lifted up his face and said, "If you're going to have a wedding, make sure you invite Jesus!"

As our story opens, evidently, the wedding feast has been going on for a while.  Weddings in Jesus’ day could go on from seven to fourteen days.  Many poorer families scrimped and saved for a long time to host a wedding.  As we see, Mary is at the wedding and Jesus and his disciples seem to be just additions to her presence.  The wedding festivities seems to be in full swing when suddenly they run dangerously low on wine—a major social calamity and embarrassment to the hosting family.

          Jesus’ mother presents this as a problem to Jesus.  Jesus asks her how this shortage of wine creates a crisis for them.  In Jesus’ response to her, we see the intercessory power of a mother and, yet, the impropriety of anyone having a claim on Jesus’ power except God.  He tells his mother it is not time for him to reveal himself fully, alluding to his final revelation of himself in his death and glorification. 

Mary, as it would seem to appear, does the typical mother thing, ignores Jesus, and tells the servants to “do what ever he tells you.”  This is a critical misunderstanding of these scriptures.

          Jesus tells the servants to fill the stone jars that would have held water for the Jewish ceremonial washing of the hands and feet up to their rims.  They did so. 

          Then he told them to fill their serving jars from the larger, stone jars and take it to the chief steward of the wedding, who tasted the wine and raved about the host saving the best wine until the last.  The custom was to serve the cheaper wine after everyone got a little tipsy and had so anesthetized their pallets that they could not tell good wine from bad.

As the scriptures tells us:

This act in Canaan of Galilee was the first sign Jesus gave, the first glimpse of his glory. And his disciples believed in him.  (The Message New Testament, John, 2:10)

          I imagine you were impressed with that little miracle story, huh?  While Mary was seemingly being a bit pushy and Jesus turned water into wine you were distracted and you didn’t notice that God ushered in the next increment of God’s coming rule and reign in the human condition right under our noses.

          Did you notice that on the third day, foreboding of the tomb that the waters of repeated, external, human-contrived washing for purity before God was turned into the eternal wine of sacrifice and internal joy.  Did you notice that a new day had dawned in humankind’s experience of God’s grace in Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the law?  A new day that begins and ends through the shedding of water and blood. A reality we celebrate each Easter and every Sunday at the Communion Table.  Did you notice that God chose to reveal the divine self in response to a common human need—more wine--at a marriage feast?  God does not reveal the Divine Self in bellowing smoke, thunder or lightening, or in the Temple or in the church.  No, God reveals the divine self in human flesh in the everyday joys, disappointments, and hopes of a poor community of people celebrating a wedding.

Did you see Mary changed in to Eve for just a split second—the woman of the temptation—who appears to be tempting Jesus to reveal his divine glory prematurely?  Did you notice just as quickly how Mary unlike Eve defers to God’s will in Jesus?  As Eve was the archetype of the temptress woman, Mary becomes the archetype of the obedient woman and the redemption of all women from the stereotype of the first fallen.  Mary punctuates this role by telling the servants to do as Jesus tells them.  Jesus could have told these servants to go about their business because this problem with the wine is not his concern, but he didn’t.  Why?  Well, the divine coming out had to start somewhere and this was as good a place as any since it was in keeping with God’s concern for the poor, disenfranchised, outcasts, the common folk of the land, and that which is most human. 

However, did you also notice Mary’s words when she defers to Jesus?  Mary says to the servants of God of all ages that we are to do what ever Jesus tells us do?  Did you see the results of those ordinary servants of God doing what Jesus told them to do—filling ceremonial jars with ceremonially, pure water, which produced miraculous results beyond religious purity?  Did you see beyond the obvious and catch the significance of God changing the essential nature of humankind’s relationship to God from external obligations of religious observances to the internal joy and euphoria of new wine?  Did you grasp the significance of Jesus making a new wine in the stone jars of an old tradition?  Did you like the special slight of hand in the wine of the older traditions dulling the pallet and the new wine of Jesus’ reviving and invigorating the pallet? 

          Didn’t you find it amazing that the one in charge of the wedding  was amazed at this new wine—that is to say that the Jewish leadership at that time didn’t recognize God’s presence in Jesus as the Christ in light of all their hopes for the coming of the Messiah.  Truth is, there is none as blind as those who refuse to see because they are blinded by their expectations.

I am sure you caught the shift of focus from the wedding to Jesus, the guest, who brought gladness and an over abundance of quality wine that delighted the pallet and gladden the hearts of people who would never know him personally across the ages.  I also bet you didn’t see God give us hope of a new day when we do as Jesus tells us in faith and drink of the new wine of God in Jesus the Christ.

Moreover, the real miracle of this story in John is that as the water was being turned into wine right in front of our very eyes Jesus of Nazareth disappears—poof!--and God is made known in the flesh to the true seeker’s of God’s will.  Never again can we see Jesus as just the man from Galilee. In these passages for John’s readers, he is revealed to his disciples and to people across the ages as the mighty Son of God, the one who comes to the most common of people in their most common of needs—a sense of spiritual direction and security in life and death.  We see Jesus become the fullest manifestation of God in human flesh, who reconciles the world unto the Divine Self for our eternal joy and delight in the most common of human settings—the joy and hope of a wedding, the mysterious and life giving and life affirming union of a man and woman in marriage.

No longer are God’s people to be overly burdened with the externals of religious rites and traditions at the expense of an internal and personal relationship with God through the divine mystery in Jesus Christ.  No longer do we wash in ceremonial waters from stone jars daily.  Now we are washed for the last time in the living waters of the Spirit in our baptisms.  A baptism of confidence that God was in Jesus doing the truly miraculous--forgiving our sins forever and reconciling us to one another and to God through God’s love made flesh for all eternity.

          You were impressed with the water into wine thing I’ll wager, but I’ll bet you weren’t expecting the Lion cub—the Lion cub that became the great Lion of Judah, the Messiah.  No way could you have anticipate God, the Holy Self, mysteriously incarnate showing up at a wedding, in some little backwater town in Galilee and becoming your savior and the savior of the world right before your eyes. 

Like so many across the ages, we anticipate God’s earthly manifestations in grand and commanding, supernatural performances.  Wrong!  Like so many, we anticipated God appearing in power and majesty in the Temple, a great cathedral, or a big revival meeting.  Wrong!  Like so many, we anticipate God coming into the human condition according to our doctrinal creeds, denominational expectations, or silly human paradigms of religious power.  Wrong! 

God, in a slight of hand defied all our expectations and exceeded our greatest hopes by becoming a human baby, born to a poor young woman, in the lowliest of conditions, and who first revealed himself to the world as a bootlegger.