Only the Servants Knew (January 19, 2025)
Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 36:5-10; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
Our first reading today from Isaiah is one of many passages in Scripture that imagine the relationship of God and God’s people as a marriage. Prophets like Isaiah and Hosea, the parables of Jesus, the visions of the book of Revelation, all imagine that time will conclude with a wedding between God and creation, and what an amazing reception God has planned. Plentiful and excellent wines are just one of the images used to describe this wedding, as we have in today’s psalm.
This is poetry, of course – the end of time is beyond our ability to really understand or know. But God wants us to know that the story of creation ends well, and everyone will live happily ever after. And not only this. Every wedding, every marriage, points to the kind of relationship God wants to have with all of us. The love of two people who care for each other, who sacrifice for each other, who devote themselves to each other’s welfare, who bear with each other’s failings, who create a home of hospitality where they often welcome new life – all of this is a sign of who God wants to be for all of us. In fact, it is only because God has loved us into existence, only because God has committed God’s self to us and holds us in love that we even have the ability to commit ourselves to love one another in marriage.
Well, if every marriage is to some extent a sign – an imperfect sign, to be sure, but a sign nonetheless – of the relationship God has with us, there was one wedding that Jesus and his mother and his disciples attended in the village of Cana in Galilee starts out as a very imperfect sign of the celebration God intends for the end of time. Because at this wedding, they ran out of wine. Every bride’s nightmare – you plan for everything, you want your special day to go exactly right, you work so hard that everything goes well for your guests, and something basic somehow gets overlooked.
This happens a lot, and not just at weddings. People try and work hard to make things right, and it just doesn’t come together. And when people mess up, the life kind of goes out of the party. The joy isn’t there, the spark isn’t there, and it won’t be long before the wedding celebration breaks up early, and everyone will remember this wedding for all the wrong reasons.
The mother of Jesus notices the problem, and says to Jesus: They have no wine. And Jesus shrugs his shoulders. “Somebody messed up and now things are going wrong? Tell me something new. Nobody has enough wine. That’s the problem. The life that God wants for everyone just isn’t working, the joy isn’t there, the spark isn’t there, that is why I have come into the world. When the time comes I will fix all of it, for everyone, everywhere, but this isn’t the time yet. There isn’t enough wine. Such is the way of the world in need of redemption.” There’s a plan for the Big Problem of the world – but what are we supposed to do at this particular moment now?
That’s what I think Jesus means by “What concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” It sounds like a “no” – but it’s not “no I don’t care” or “no it’s not my problem.” It’s more “The problem is so much bigger and deeper than you realize and I’ve got a plan to get at the root of the whole problem.” In any event, Mary understands that she should not take his answer as a “no.”
In this, Mary – who is really being presented to us as the model disciple of Jesus – Mary tells the servants, Do whatever he tells you. She does not say “I’ve got a plan, do what I tell you.” She trusts that whatever Jesus decides do to will be the right thing. And she knows her son well enough to guess that, whatever Jesus does, if he does anything, he will do through the servants. Through the waiters, the attendants, the ordinary people whom everyone else overlooks. She knows her boy very well.
And so Jesus gives the servants a task – there are these 25-30 gallon stone jars used in religious purification rituals, and they’re empty. These rituals are what we do when we realize we’re not getting it right. Rituals by which we express that we know we’re not right with God and hope for a solution to the problem. I imagine the servants rolled their eyes and thought to themselves, Oh no, this religious guy is gonna do some purity rituals. But they do what Jesus asks.
And then Jesus says, Oh no, we’re not going to wash anything with this water. Don’t try to purify anything. Just take some, put it in a glass, and take it to the wedding coordinator. And so we have a solution to the problem of the day – not enough wine for this particular wedding problem. But more than that. It is a sign that the solution to the Big Picture Problem is at hand. It is a sign that the promised wedding feast of God and creation is beginning.
Do you ever feel like the wine has run out? That the wine has run out on your marriage, on your career, on the church, on our democracy, on our hope for the future? That your plans didn’t work out and now the joy has gone out, the spark has gone out, and you don’t know how to get it back? Don’t worry, Jesus knows all about it. But tell him anyway, he appreciates the conversation. And whatever he says, trust like Mary did: Jesus has the answer, the Big Picture answer of course, but also how the Big Picture answer can show up in the specific circumstances we’re in right now. He has a better idea than you or I do, and you can trust him.
And there’s one more thing in this story of the first sign of Jesus, this enacted parable, that will continue to apply every time Jesus acts. Everybody gets to drink the good wine that Jesus brings to the party. Even those who have already had enough of the bad wine that they don’t really appreciate it. But the people who imagine themselves to be in charge of the party – the chief steward, the groom and his family – they have no idea where the good wine came from. Only the servants know. And that’s just the way Jesus wants it.
Whatever service Jesus is calling you to right now isn’t your ticket to more and better wine. The good wine, like grace, is a free gift offered to all. No, being a servant called by Jesus is an opportunity to be part of what Jesus is doing and to see what Jesus is doing. As Paul says in the second reading today, your way of service is a gift God gives you to make the wedding feast happen. And the reward for the servant is to have the chance to participate and to have open eyes to see what God is doing. May each of us have the joy of knowing what Jesus is up to, and may everyone share freely in the celebration.