Sermon for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany
admin | 15 January 2012“This beginning of signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee
and manifested forth his glory and his disciples believed on him.”
Epiphany is the season of teaching, we have said. It is, also, it seems the season of miracles. Epiphany abounds with the miracles of Jesus. Is there a connection? Yes. The miracles teach. They belong to what is being made manifest, to what is being made known to us about who Jesus is and what he means for us. Importantly, the miracles reveal God’s will and purpose for our humanity.
Yet, miracles may trouble us. Some have thought of them as being little more than the stuff of superstition and nonsense. Thomas Jefferson, for example, in the almost typical exuberance and arrogance of the reason of the Enlightenment, took his scissors to the New Testament and cut out of it all the miracles, leaving merely a kind of core of moral teaching as he thought. But this, I am afraid, to have missed the whole point of the miracles. Without them we miss the greater story of God’s will and purpose for our humanity and our world. After all, as theologians like Augustine pointed out long ago, the great miracle is the miracle of creation itself to which the miracles recall us in one way or another.
The miracle stories of the New Testament open us out to the truth of God as Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier and, perhaps, nowhere do we see that more clearly and more profoundly in this Gospel story of the Wedding Feast at Cana of Galilee where Jesus turned the water into wine. John tells us, and it is something he is at pains to tell us, that this was “the beginning of signs” which Jesus did, the first of the miracles as it were. I think he wants us to appreciate how much this Gospel story makes manifest – there is that Epiphany word again – the true meaning of all the miracle stories.
And yet, there is something special about this miracle story. Unlike most of the miracle stories of the Gospel it is not about a healing; it is not about the blind receiving their sight, the deaf hearing, the lame walking, the dead being raised up. These are all important aspects of the theological idea of human redemption. God seeks our healing. But for what end?
In a way, this Gospel story tells us. It is a touching and compelling scene. Jesus is a guest at a country wedding along with Mary his mother and some of his disciples. The wine failed, we simply told, meaning that the party ran out of wine. A social disaster. Mary names the dilemma – “they have no wine”, she says; even more, she names the human predicament – ‘we have no wine’, meaning that we lack the means of joy and blessedness in ourselves. In the background of the story is an old Jewish saying, that without wine there is no joy.
She names the human predicament. Jesus’s response is most intriguing. “O woman, what is that to me and to thee. Mine hour has not yet come.” What is his hour? I think it refers unmistakably to the hour of his passion and death, to the crucifixion, to the critical event in the story of human redemption. It is about the purpose of his coming. An important connection is made between this first miracle and the crucifixion, between this beginning of signs and the ultimate accomplishment of human redemption. Here then is a miracle that will open us out to the presence of the Creator and the Redeemer, both of which principles belong to the essential divinity of Christ that Epiphany makes manifest.
“Whatever he tells you to do”, Mary then says, “do it”. There is something wondrous here as well. It has to do with the miracle of obedience that overturns the misery of our disobedience. It is about a mindful obedience, too. It has to do with our commitment to truth. It is Mary’s command to us to obey Christ.
What follows is the miracle of the water turned into wine and not just ordinary wine but the best wine. Water into wine. A kind of new creation and yet one which also speaks to the theme of redemption in the Epiphany context where the things of this world and things of our humanity become the means by which the things of God are communicated and known; “God in man made manifest”, as one of our hymns puts it. For that, too, is part of the larger meaning of turning water into wine, sacramental images, too, that remind us of how the themes of creation and redemption are concentrated for us in the sacraments.
And sanctification. In the classical Book(s) of Common Prayer, the marriage service makes reference to this miracle story because of Christ’s presence. He beautifies and adorns marriage it is said, because of “his presence and first miracle that he wrought in Cana of Galilee”. This brings out the idea of sanctification, the idea of our being made holy because of our engagement with the Holy One who is in our midst.
But for what end? Our joy and blessedness. This is the profound point. This Gospel miracle, unlike any other, teaches us about the purpose of human redemption. It signals the perfection of our humanity because of God’s will and purpose for our humanity. God seeks the very best for us. He seeks our joy and our blessedness. It is to be found in our taking delight in what God delights in – his creation, redeemed and sanctified. In this miracle story we are opened out to life and light and love, the life and light and love of God in whom we find life and light and love; in short, blessedness.
“This beginning of signs”, John tells us, “Jesus did in Cana of Galilee and manifested forth his glory”. We can see, I think, the obvious connection to Epiphany. This miracle, like all the miracles, makes something known to us about Jesus and about God’s will and purpose for our humanity. John concludes though by saying “and his disciples believed on him.” Through what is made known to us we come to a new and deeper understanding. We are enlightened and challenged to become disciples, believing on him whose glory has been made manifest.
“This beginning of signs” is the great miracle which opens us out to the truth of God as Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. In this miracle story, God signals his will and purpose for our humanity. It is about our delight in God and in what he seeks for us.
“This beginning of signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee
and manifested forth his glory and his disciples believed on him.”
Fr. David Curry
Epiphany II, 2012