by CCW | 25 October 2026 10:00
Signs and wonders. Things said and done. What is the effect of God’s words on our minds? His word is proclaimed in our presence. His story is told in our hearing. It is told for us. It is even written out for us to read in Jesus Christ. We hear it. We know it. But what effect does it have on our minds and in our lives? Today’s Gospel is an excellent illustration of what Paul means by bidding us “put on the whole armour of God”… “taking the helmet of salvation” that has to do with our minds, “and the sword of the Spirit,” which is nothing less than “the word of God” (Eph.6.10ff). Is this not what we see?
“This is again the second sign that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judaea into Galilee,” John tells us. In telling us this, he reminds us of the first sign, the first miracle which Jesus did. Moreover, it is the second time that he is in the same place. What is that place? Cana of Galilee. It seems to have been the place of signs. At the very least what happens here in Cana of Galilee signifies something of the effect of God’s words and deeds on human minds and human lives.
God’s word causes delight. God’s word creates new life and new birth. God’s word causes healing and restoration to life in God. At the very least, we may say, these are the desired effects of God’s word upon our minds.
What was the first sign that Jesus did in Cana of Galilee? It was there at the Wedding-feast that Jesus turned the water into wine. The effect was to cause delight and wonderment. “They have no wine,” Mary said, articulating so simply the human predicament. We lack the means of joy and life in ourselves. We lack what we most desire and seek but which can only come from God. This is the point. Thus Christ gives not only wine but the best wine. Wine, as the psalmist says, “makes glad the heart of man”. The most excellent wine of Christ’s making belongs to the abundant life which he would give us, namely, our joy and our blessedness in his presence with the Father and with one another in the fellowship of faith. The effect of God’s word is our joy. Such is the purpose of God’s word in the first sign that Jesus did in Cana of Galilee. The first sign and miracle signals the radical meaning of all the miracles. They intend our wholeness and our joy, our living and abiding in the truth of God.
If we are open to his purpose, disposed towards it and alive to it, then there is joy and delight in us. But it is the joy and delight of God’s Word in us. That is what this second sign shows us.
What was this second sign? The healing of the nobleman’s son. This father went to Jesus, searched him out, as it were, and found him in Cana of Galilee. But his son “at the point of death” was in Capernaum. “Come down”, he says, “ere my child die.” We feel his agony. Yet Jesus does not come down but he does heal his son. His word causes healing. “It was neither an herb nor a poultice that healed them, but your word, O Lord, which heals all things,” as the Wisdom of Solomon puts it (Wis. 16.12). The divine Word which creates is the Word which heals and restores. Such is the divine Word, the Word that is the Son of the Father.
The healing was in Capernaum. But the cause of the healing was in Cana of Galilee. Jesus Christ who is God’s Word and Son has come that we might “have life and have it abundantly” (Jn. 10.10) and to that end he has come in the body of our humanity to heal us of our sickness and death. He has come to heal us of all our sins which make us less than what God would have us be in his truth and will. That Word made flesh stands in Cana of Galilee, to be sure, but that Word is God’s Word Incarnate and is not simply constrained and limited to time and space. My Word, as Isaiah, reminds us “goes forth to accomplish that which it purposes.”
God’s Word purposes healing which belongs to human redemption, ultimately the healing of soul and body. That Word which was in Cana of Galilee cannot be restricted to that little village or any other place or culture. It reaches out to heal in far-off Capernaum. It reaches out to heal us who stand yet farther off in time and space. And yet that Divine Word heals in Capernaum because it was heard and received in Cana of Galilee. It was heard and received in faith by the nobleman who came to Jesus.
He, too, was healed. How was he healed? What was his sickness? His sickness was an error of the soul, a mistaken or incomplete view about the power and truth of God’s Word. He came to Cana of Galilee seeking out Jesus Christ, to be sure, but demanding that he come down; in short, make a house-call! He thinks that Jesus has to be physically present in Capernaum in order to heal his son in Capernaum. This places a limitation on God. Yet God’s Word is not so constrained by our expectations or our demands. His word causes healing but only if we are alive to his word. His word can touch us and heal us from afar and in many ways that speak to how we face the sufferings and troubles of our world and day.
What stands in the way is ourselves and our expectations. Jesus names the problem. “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.” Here in Cana of Galilee, there were two signs: both things said and done by Jesus that reveal God to us and redeem us to God. But the point in each case is to go beyond the sign to the thing signified. What does God’s Word purpose? His Word purposes our delight and our salvation, our joy and our good in our being healed in soul and body of all that would destroy our fellowship with God and with one another. The signs are done to open us out to the power and truth of God’s Word and not to constrain us to signs and wonders themselves. The signs and wonders are but the outward and visible aspects of what is inward and spiritual. They are like the sacraments in which we see and taste the bread and wine but know in faith the body and blood of Christ, his life in us making us one with him. “Faith our outward sense befriending/makes the inward vision clear.”
We hear about these signs and wonders in today’s readings. Is that not enough to cause delight and healing in us? It was enough for the nobleman. He went at God’s word and command: “Go thy way, thy son liveth,” Jesus told him, “and the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken to him.” Note, too, that as he goes he is met by his servants who tell him that his son is healed and, as John tells us , “and he himself believed”; faith grows in faith and in understanding. Note, too, that this leads not just to his belief but that of “his whole house.” Faith is not just individual and personal.
This second sign points beyond what is immediately sensed and seen. Its power lies in what is heard and received in faith. And so it must be with us. The telling of the sign and wonder opens us out to the truth of God’s Word. It frees us from demanding that Jesus be physically present or constrained to our terms about our wants and desires, as if God were subject to us. It alerts us to his being with us spiritually and in truth. It convicts us of the conditions of our fellowship in the Gospel and recalls us to the deeper wonder and dignity of our humanity; in short, to see ourselves as God sees us and loves us.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 21, 2026
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2026/10/25/sermon-for-the-twenty-first-sunday-after-trinity-10/
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