Water into wine
A Sermon preached by the Precentor, Canon Anna Macham
Sunday 19 January 2025- 10:30am
Isaiah 62:1-5 and John 2:1-11
Out of the three so-called “occasional offices” – in other words, baptisms, weddings and funerals – weddings – up until recently – have been the ones I’ve liked the least. Baptisms, or christenings, for me, are more rewarding; they’re more relaxed and have a more obviously spiritual purpose- and usually, they’re a lot of fun, especially if children are involved, with copious amounts of water splashing around – and funerals give an opportunity to make a difference at a difficult time in people’s lives.
Weddings, I’ve found, can be more tricky. Maybe it’s the high level of expectation. Especially if the couple are young, it’s one of – if not the – most important day in their lives so far, so there’s a lot of pressure for it to be perfect. Maybe it’s the fact that, as most of the weddings I attend I’m working at, I don’t get to dress up and enjoy it as a guest. Or maybe it’s the oddness, for me as someone with a same sex partner, of facilitating a ceremony for people that – however joyful – is not something I’ve had the experience of doing myself.
Since working here at the Cathedral, however, I’ve come to appreciate weddings a lot more. The building seems made for it. It’s not just the grandeur of the surroundings, but the sense of beauty and good will coming together to create a perfect setting for the couple to make their vows- from the glorious sound of the organ as the bride walks in up the century of the nave, with onlookers smiling and everyone so happy and rooting for the couple, to the grand entrance out of the West Doors at the end. Sometimes being the centre of attention in such a grand space can feel a little daunting – but, as one the bridemaids encouraged the bride while we waiting to go in at a wedding I was doing last weekend, the most important thing to do in that moment is to enjoy it – the day will go so quickly, and it’s a day to cherish every moment of, with the important people in your life all around you.
That sense of joy in a wedding is palpable in today’s Gospel. The party element – that sense of celebration and good will – is very much to the fore as the focus is on the wine and the fact that it has run out. Jesus does his first miracle – or “sign” as John has it – and – at the persuasion of his mother – turns the water that’s used for purification – for washing people’s feet when they came into the party or for their hands before eating – into wine so that the celebrations can carry on.
A wedding party in the ancient near-east wouldn’t have lasted just one day like our weddings here – it would have gone on for several days – and to run out of wine would have been a disgrace. The sheer quantity of wine that results from Jesus’s action is remarkable. John, the evangelist, notes that each jar held about twenty or thirty gallons – so six jars works out at around 150 gallons, or 800 bottles of the best-quality wine. This would certainly have been a party to remember!
The key note, in this brief but vivid scene, is abundance. In producing so much wine, Jesus surprises all the guests, in Nathanael the recently called disciple’s home village of Cana in Galilee – by doing something that goes far beyond what was needed or necessary. In performing this his first miracle, Jesus is trying to show us something important about himself, and the abundant life he has come to bring.
The prodigious amount of wine in this story has invited comparisons between Jesus and Dionysus, the Greek god of wine; there are various stories from the Hellenistic culture of the time of bowls being miraculously filled with wine in his temple at Elis, or of a fountain flowing with wine in his temple at Andros.
But a clearer frame of reference is the extensive imagery of weddings and wine we see throughout the Hebrew scriptures. The female lover in Song of Solomon says of her male beloved: “your love is better than wine… we [she and her friends] will extol your love more than wine” (Song of Solomon 1:2,4). The prophet Amos uses the image of “the mountains dripping with sweet wine and the hills flowing with it” for the great Day of the Lord to come. Isaiah looks forward to the Lord giving a huge party, “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines” (Isaiah 25:6) and our Isaiah reading today likens God’s rejoicing over his people to a wedding. “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate… for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For… as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isaiah 62: 4-5).
In the Gospels, Jesus uses this image of a wedding banquet for the kingdom of heaven in his parable of a marriage feast (Matthew 22:1-10; Luke 14:15-24) and likens himself to the bridegroom. All of this, says John, is being inaugurated in the here and now, as Jesus begins his ministry at this wedding feast in Cana.
John the Evangelist could have chosen a different kind of miracle, or “sign” as he calls them, to inaugurate Jesus’ ministry – the healing of the sick, for example, in chapters 4 and 5, or feeding of the hungry, in chapter 6. But he doesn’t: he chooses a wedding.
We might question whether such a mood of joy is really appropriate at the moment. Is rejoicing really the note we should be striking, at the start of this new year? The last couple of weeks have seen Justin Welby laying down his pastoral staff, with the Archbishop of York stepping in – in an atmosphere of controversy – to take his place. The Church of England is in a time of crisis, with trust in the pronouncements of its leaders being at an all-time low. How, in the face of its multiple – and very public – institutional failures in safeguarding, can the Church even begin to speak about healing, let alone joy?
And in the wider world, too, jubilation is surely not the dominant note just now. The joy we may feel at news of a ceasefire and hostage-release deal between Israel and Hamas is surely not the overflowing, abundant joy we’ve been talking about, but something more cautious, as we wait to see how the planned deal and ceasefire will unfold, and how long it will last.
Joy- especially the wholehearted joy of a wedding – seems to be in short supply currently. But there is hope. Amidst all the continuing negative press about the Church this week, I also read a letter from a survivor of abuse in a church setting that calls for greater confidence on the part of Christians. Whilst being clear about the failures of the Church, the letter contends that, in the scramble to propose a solution, “key biblical principles of collaboration, grace, and unity in sharing the Good News of healing and new life are being lost”. “The Church absolutely must not minimise the desperate suffering endured by so many”, this person writes, “but we must also remember that it is our job to offer comfort, hope, and the power of God to heal and renew”. (Church Times letters, Friday 10 January).
Today’s Gospel challenges us to look for fresh signs of glory, signs of the radiant, healing presence of God among us, to show us that, despite all that is wrong in the Church and with the world, we have a right and a reason to rejoice. There is much we can do, in the small things, in the welcome we give and the way we treat one another, to create inclusive and safe cultures in our churches.
A wedding is a burst of joy, a celebration of the beginning of a new family, with the anticipation of new life. It resonates across cultures and generations. At the same time, it runs through scripture, with marriage as the leading image for the core relationship of the covenant – or promise – between God and his people. When we celebrate the Eucharist, the ordinary things of bread and wine, we look forward to the heavenly wedding feast of God with his people. And this is a wedding feast at which everyone is welcome; everyone is invited, where every person is valued and every voice heard.
The mood of a good wedding is infectious; like the cautious yet joyful radiance of a bride, a couple just embarking on their journey together, it gives confidence to everyone who’s part of it.
The wedding feast at Cana challenges us to trust in the overflowing reality of God’s love, in the ordinary water of life that becomes the extraordinarily good wine. Just as Jesus brings life to the wedding party when things ran out, so he comes to us with the superabundance of his grace to make all things new.