Jesus said to the servants: “Fill the jars with water”, and they filled them to the brim. “Draw some out now and take it to the steward.” This they did; the steward tasted the water, and it had turned into wine. John 2: 1-11
While our Bibles often give the title of this story “The Wedding Feast of Cana”, It is about something other than a wedding feast. The main characters are Mary and Jesus, with subsidiary roles allocated to the servants working to provide for all gathered for the celebration. What the other Evangelists would call a miracle, John labelled what Jesus did as a “sign”. His changing of the water into wine was, for John, a sign, a signal, an indication of what was to come for the inhabitants of Israel and for all of humanity once the kingdom of God, which Jesus had come to introduce, took hold. This story is bordering on being a parable of the munificence of God’s love for humanity.
Wedding celebrations in the time of Jesus sometimes extended into several days. Still, 600 litres of superior wine would have been well and truly in excess of what was required in addition to what had already been consumed. The changing of the water into wine is the first of a succession of Signs described by John to indicate that Jesus had come to reveal to the world the extravagance of God’s love for humankind and God’s endless beneficence offered to all who would recognise and receive it.
In chapter 6 of his Gospel, John told the story of a parallel event which illustrated the boundless love and compassion of God. It is the story of the feeding of the 5000 strong crowd and shows how God is willing and able to take the little we have to offer and transform it. Given freely, God takes our little and multiplies it limitlessly. (See John 6: 1-14). John labelled this as a Sign of God’s extravagant love reflected to the world in the person of Jesus and a clear indicator that Jesus was the Messiah, God’s anointed.
Back, briefly, to the story of the changing of the water into wine. It is rich with symbolism. John mentioned, almost as an aside, that Jesus directed the servants to fill with water a set of “empty ceremonial jars”. Scripture scholars are agreed that John did not waste words or use them simply to fill out his stories. The ceremonies that Jesus encountered in the synagogues he entered and in the great Temple of Jerusalem were empty, lifeless and soulless. The servants’ filling of the empty, ceremonial jars to the brim was a symbol of their enthusiasm. In John’s mind the issue at stake in this story was much more than a lack of wine. It was a loss and lack of passion in the way in which God’s people had come to live their lives and practice their worship.
Might there be in this story a wake-up call to us? Have we settled for “same old, same old” meaningless grind in the way we live our lives, minus passion or any indication of rejuvenation? Are we satisfied with going through the motions when we gather for the Eucharistic liturgy, sticking mindlessly to rituals the meaning of which is lost to us? Could we justifiably be accused of the sin of settlement?
Worthy of note in this story is the fact that, when Mary drew her son’s attention to the pending embarrassment for the party’s hosts, Jesus responded with: “Woman, why turn to me? My hour has not come yet.”
Maybe Mary was a step ahead of her son in her theology. Her action indicated that anyone truly present to what was developing could not avoid being involved. True presence leads to either compassion or neglect. Neglect for Jesus would have been a total contradiction of who he was. His mother proved to be the consummate organiser, fully in touch with the mission her son had undertaken.
The focus of Jesus’ stated mission of ushering in the kingdom of God was the re-establishment of the relationship between God and God’s people. That relationship had been repeatedly described throughout the Old/First Testament as a marriage relationship. So, it is not coincidental that John chose a wedding feast as the context in which to indicate that Jesus’ changing the water into wine was a portent of what was to come. If we let ourselves be influenced by the God of extravagant love, the manner in which we reflect that love to our world will be beyond our imagining. Are we prepared to let our emptiness be filled and our lives transformed? Can we dare to listen to the directions Mary gave the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.”?
