Poor Wine
John 2:1-11
January 17, 2010
One thing we learned several years ago when our congregation seriously studied the nature of marriage is that there is no one model of marriage that fits all, and certainly the Bible presents an overwhelming diversity of marriage - most forms of which we do not like or appreciate.
Most weddings have included dancing, usually afterwards at the reception. Once again, nothing really new of course, there are some who dance in the wedding. If you were able to watch the YouTube video of the St. Paul wedding of Jill and Kevin, the entire wedding party danced down the aisle, several times, bringing quite a different nuance to the term “processional.” This was not Pachelbel’s “Canon in D”! The entrance first of the groom and climatically of the bride were, to say the least, unique. No one in the congregation knew what was coming, but it was reported that the groom’s grandmother danced her way out of the sanctuary during the “recessional.”
Several people have wondered out loud what happened that fateful day in the minister’s office when the bride and groom told her, “This is what we would like to do....” I can feel Hart cringing now, though we have conducted many different styles and flavours of wedding here, and certainly will do some more in the future.
Is this the point at which I should be expounding on the virtues of a proper Christian marriage? I would be foolish to do so. Remember that program “Kids Say the Darndest Things”? Well, people get married for the darndest reasons. Many don’t survive, of course, but many that do survive are not anybody’s image of a marriage made in heaven. Good marriages are evidence of God’s grace, whether the couple is Christian or any other faith or no faith. If there were one characteristic of marriage it would be one of a lot of talking. Talking all the time with one another, and let me leave it at that.
My hesitancy to describe marriage is Biblical, for in this famous story from the Gospel according to John, nothing is told us at all about the wedding itself. As much as Jesus uses wedding metaphors in his parables and teaching, he never talks about what a good marriage ought to be. He does offer that thundering piece about divorcing and adultery, and then only that memorable line about becoming no longer two, but one. How and why we should be married in the first place baffles Jesus too. I am not supposed to tell you about the qualities of a good marriage, and so it’s your task to talk with one another about why you are married and why it’s been good. Talk about religion being dangerous!
There is something peculiar about this story of a wedding in Cana of Galilee. It starts at the very beginning of Chapter 2, so there has not been a lot of action and background to Jesus’ ministry building up. In fact, he has just finished recruiting his first four disciples and they are all off to a wedding. While this is a story told in a narrative sequential style, we are not given the time to put everything properly in its place.
The chapter begins, however, “On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee....” Third day after what? There is no Day One or Day Two mentioned. Instead, this is Biblical numerology at its subtle best. On the third day he rose from the dead, and so the announcement of the third day indicates that something resurrectional is afoot, something to do with the Messiah. The fact that there is a banquet is a sign of the heavenly banquet in the kingdom of heaven. There’s always food in heaven, so maybe all our United Church suppers aren’t that far off.
There is no mention of the wedding, no happy couple, just an administrative faux pas - the wine failed - the wedding planner had miscalculated. All right, this was embarrassing, but no one was hurt, no one lost their life. But the wine was gone, and the mother of Jesus turns to him and says, “They have no wine.” In what tone of voice do you think she spoke? Jesus replies with some umbrage, but there is an understanding between the two. “Do whatever he tells you,” she orders the servants. There were a bunch of huge stone jars, 20-30 gallons capacity and Jesus had them fill them up, then take a cup to the steward of the feast. The narrative simply says that the steward tasted the water now become wine and is amazed and delighted. People usually get everyone drunk on the good wine first, then bring out the poor wine and nobody knows or cares for the difference. But this time the best stuff is saved for the last.
Do you realize how much trouble this Cana in Galilee wedding party has caused? In the late 1800’s so many Christians were convinced that what the Gospels called wine could not possibly be wine that they were willing to commit intellectual hari-kari to prove it. Thomas Bramwell Welch concocted this unfermented grape juice as a non-alcoholic alternative to wine for communion. It was promoted at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, “out of a passion to serve God by helping his church to give its communion as ‘the fruit of the vine’ instead of the ‘cup of the devil.’” Some were so convinced that it had to be grape juice, that when the steward proclaimed that this was the best stuff, the dry Christians knew, of course, it was Welch’s!
Well, the last drink may have come from those scholars who have utilized social research into that era to interpret the text. Wine was the preferred drink of the elite, the Romans, while the common folk drank beer. It does not seem right that Jesus who mixed it up with prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners would have chosen the beverage of the rich and powerful instead of the drink of the people. We always knew Jesus was a Canadian.
No matter what the guests drank, it was the poor wine that we can do without. This is the first of Jesus’ “Signs” - there would be seven - signs that with and around Jesus, the poor stuff just won’t do. This is Third Day - and on the Third Day you don’t settle for poor wine. Everybody was settling for the poor stuff, no one will notice, we are just going to keep up the appearance of being busy and doing what is normal. By the way, hardly anybody at the wedding banquet recognized that something different had happened, that something had changed from the ordinary. The disciples saw what had happened, they drank what had happened. This was to be a ride where nothing normal would be able to get in their way and slow them down to the ordinary. Before they knew the word resurrection, they had experienced a way of life that continually and inexplicably would defeat death and create a way of life unimaginable.
Hey, we are the disciples in this place, let’s stop using the poor stuff - and expect resurrection. And during the coffee hour, watch the juice.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan