Sunday 19 January 2025
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” (vs 1-3)
Background
The story of the wedding at Cana is a slightly awkward one for Methodists, with our temperance movement heritage and our commitment to non-alcoholic wine for communion! But the writer of John’s Gospel clearly wants us to reflect on the theological implications of this first miracle, introducing themes which illuminate Jesus’ whole life and ministry.
The story begins with a reference to ‘the third day’. The wedding party clearly happened three days after John 1:43, when Jesus went to Galilee and invited Philip to follow him; Philip then invited Nathanael; and Jesus promised Nathanael that he would see ‘heaven opened’ (John 1:51). This explicit linking of the miracle at Cana with the start of Jesus’ public ministry alerts us to the significance of what Jesus is doing. But it also looks forward to another miraculous and unexpected third day miracle which will change everything when Jesus rises from the dead.
At the wedding at Cana the wine runs out. John tells us, in realistic detail, that "standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons." (v 6) Stone jars were used because if anything unclean were to fall into a clay jar holding water for ritual cleansing, the whole jar had to be broken (Leviticus 11:33). But even for a wedding with a large number of guests, this is a huge amount of water. John wants us to recognise the sheer extravagance of the miracle of turning so much water into wine.
In his telling of the feeding of the 5000 (John 6:1-14) the same extravagance is evidenced – Philip estimates that it would cost six months’ wages to feed the crowd, yet there were 12 baskets of scraps left over. No information is irrelevant in John’s Gospel: we are invited to recognise the significance of these two miracles of abundance involving bread and wine.
And so the stone jars of the Levitical custom are lavishly filled with the best new wine. The old law is not rejected, but something new is gloriously created out of the old tradition. In John’s Gospel ordinary things are continuously transfigured in the life and ministry of Jesus as signs of God’s grace. The Lectionary sets this reading on the second Sunday after Epiphany as a sign of the revelation of God’s transforming power.
To Ponder:
- Have you ever experienced something of God’s extravagant grace?
- How are old traditions combined with new possibilities in your own faith journey?
- Look around you now. What ordinary things might give you a glimpse of God’s glory?
Prayer
Holy God, you promise us good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over. Give us the faith to open our minds and hearts to your extravagant love, living faithfully in the gap between how things are and how things will be. Amen.
Bibles Notes author: The Revd Val Reid
Val Reid is a newly retired presbyter who lives in Salisbury. She is exploring what ministry looks like in this new season of her life and relishes time for choral singing, wild swimming and walks in the New Forest.