"What Would You Ask of Jesus?" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday January 19, 2025 – 2^nd Sunday After Epiphany
Scripture:  John 2:1-11


Having spent all of the season of Advent immersed in Mary’s story, I probably shouldn’t be surprised that when I read the story of the wedding at Cana this month, Mary’s perspective was the one that I gravitated towards.  And using the same technique that I use when I’m writing my story-telling sermons, I started imagining myself into her story.

Why was she at the wedding?  Cana is less than 10km away from Nazareth where Mary was likely living – closer than our Two Rivers Churches are from each other.  Back in Advent, when I mentioned this story, I imagined that a young woman from Nazareth was marrying a young man from Cana, and so a wedding might have brought the two villages together.  Or maybe one of Mary’s sisters had married into a family in Cana, so she was there attending the wedding of one of her nephews, one of Jesus’s cousins.  That might explain why Jesus and his friends were also at the wedding.  It’s interesting to note that John doesn’t have Jesus and his mother arriving together – he tells us that the mother of Jesus was there at the wedding, and that Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to that wedding.

Imagining myself into Mary’s perspective again, I wonder how Mary knew that the wine supply was exhausted.  If it were a family wedding, she might have been involved in hosting duties, supervising the food and wine, making sure that it was being served on schedule.  And so the wine running out would have been a cause for panic for her.

But another possibility is that she was simply observant.  Maybe, as she was enjoying the party, enjoying the food and music and dancing, as she was watching her friends and neighbours enjoying the party, she noticed a flurry of agitation among the servants.  And so observation combined with curiosity might have led to her asking the question – what’s going on here.

Which brings me to my last question about Mary.  How did she know that Jesus would be able to do something about the wine shortage?  John, our narrator, tells us that this was the first of Jesus’s signs, implying that he hadn’t performed any other signs before this one.  If you flip back to chapter 1, you will find the story of John the Baptist, as well as Jesus calling his first disciples, but you don’t find any stories of miracles.  Unlike the other gospels, John leaves out the story of Jesus’s baptism, so we don’t get to see the Holy Spirit descending like a dove; and we don’t get to hear the voice of the one whom Jesus calls “Father” proclaiming Jesus to be the beloved child.  John also doesn’t give us a birth story for Jesus – no angels, no shepherds or wise men, no heavenly chorus, no extraordinary star, not even any dreams.  This story of the Wedding at Cana is the first time that Jesus’s mother makes an appearance in the story.

And yet, even though all of these things are missing from the story, Jesus’s mother still knows that her son is able to do something so that the family hosting the wedding won’t be shamed for failing to extend the hospitality that was expected of them.

And not only does she know that Jesus can do something, she persists even when Jesus’s first answer is “no.”  Even when Jesus replies, saying, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?” – incidentally, this response is just as rude in the original Greek as it is in our English translation – even when Jesus replies, saying, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?” Mary brushes off his rejection.  She goes ahead, assumes that he is going to do something about the wine shortage, and tells the servants to do whatever her boy tells them to do.

How did Mary know?  I don’t have a good answer to this question, beyond letting my imagination take flight, so I will leave that question to your imagination.  How did Mary know that her boy would be able to do something about the impending catastrophe?

And, as we can see from the story, her trust in her child was fully justified.  In fact, Jesus’s response to the situation far exceeded anyone’s expectations.  Jesus’s response to the situation likely exceeded anyone’s wildest hopes.  Six stone water jars, holding water used for purification rituals, suddenly held wine instead of water.  And an abundance of wine.  If each stone jar held 20-30 gallons of water, let’s take the average of 25 gallons.  And there were six of them, so 150 gallons of wine.  Or, since I think in metric, 568 litres of wine, give or take depending on the exact size of the water jars.  Or more than 750 bottles of wine, using the modern 750mL wine bottle size.  This is an abundance of wine appearing at a banquet when the wine was about to run out.

And not just ordinary wine, the cheap stuff that would normally be served once the guests are drunk, but this was fine wine, better wine than anyone had ever tasted before.

And with this wine, the hospitality of the hosts could continue, the blanket of fear and anxiety was lifted, and the joy of the celebration could continue.

I love the story of the Wedding at Cana, not because of the wine (though part of me wishes that I could taste a sip of this most excellent wine), but because it is a story of abundance and a story of joy.

In the gospel of John, Jesus’s miraculous acts are never referred to as miracles – instead John names them as signs.  And if you think about what signs are, signs point to things.  If you’re driving into town, you might pass a sign that says “Saint John, next exit” and the purpose of that sign is to point you towards the next exit if you are trying to get to Saint John.

And so by naming Jesus’s miraculous acts as “signs” John is telling us that these acts point us towards something.  Jesus’s miraculous acts, like turning water into wine, are signs of how Jesus presents God to the world.  With this sign, Jesus is pointing us towards a God whose essence, whose core values are joy and abundance.

There are so many theological nuances in this story that I could explore.  It begins with a reference to the third day which, to a reader who knows Jesus’s full story, has us thinking about Easter and resurrection right from the beginning.  The water in the jugs might make us think of the waters of baptism.  The wine might also have us making connections with communion, and the feast that we celebrate as the church.  The fact that it was water that was used for purification rituals might help our brains make the additional leap to think of the communion wine that we share as being purifying in some way.  Even the setting of a wedding can remind us of the teaching that the church is the bride of Christ.  Each one of these theological details and hints in this story could be a sermon on its own; but don’t worry – I’m not going to try and preach all of those sermons this morning.

Instead, the place where I want to end is with those questions of trust and abundance.  Mary trusted that Jesus would answer her plea, and even when his first answer was no, her trust wasn’t shaken and she persisted.

And so the question that I want to ask each of you is:  What would you ask of Jesus, if, like Mary, you trusted that his response would be abundance.  What would we ask of Jesus if we trusted that his response would be abundance?  And then a second follow-up question:  What keeps us from asking?

May God hear our prayers; and then, in the right time and in the right way, answer them.  Amen.

“The Wedding at Cana”
JESUS MAFA
Used with Permission