Sermon for Epiphany 2C, January 17, 2016

Text: John 2:1-11

            Beloved in Christ, parents warn their sons to steer clear of a lifestyle of “wine, women, and song.” Drunkenness, lechery, and frivolity never helped anyone. It certainly never helped develop moral character or maturity. And so it might seem strange that our Lord would go to a party and turn water into wine. Even if there was nothing immoral going on, it seems too ordinary, too secular, too profane an occasion for Him to perform His first miracle there. His first miracle should have been something grander, such as a matter of life and death, not a simple embarrassing situation.

            But “God created the heavens and the earth” and so “the earth is the LORD’S and the fullness thereof”—including all the mundane things such as a wedding party. But because the whole world has been tainted by sin, everything in it—including mundane things such as a wedding party—need to be redeemed by the Lord. Young men should be told that there is nothing wrong with “wine, women, and song,” as long as we receive them as gifts from the Lord. But when we abuse these gifts, when we get drunk on wine, turn women merely into sex objects to satisfy our lusts, and when we never “sing…the songs of Zion” but only vulgar ditties, then we must be redeemed, that is, brought back to wholeness. That redemption takes place only in Christ Jesus, and so it is not surprising that our Lord would attend a wedding and show us what a redeemed life would look like with regards to wine, women, and song.

Bartolome Murillo, Wedding at Cana

            That would be grounds enough for us to look carefully at this first miracle of our Lord. But the Apostle John goes on to call this miracle a “sign.” In fact, John will call all our Lord’s miracles “signs.” We instead tend to speak of them as “miracles” because we want to emphasize that these are not ordinary happenings, but rather something supernatural. But John calls them “signs” because they point to something greater than the merely miraculous event. They are teaching something about God and His kingdom. And so today I would like to look at this particular sign and what is pointed out by the wine, women, and song of the miracle at Cana.

            Long before Christ came, wine had been used by the prophets of the Old Testament as an image of the joy of fellowship with God, especially the fellowship that the Messiah would bring. To be sure, there are some negative references to wine also throughout the Scriptures. When they speak of God punishing the unrepentant, they often compare the wicked to people who are forced to drink wine down to the last drop. One gets the impression that such people are not altogether unwilling drinkers, even if it leaves them reeling. You see, the wicked who refuse to repent would rather cling to their wickedness, even if they know that there will be consequences. It is as if they want to be drunk on their own selfish desires, and God says, “Drink up,” even if it means they have a bitter hangover. But notice that it is drunkenness—not moderate enjoyment of wine—that is a metaphor for judgment.

            Instead the moderate use of wine is often a metaphor for the joy of fellowship with God. The psalmist notes that God had given “wine to gladden man’s heart.” Therefore, it is not surprising to see another psalmist say, “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.” In other words, he would savor God’s salvation as one might savor a wine of fine vintage as he prayed to the Lord for help. But lest we think too literally about this wine, another psalmist makes it clear that God’s salvation is better than wine: “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their wine and grain abounds,” he says. And so the messianic age is described with images of grapes and wine. It is like a feast on a mountain with rich wine. It is like hills and mountains dripping with wine.

            But, of course, there wasn’t much wine at this wedding party in Cana. The closest thing they had to wine was water, and even that water wasn’t in pitchers used for drinking water. Instead, this water was stored in massive stone containers designated for ceremonial washing. It would take all the water in these six jars to bathe one’s whole body or all the water in just one of these jars to wash one’s hands adequately so that one would not be ceremonially unclean when entering the house.

            Now why did they have these jars here? There is nothing in the Old Testament law about washing frequently in order to become holy. Yes, if you had become unclean, you would have to wash at the end of the day so that you could become clean again. But there was nothing about washing your hands whenever you came back from the market lest you have any taint of uncleanness sticking to you from there. That was an invention of the Pharisees. But that sort of idea percolates when you do not focus on the true Redeemer of the world. You blame your sins on the uncleanness out in the marketplace rather than on the sinful heart that resides within you. You pretend that washing yourself of the world will make you all right. Yes, religious people are greatly tempted to do this, but even utterly secular people wash themselves of others whom they deem the great unwashed. They deny the evil that resides within themselves but think others cause all the problems. We all like to pretend that the problem comes from outside of ourselves rather than inside of us.

            But sin was vanquished when Christ atoned for our sins and the sins of the whole world. He could rightly have washed Himself of humanity since He was not responsible for our sins, but instead He poured out His blood that was as red as the wine that flowed from those jars. His blood would take the place of the repeated washings done in Judaism. The joy of Christ’s salvation takes the place of our efforts to purify ourselves and make ourselves acceptable to God.

            So that is the meaning of the wine in this miracle. Let us turn now from wine to women—or to be more accurate, marriage. Like wine, marriage is an ancient biblical metaphor for describing the relationship between God and His people. Throughout the Scriptures God is compared to a husband and the church is compared to a wife. The intimacy a married couple enjoys is like that between God and His people. Just as a good husband naturally is willing to lay down his life for her, so Christ, the Son of God, laid down His life in order to save the church. Just as a good wife loves her husband in return, so the church loves and honors Christ. In fact, as Paul makes clear in Ephesians 5, it isn’t that the relationship between God and His people imitates a marriage but rather the opposite: human marriage imitates the relationship between God and His people. That is why we Christians are going to have a different understanding of marriage than our secular counterparts do. They see the family as a short-term arrangement that can be construed any way they want. They see lifelong fidelity as a burden to be minimized, since they value passion over commitment. But we understand things differently. God doesn’t love us and leave us. His love lasts forever. And so we will naturally live differently in our marriages because we have a different view of God. We do so not only because we think that it is a better way of living, but to change our view of marriage would mean we would have to change our view of God.

            Now when Christ came, the marriage between God and His people had been very rocky. The prophets Hosea and Ezekiel were quite frank about this, pointing out that God had been faithful but His people had been cheating on Him by sinning and worshipping idols. And so by performing this miracle at a wedding, Christ was announcing that God was going to undertake the hard work of getting the marriage back on track. He was going to shoulder the burden, even though He wasn’t the one who had made the marriage a wreck. But because He gave Himself wholeheartedly to redeem us, the marriage has been saved. There is love between God and His people once again.

            So far we’ve talked about wine and women. Next comes song. I know that I’m stretching things here, since there isn’t anything mentioned about music in our text. Nonetheless, we in the church sing about the things that are talked about in today’s Gospel. We read that the “disciples believed in Him.” And we are told that the master of the feast praised the wine that Christ had created. That is what our songs are about. They reflect our faith in Christ and praise God for His goodness. They confess, “He has done all things well.”

            Yes, there are other forms of music besides church hymnody. They have a proper setting. There is nothing wrong with listening to some popular music as you work out at the gym or drive in your car. There is nothing wrong with singing some sea chanties or folk songs with people who enjoy them. Of course, I’m assuming that the lyrics of all these songs are fitting for Christians to sing—and not all are. But in the Christian church the hymns and canticles we sing proclaim our faith so that we can strengthen ourselves by those words and teach the faith to those who do not yet know it.

            So, yes, indeed this miracle is full of “wine, women, and song,” but it points us to the wine of gladness that comes from our salvation, the bride of Christ redeemed by Him and loved deeply by Him, and the hymnody that proclaims these truths. In Jesus’ name. Amen.