GLORY
John 2:1-11
January 14, 2007
The 2nd
Sunday after Epiphany
First Presbyterian
Church ~ Owensboro, Kentucky
Rev.
Jonathan E. Carroll, Th.M.
Let’s imagine that we are all here this
morning because we want to be together in the presence of God; because we want
to get close to God. Let’s say that’s why you have gotten up, gotten dressed,
and come into this place — to be close to God and all that God promises to
bring into our life together.
The Fourth Gospel is unique, distinctly
different from the other three which tend to see the events that unfold around
the person of Jesus quite similarly. No, John’s Gospel is different; it’s
purpose is to allow a fresh, new vision of who God is by inviting us to take
him seriously as one through whom God is working God’s purposes out. The first
12 chapters of the Fourth Gospel are called The
Book of Signs; not miracles, signs. The first of these “signs” is this, the
turning of water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana.
First of all, the amount of water in
this story is huge and significant. It measures to about 120 to 180 gallons of
water. What were they doing with all that water? This water is for purposes
having to do with worship; it is for the Jewish rites of Purification. The Jews
had many such rites for making oneself pure. Here, in this story, 120 to 180
gallons of water is present, enough for a hot tub or two. This is for the
ritual of purification.
The ritual of purification was strictly
regulated by the Torah – the Law. This was not water for cleansing, but rather
water as a sign of preparation to worship – preparation for drawing together to
meet God, to get close to God, to be one with God in one place. And the Torah
declared that in order to do that, one needed to get clean, by ritual
cleansing. In fact, in the Talmud (that corpus of civil and ceremonial law and
legend), it is specified how much water is needed for the rites of
purification. Only about a cup of water was necessary to purify a hundred men.
But here, in this story, there is well over a hundred gallons of water! That is
enough water to purify the entire world!
Get it? When Jesus is present, there is
always more than enough, and for his disciples and the early church who
experienced this story, Jesus is that
purifying water which is available in enough quantity for the whole world.
The water in the jars was water used
for the rites of purification, so that people would be ready to worship. As
people came into the wedding to worship God they would dip their hands into the
water and purify themselves, making themselves ready for to be with God.
It has been said of the Gospel of John
that it is a “pool in which a child may wade and an elephant may swim.” In
other words, it is so simple, so accessible, so inviting and safe; and it is
deeply complex, as well. So while it would be easy for us to think that the
meaning of the story is that Jesus saved the caterers’ reputation taking plain
drinking water and turning it into wonderful wine, we would have missed the
sign. You see, the issue here is purification, making oneself right with God. The old churchy word for
this is justification? How does one
get close to God? Jesus has, in this story, transferred us from one means of
getting close to God — the rituals of purification as specified in Torah — to himself.
He has become, in this story, the new
way, the new path to God.
The steward of the party notes that, in
most of these affairs, the good stuff is always saved until the last. Now the
author is making the same claim about Jesus. Throughout the history of Israel,
God sent the great patriarchs and the prophets. But now, in Jesus, the best is
being saved until the last. Earlier the Fourth Gospel writer claimed that John
the Baptizer was former; that Jesus is the one to come later and to bring the
life that God longs to give. You get these comparisons throughout the Gospel of
John. First Adam, now Jesus. First Moses, now Jesus. First John the Baptizer,
now Jesus. John’s Gospel seems to be saying, if you want to know who God is –
God’s character, purpose, and love – take a long, hard look at Jesus.
In verse 10, the story seems to stop.
The narrator steps in and says, “This is the first of his signs.” Remember, in
John’s gospel a sign is not a “miracle” as we sometimes describe miracles, some
reversal of natural processes. A sign is something which points beyond itself
to something else.
As Will Willimon once proposed: “If you
look in your rearview mirror and see a flashing blue light, and you say, ‘There
is a policeman behind me,’ you do not really mean that. What you mean is that
this is a sign that a policeman is on his way. The sign precedes the thing
itself, points beyond itself to the real thing which is on its way.” This is
said to be the first of his signs, a sign pointing to his glory. When they saw
the sign, they saw glory. Suddenly, a mere wedding party transformed into an
occasion of revelation, a moment when some were brought close to God.
You’re here because you want to be
close to God. I am, too. But how can we? Am I only speaking for my own
experience when I say that I’ve been told that with my sin, my brokenness, my
inadequacies I keep myself far from God? How can we come close to God? Haven’t
I stood on the bathroom scales fully dressed: “Well, it’s because I’m wearing
heavy clothes today,” I say, deceiving myself and everyone else? Somebody like
me is going to get close to God?
Jesus is God’s act of coming close to
us – to all humanity – even in the face of humanity’s self-designed attempts at
salvation.
In other words, this story speaks about
Jesus as Messiah, Jesus in his Messianic form, Jesus as God among us. Messiah
means “the Anointed One,” the one who is anointed by God to stand for God; the
One sent by God to do God’s work in the world.
And yet I fear that the contemporary
church is guilty of frequently using Jesus for non-Messianic purposes. The
other day, I saw a sign advertising a garage. It showed a man with a gigantic
wrench ready to fix your car. At the bottom of the sign it said, “A Christian
business.” There is an entire phone book published much like the Yellow Pages
that will tell you which businesses are “Christian” ones. “Christian” has
become an adjective, modifying the noun, (in this case) business. Christ is
judged basically on the virtue of his utility, his helpfulness in getting
things that we want, things that we wanted before we met Jesus. This is a
non-Messianic use of Jesus. So we
come to church hoping to find self-esteem, or peace of mind, or for help making
it through next week. All of that may happen here, but it’s not the main event.
The main event is to come here hoping to meet, or more to the point of today’s
gospel, hoping to be met by God.
Note in the story that Jesus is clearly
in command of the situation. He gives the orders. He makes the sign. The Gospel
of John presents Jesus as the Messiah who brings us close to the glory of God.
Jesus bursts in as Messiah, devastating all of our self-salvations. In his
temptation in the wilderness, he was tempted by Satan to turn stones into
bread. Now, we want him to turn water into wine. Turning water into wine is
impressive. Yet, it is trivial, in itself. When you think about it, this is a
rather trivial way to begin a gospel — at an ordinary wedding reception with
ordinary problems like the wine running short. But by the end of this story,
all of this has been swept away. Glory breaks out. Glory is to God what style
is to an artist, what method is to a winemaker. A painting by Vermeer is so
rich with the style of the one who painted it that, for those who have eyes to
see, it couldn’t have bee made by anyone else. And that style brings you close
to the artist, closer than anything else. To behold God’s glory is the closest
we can get this side of Paradise, like reading Macbeth is the closest we can
get to Shakespeare. “Glory,” says Frederick Buechner, “is what God looks like
when for the time being all you have to look at him with is a pair of eyes.”
You see, in Cana, we are invited to stop using Jesus, and to simply look at
him, instead, to see the Messiah in him shine through, to know God.
I wonder: Is the church’s Jesus merely
the church’s errand boy? Is the church’s Jesus the creation of the church, or
is the church the new creation of Jesus? Jesus is among us, not to provide
wine, but to bring glory – a picture of God embodied for all the world to see.
Apparently, the party gets better the longer you stick around. Glory. Amen.
