Perceptions from a Pewboy

In my twenty years of pastoral ministry, I have officiated at 197 weddings. That averages out to be about 10 weddings a year. I know the wedding liturgy like the back of my hand. In fact, one time, I was dreaming that I was officiating at a wedding, and when I woke up, I actually was! My experience tells me that, in the cultural hoopla that often surrounds the contemporary wedding, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain a spirit of worshipful and Christ-centered integrity in the process of planning and facilitating a service of Holy Matrimony.

But whenever I am tempted to lose my belief in the sanctity of weddings, I normally spend some time in the second chapter of John’s Gospel. I do this because, in that particular chapter, Jesus finds himself at a wedding. His presence there is a powerful reminder to me that Jesus must have believed that weddings were worth attending and celebrating. His presence at that wedding reminds me that I can ill afford to become so cynical that I lose sight of the sacred marital covenant that lies beneath all the layers of cultural distortion.

The wedding at which we find Jesus is not a celebrity wedding. It is not the wedding of a dignitary or a social bigwig. Rather, it is a small town wedding, filled with small town people. The small town in question is Cana of Galilee. Jesus is there. So is his mother, Mary, and so are his disciples. The fact that all of them were invited leads us to believe that perhaps the bride or groom is a relative of Jesus’ family, or at the very least a close family friend. At any rate, everyone is celebrating—and yes, no matter how hard the faithful United Methodist or Baptist might try to avoid this detail, wine was involved in the celebration. Not drunkenness. Scripture speaks against that. But we cannot deny the fact the celebration of a first century Palestinian wedding included the enjoyment of wine. That detail, of course, makes the crisis of John 2 all the more compelling, and that crisis is this: They run out of wine at the wedding celebration.

Were there more guests than they had anticipated? Were people consuming at a faster rate than they had calculated? Did somebody forget a case of Kendall Jackson down at the state store? We don’t know. All we do know is the celebration is still going on, and there is no more wine to be found.

There’s a panic—much like the panic that would occur at a Steeler tailgating party if the supply of Iron City ran out. Mary, the mother of Jesus, somehow gets pulled into the panic. Maybe someone in the wedding party pulled her aside and said, “Look, we have a little problem here. We’re out of wine. So we thought maybe you could talk to Jesus. We don’t know if it will do any good, but we figure that anyone whose baptism inspires the heavens to open could probably put together a few jugs of cabernet!”

Mary says to Jesus, in true, motherly, passive-aggressive fashion: “They have no wine.”

(Translation: “Jesus, do something!”)

Jesus response is interesting: “Woman,” he says, “what concern is this to you and me?” Don’t assume that there is annoyance or disrespect in Jesus’ words. What Jesus is really asking is a reasonable question: “Woman, is this really something that should concern us? I’m not sure that this is something significant enough for us to panic over. It’s just wine, for goodness sake. What does this have to do with us?” Then Jesus adds this phrase: “My hour has not yet come.” What does he mean by that? Does he mean that the time for miracles has not yet come? Does he mean that the time for revealing his glory has not come? We’re not certain. But it is clear that Jesus’ first inclination here is not to do anything that is going to draw attention to his miracle-working power. He senses that the time is not yet right for that, that the conditions are not yet conducive to people being receptive to what he might have to offer.

Mary, not receiving the response for which she had been hoping, walks off, but not before offering one final word of instruction to the servants who were standing nearby: “Do whatever he tells you,” she says to the servants.

(Translation: “Just in case he changes his mind about doing something to help our wine situation, follow his instructions, no matter how strange they might seem.”)

(Further translation: “Even if Jesus asks you to stand on your head and whistle, do it.”)

We are not told about Jesus’ thought process over the next few minutes of the story. But he must have been thinking about something that inspired him to change his mind. Perhaps it occurred to him how much of a social embarrassment it would be to the bride and groom to run out of wine at their own wedding. Or perhaps he sensed that people would lose their focus on the celebration and start griping about what they didn’t have. Or perhaps Jesus simply had a hankering for a good pinot noir! Whatever his reasoning, Jesus decides to do something significant. He instructs the servants to fill the jars with water, which they do. He then instructs them to give some of that water to the chief steward to try, which they also do. When the steward drinks the water, his tastebuds, along with the tingle in his throat, tell him a mysterious truth: The water was water no longer. Somehow, the water had become very good wine. Problem solved. Crisis averted. Miracle rendered.

This is Jesus’ first recorded miracle in John’s gospel. Part of what I appreciate about the miracle is that it is relatively insignificant and small in the larger scheme of things, especially when compared to some of Jesus’ other miracles. After all, compared to healing a leper, or making a lame man to walk, or blind man to see, or compared to causing Lazarus to walk out of the grave, what’s a little bit of wine at a wedding?

But therein, I think, is part of the revelation. The story tells us that it doesn’t have to be something monumental in order for Jesus to pay attention to it. It simply has to be something close to the human heart. Jesus cares about the things that mean something to us. Think about the significance of that. The God of the Universe becomes incarnate in a Jesus who pays attention even to the small things. People’s feelings. People’s dignity. People’s pain. People’s embarrassment over not ordering enough wine for the wedding. Jesus cares about those things.

He might have said to his mother, “Woman, does this small thing really concern me?” But he eventually answers his own question in the affirmative. “Yes, as a matter of fact, this small thing DOES concern me. And I’m going to do something about it.” In a world in which we are often made to feel anonymous and unknown, as though we are little more than a social security number, tonight we are blessed with a story that reminds us that Jesus is different than the world. Jesus is attentive to the small things like people’s feelings and their wedding celebrations. In that sense, maybe this first miracle is just as important as all the rest, but in a different kind of way.

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