The Second Sunday after the Epiphany 2023
St. John 2.1-11
January 15 A+D 2023
A wise man once said, “Some people work very hard at top speed, only to find themselves falling further behind.” Does that describe your life? It’s tempting to imagine that this is the result of our always-connected devices, with the expectation that you work from the moment you awake until the moment before your head hits the pillow. Certainly the ability to be on another continent in a matter of hours, and the twenty-four hour news cycle, leads to a frenzied sort of existence. But at its core, the saying reflects a very old problem. This saying—“Some people work very hard at top speed, only to find themselves falling further behind”—this saying comes from The Wisdom of Sirach [11.11 NJB], a second-century BC Jewish book similar to Proverbs. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I read from the NJB; the ESV is a bit more stately: “There is a man who works and toils and presses on, but falls behind so much the more.”
That idea of failing, falling, falling behind – it’s a universal human experience. Try as we might to accumulate resources, it’s never enough. And time, our most precious commodity, is steadily ticking away. All the fears about population and climate change reflect the human anxiety that we are running short, lacking, dying.
That’s what underlies today’s Gospel. It’s a real event, not a parable. Jesus really did change water into wine at Cana. It’s not fiction – but it is loaded with symbolism. Running out of wine makes the wedding a failure.
The Marriage of Shawn Barnett & Molly Leithart
Man was made for weddings. The Bible begins & ends with them. In the beginning, God makes the man, then the woman, and unites them in sacred marriage. In the new beginning, in Rev. 21 & 22, there is a new heavens & a new earth, and another marriage, between Christ & His bride the Church.
It’s no mistake that as we now approach the end of this world, marriage is under direct assault. First came no-fault divorce, then the acceptability of physical intimacy outside of wedlock, and now the breakdown of the foundations of human biology, that we are irrevocably male or female, by God’s good design.
In the book of the prophet Hosea, God has Hosea marry a prostitute, who is, to no ones surprise, unfaithful to him. Their marriage is an enacted parable of the infidelity of Israel to God.
When Jesus attends & transforms the wedding at Cana, St. John tells us this is the “beginning of signs.” It could be translated the “chief” of signs, from which all the other signs flow. Which is to say, Jesus has come to restore everything broken in this world, and particularly to bestow joy. That’s what wine represents in the Scriptures – joy, especially communal joy.
They’re terribly convenient, but those tiny little bottles of wine they pass out on airplanes should be abolished. Wine is meant for conviviality, a communal celebration, and ultimately, dare I say, communion in all the senses of that word.
Weddings, in the Jewish and Christian sense, anticipate the kingdom of the heavens. But lacking wine, the wedding at Cana was rapidly becoming not heavenly but more like the other place. “They wanted wine.” They lacked, they ran short; joy was gone, replaced by shame.
That’s the human condition. That’s what faces you. So Psalm 39 teaches us to pray, “O Lord, make me to know mine end, and the number of my days, what it is; that I may know what I lack” [v 4 LXE].
When the prophet Daniel stood before the emperor of Babylon, he pronounced God’s judgment: “You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting.” What will the judgment be when your life is weighed in the balances?
When the Rich Young Ruler asked Jesus what he needed to do to have eternal life, Jesus said, “If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” “Which ones?” “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Now the Rich Young Ruler had lived a highly ethical life, such that he could say with sincerity, “All these things I have kept from my youth.” But he knew it was not enough. “What do I still lack?” he said.
It’s tempting, like the man in the Wisdom of Sirach quote, to try to work harder, go at a speedier top speed, to make up for what we lack. With greater effort, we shall overcome.
The Word of God says something starkly different: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” [Rom 3.23]; or, as the NJB renders it, “All have sinned and lack God’s glory.” That’s what’s in the picture of the wine running out. Man is empty. Man has failed. He lacks within himself what is needed, and you can’t obtain it by doing yoga or centering on your breath.
The same idea is in the parable of the prodigal son. After he squanders his inheritance, he lusts for the swine slop. Jesus, the master of simplicity, simply says he “began to be in want.” His money, his strength, his options exhausted, there’s one thing to do: “He arose and came to his father.” But this means serious repentance, not cheap grace.
An early Christian writing called The Epistle of Barnabas warns us against “cheap grace”: “‘Thou shalt not join thyself to men who resemble swine.’ For when they live in pleasure, they forget their Lord; but when they come to want, they acknowledge the Lord. And in like manner the swine, when it has eaten, does not recognize its master; but when hungry it cries out, and on receiving food is quiet again” [10.3]. We are more like swine than children of God; for when things go well, we forget God and rejoice in our prosperity; and then when trouble comes, we look to God not for righteousness and absolution, but to bail us out of our earthly messes.
Do you not know that you can fall away and lose what God has promised you? Not because God is not faithful—He is!—but because we can renounce, reject, repudiate His generosity. What does it say in the book of Hebrews?
“Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled; lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright” [12.14-16].
The Mother of Jesus teaches us what to do at all times, and especially when we realize our failure, our sin. She goes to her Son, who is the Lord, true God and true Man.
What does Jesus do? Before turning the water into wine, He points His mother—and us!—to His hour, i.e., to His cross. There, on the cross, in His sacrificial death, He supplies what is lacking. There from His side flow water and blood. He is the true vessel of purification, and from Him comes the pure wine that makes glad the heart of man.
Then look what Jesus does! Jesus makes the wine, but the credit He gives to another! The governor of the feast called the bridegroom and said, “every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.” Jesus makes the wine, another gets the credit, as though it’s his work. That’s what the Bible calls justification. Jesus does the work, Jesus makes the atonement, Jesus fulfills the commandments, and we get the credit. Jesus supplies what is lacking, Jesus supplies what is wanting, Jesus gives wine for a feast and death for our life.
That’s the Gospel: you get credit for what Christ does. So go, like the Mother of Jesus, and place your requests before the Son who hears your cry for mercy. For truly in Christ it has come to pass: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall lack nothing.” ✠INJ✠