Did you do the math?

Did you do the math? Six stone jars, twenty or thirty gallons each. That’s over a thousand bottles of wine! And in little Cana of Galilee, just north of Nazareth, there were probably only a hundred or so people in the entire village. Even if they were all invited to the wedding, even if some of the neighbours in Nazareth came too, that still works out to over 5 bottles per person.

It’s over the top. It’s excessive. It’s too much.

This is grace upon grace.

John, the gospel writer, tells us that this is the first of Jesus’ signs. It’s the first act of his public ministry, the sign that points us to who Jesus is and what he’s all about.

It seems like a strange way to start, a curious way for Jesus to launch his ministry as a wandering rabbi. What’s he trying to tell us? Why this sign?

If you follow the news, you might know that Mark Carney launched his public career as a politician on Thursday. His first sign was carefully crafted. He chose a hockey rink in Edmonton as his setting, and made sure to tell us that he was focused on the economy. The sign, the launch, was intended to signal that this was a guy with roots in the west who could relate to ordinary, hockey-loving Canadians, someone who wants to make our lives better by improving the economy. A carefully crafted sign to tell us who he is and what he’s all about.

So why did Jesus choose a wedding in Cana of Galilee as his setting, and why did he turn such an over-the-top quantity of water into wine as his first sign? Is this what you would have expected for Jesus’ opening move?

Do you remember on Christmas Eve how we noticed that line in the carol Silent Night that talks about Jesus’ arrival as “the dawn of redeeming grace”. And how in the first chapter of John, in the prologue that sets up Jesus story, John repeatedly refers to Jesus as grace?  As the one who was full of grace. As the one through whom grace came into the world? “From his fullness,” John tells us, “we have all received grace upon grace.”

Then, we talked about how after that big set-up, John never uses the word grace again in his gospel. Because instead of giving us a definition of grace, from now on John will show us what grace looks like by telling us the good news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

Jesus’ first sign shows us what grace upon grace looks like. This is the dawn of redeeming grace. A wedding that is about to be a social disaster because the hosts were running out of wine is redeemed by grace. And not just enough wine to avoid disaster, no, way more than that. A thousand bottles of wine, and not the ordinary stuff, no, the best stuff, the good wine, so good it surprises and confounds the chief steward who is in charge of distribution.

Jesus’ first sign is intended to tell us who he is, and what he’s all about.  Jesus is the grace of God personified, and what he’s all about is joy and life and abundance and new beginnings and celebration and community. That’s why a wedding makes such a great setting for this, the first of his signs.

Later in John’s gospel, Jesus will tell us that this is his mission in so many words. “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”  Joyful abundance for the sake of community. Grace upon grace. Life in all its fullness. This is the core of Jesus’ mission. This is what he wants for us. This is how he wants to redeem our lives.

That tends to surprise a lot of people, just like it surprised the chief steward when he tasted the good wine. Is this really what our faith is all about? Is this what it means to follow Jesus? Isn’t this whole water into wine thing a bit frivolous?

There’s an interesting little detail that John includes in his account of this sign. He doesn’t just tell us the quantity and size of the six stone water-jars that Jesus tells the servants to fill. He also tells us that these stone water-jars are for the Jewish rites of purification. Water from these jars would be used for ritual hand-washing, for purifying cooking vessels and to fill the mikveh, the ritual baths used by the faithful to comply with purity laws.

Jesus however, in his first sign, uses these special stone jars to turn water into wine.

It’s not that there is anything wrong with religious ritual and moral commandments. Following God’s law and living ethically are good things. But they’re not where Jesus chooses to put his emphasis. Jesus values joyful, abundant living over moral perfection. Water into wine. Grace upon grace.

Can I say that again? Jesus first sign tells us that he values joyful, abundant living over moral perfection. Grace, celebration, redemption, joyful abundance for the sake of community, these he values even more than our striving for moral goodness for its own sake.

That might come as a bit of a shock to those of us that have grown up in the church. I know that I was raised to do the right thing, to not sin, to value moral goodness, to strive for moral perfection. That’s what the church taught me, or at least, that’s what I thought the church was teaching me.

But Jesus doesn’t say “I came to teach them how to behave better, to comply with religious rituals, to achieve moral perfection.”  No, Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”  And for his first sign, to show us what he is all about, he changes water into wine.

Now, it’s not that living ethically or participating in the rituals of our faith are bad things, they’re not, they’re good things. But they are not the point of it all. When Jesus tells us to “love one another the way that he loves us” it’s not so that we can behave better and check off a box on our way to moral goodness. No, Jesus tells us to love one another, because when we do love someone, we enable them to live more abundantly and we bring joy to their lives and ours.  When we love our neighbour as ourselves, when we become the means of God’s grace in the world, we will experience more joyful abundance in community, we will live lives that are fuller, we will become the people that God created us to be.

This is grace upon grace. This is what God’s grace looks like in the flesh. This is the dawn of redeeming grace, the free gift of God that will take a wedding that’s headed for disaster and turn it into an over-the-top joyful celebration, one that we’re still talking about two thousand years later.

From his fullness we all receive, grace upon grace. Did you notice that the first people to see Jesus’ sign were not the people in charge, not the steward nor the bride and groom, not even the wedding guests, but the servants in the back room? And did you notice that these servants instinctively seem to understand what Jesus is doing, for when he asks them to fill the stone jars with water, they do their part for abundant grace by filling them to the brim?

In a world where we sometimes talk about trickle-down economics, its worth noticing that the economy of grace works in a trickle up sort of way. Grace upon grace is for everyone, and it starts by bringing good news to the poor and oppressed. Just imagine the reaction of those servants as they filled the jars and realized what was happening.

Sure, it’s over-the-top. And this is just the beginning. This is the dawn of redeeming grace.

Amen.

Homily Yr C P2. January 19 2025. Trinity

Readings: 62.1-5; Psalm 36.5-10; 1 Corinthians 12.1-11; John 2.1-11

Photo by ilya st