Turning water into wine.
A sermon for Sunday, 19 January 2025
Primary Text: John 2:1-12
In John’s Gospel there are seven miraculous signs that give us insight into who Jesus is and why he was sent. The turning of water into wine at the Wedding in Cana is the first of these (John 2:11).
This account says something about the extraordinary nature of Jesus; turning water into wine is no mean feat! So, it points to Jesus’ divinity.
Perhaps as importantly though – for our edification as disciples of Jesus – it teaches us something fundamental about the transformational quality of divine love; a love that we are called to participate in to build a better world.
Very often in the gospels, the sort of transformation we see occurring at Jesus’ command is healing – the healing of an individual. Today though, the transformation is of an inanimate object – water – which becomes another inanimate object – wine. That is true, at one level, but ‘for those with eyes to see’ this transformation is symbolic of the positive change that comes over every creature (or thing) impacted by divine love; the water of their present is changed into wine – something rich and blessed which is meant to empower them to go on and bless/love others.
That’s the big picture.
If we zoom in on the story, there are some valuable things we can learn about the way this sort of love works (or, how we can discern that it is divine love that is modifying a situation as opposed to something masquerading as love).
One of the details one notices when the story is put under the microscope is the discreet (low-key, no-fuss) way in which loving transformation occurs. When Jesus turned the water into wine, he didn’t make a spectacle of that act. It was no stunt; he wasn’t virtue signalling to get more ‘up votes’ for his social media channel. He did it with some reluctance (as a favour to his Mother) and he did it as discreetly as possible. The six stone water jars that Jesus ordered to be filled with water were not, presumably very prominent in the room, because neither the wine steward nor the bridegroom knew what had happened when a terrific batch of ‘red’ turned up to save the event.
Another important detail is that the people who realised what had happened were the servants – the ones working behind the scenes. This reveals an ongoing pattern in John’s Gospel and the Gospels in general, namely, that the people with ‘eyes to see’ the hand of God at work are the humble people – the little ones – who keep the cogs of society turning.
So, the miracle Jesus did at Cana indicates that the love which leads to positive transformation is not showy, but that it is discernible – and even directly revealed – to people who are down-to-earth.
The elements at the heart of this sign – namely, water and wine – also have deep significance. Take the jars of water for instance. Water is absolutely vital for life (as we know it) but it also has connotations of danger. At the very beginning of creation, for instance, the world is portrayed as a watery place, quite chaotic until it was tamed by the Spirit of God (Gen 1:1-2). Grapes and the wine that comes from them are depicted in the Old Testament as a blessing of God (the wine to be used in moderation of course) (Eccl 9:7). This would suggest that the arrival of Jesus – as he takes up his public ministry – marks the beginning of a new age, a new creation even, in which the troublesome waters of chaos (which have dogged humanity from the fall) are once again to be tamed or redeemed so that true happiness may emerge.
Grapes don’t only symbolise ‘good times’ in scripture; in both testaments, grapes are associated with the judgement of God. The prophet Joel, for instance, unimpressed by the behaviour of God’s people, declared: ‘Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full and the vats overflow— so great is their wickedness!” (Joel 3:13). These words are mirrored in Revelation, the last book of the New Testament: “The angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the grapes of the earth, and he threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath.” (Rev 14:19). The excess of wine produced at the Wedding in Cana, read in the light of these passages, points to something rather sobering, namely, that the flip side of Jesus’ ministry of redemption was judgement, requiring a decision on the part of people he encountered (and still encounters) to choose the way that leads to life rather than the way that leads to destruction.
Closely tied to what I have just said is the connection between wine and blood. In the Bible, wine is referred to often as the blood of the grape (Gen 49:11), and in the two passages just quoted, there is an obvious allusion to human blood being shed in the course of Divine Judgement; the next line in Revelation reads, “They [the grapes] were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia (around 290 km).” (Rev 14:20).
With these observations alone made – about today’s gospel – (setting aside what the metaphor of the marriage itself might point to – Christ the bridegroom and the church his bride) it is already clear that this first miracle of Jesus was a rich sign, that pointed to redemption but also judgement, for those with eyes to see.
John was writing to people who, like us, knew the basic outline of Jesus’ life. They, like us, knew that the redemption Jesus offered, and the judgement he dispensed were costly. They involved blood. Not the blood of thousands as Joel envisaged, but certainly the blood of the one who brought that redemption and dispensed that judgement. John includes an intriguing detail in his account of Jesus crucifixion. He says that when the soldiers came to speed up Jesus’ death on the cross by breaking his legs, they found that he was already dead, so instead of breaking his legs, “one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out,” (John 19:34). So the end of Jesus’ public ministry recapitulates or echoes its beginning, making us stand in awe of the way God brought in a new age of redemption and judgement, in a way that no one was quite expecting, but to which everyone is invited.
And the invitation is not to a life of suffering – at least not for its own sake. It is an invitation to life; a transformed life at its fullest (John 10:10) which has the potential to go on transforming other lives, which is a process that is its own reward because it draws us into the heart of God, who is love; to whom be the glory, now and forever. Amen.
Tony Surman