To each . . . for the common good

A reflection on John 2:1-11: Sunday, 14 January 2007

Over the years, Carol and I have been to the cinema on quite a number of occasions to see movies which are all about weddings.

There was My best friend’s wedding, and Four weddings and a funeral; there was the very Australian Muriel’s wedding, and the remake of an old favourite Father of the bride.

These movies are all comedies and the use of wedding breakfasts for comic possibilities is a tried and true formula. Even Greek theatre more than two thousand years ago was using the wedding feast as the setting for comedy.

Today’s gospel reading is another wedding breakfast, but is it comedy?

Well, let’s think about this for a moment. Can we recognise comic elements in the story, even if it doesn’t read like twenty-first century comedy to us?

Some comic possibilities:

1. The story is set among general drunkenness, after all of the other wine has run out, even the wine which is usually saved until after all the guests are drunk.

2. The Jewish mother tries, not once but twice, to organise her son into doing things her way.

3. To the amusement of the reader, the man supposedly in charge of the festivities, the chief steward, does not know what is going on.

4. And even more humorously, his servants, who are not supposed to know anything, know exactly what has happened!

But this is not a story told just for laughs.

The writer of John’s gospel sets the story in this fashion, not for the comedy, but so that we can fully appreciate the irony of what happens. The irony.

Here, at the beginning of the gospel, at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, we are told the story which is usually reserved for the end.

We get the “happy ending” story at the beginning!

In My best friend’s wedding the reception is at the end, the story comes to its conclusion. So, too, with Father of the bride. And even with Four weddings and a funeral, where there is no wedding at the end, the final act is played out with the friends gathered around the kitchen table, drinking coffee, the almost wedding feast.

Wedding feasts signal the end. The comedy is resolved, the time of peace and stability has arrived.

But the wedding feast at Cana comes at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

What ending is there here?

The clue to the answer to this question lies in the symbolism of the six stone water jars which, we are told, were used “for the Jewish rites of purification”.

This wedding breakfast is the end.

It is the end of inadequate ways of making people clean.

In the same way that the wine ran out for those gathered for the wedding, so had the rituals of Judaism come to the end of their usefulness for salvation.

Jesus, with the new wine, is the end of one way of doing things and the start of a new way..

The beginning of Jesus’ ministry is the beginning of a new way to salvation.

This story points to the end of an era and to a new revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ.

Within this story, however, there are other clues as to why it is positioned here, and to the significance of this story within the overall context of John’s gospel.

There are only two places in the entire gospel of John where Mary, the mother of Christ, is mentioned. Only two:

Here, at the beginning, she speaks to Jesus and he replies,

“Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?
My hour has not yet come.”

The only other place where Mary is mentioned is at the crucifixion of Jesus, at the end, where her son speaks to her from the cross, again calling her “Woman”.

Why is this so?

I believe the answer lies with Jesus’ next words to Mary at the wedding feast:

“My hour has not yet come.”

Jesus’ “hour” is when the glory of God will be revealed and that hour will not arrive until he is hung on a cross, and the salvation of humanity is not fulfilled until Jesus is revealed to be the Son of God.

Jesus understands that his glory is not to be revealed casually through some cheap miracle.

But Jesus is revealed.

Despite his protests, Mary goes over his head to the servants.

Jesus is revealed and the disciples believe in him because of this, the “first of his signs”.

There is something here for us –- something reassuring, something encouraging.

Yes, this is a miracle, and because of this miracle the disciples believe.

But what kind of miracle is this?

It’s a quiet one, an unassuming one.
Jesus goes to great lengths not to make a fuss, not to draw attention to himself.

In fact, this miracle goes almost unnoticed.

If it weren’t for his mother, the disciples and the servants, this whole episode would have gone quite unremarked.

Jesus takes that most ordinary of substances, water, and turns it into something only marginally more remarkable, wine.

There is no nature miracle, no stilling of a storm or something like it, to mark the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

There is no miraculous healing to draw the crowds to this new-found saviour.

There is no divine voice booming from heaven to command the recognition of this Jewish peasant as the heavenly Messiah.

We are drawn to belief in Christ through this very ordinary miracle –- the changing of a few litres of water into wine.

And why does Jesus perform this common miracle?

Is it too much to suggest that he does it for the “common good”?

Who benefits when Jesus turns water into wine?

Those at the party were not all disciples/believers.

It was not just the righteous sons of Israel, not just the holy, not just the deserving.

All those present were given this simple gift of wine.

They all benefited, they were all given the best that Jesus had to offer.

And so we find the theme of gifts for the common good.

The gifts of Jesus are gifts for all.

This is what Paul is driving at in the reading from Corinthians where he says: To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To each . . . for the common good.

Epiphany – is the season in which we reflect on how God is revealed.

God is revealed in Jesus through this miracle and his disciples begin to believe.

God is not completely revealed: that will not happen until Jesus is crucified and then rises again.

God is revealed for a purpose: that is, for the common good, for all people.

For us, this story points to God’s involvement in the very ordinary and everyday business of life. God’s desire is to be part of our ordinary and everyday lives, and that we, too, might believe in him. Jesus is Emmanuel –- God-with-us - revealed in the ordinary: water for washing, wine for drinking, friends for loving, and even comedy for laughing. Amen.