Jesus famously turns water into wine. But the greatness of the miracle is not that he can do it. But that he does.
For Sunday
The Second Sunday after the Epiphany
Collect
Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Reading
From John 2:1-11
“When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.””
Reflection
This story is known as the Wedding at Cana and famously represents Jesus’s first miracle. Which is obviously a big deal. Both in what it reveals about Jesus and how we understand the miraculous power that will continue to be revealed in the gospel. Tradition has rightly lifted this up as important.
This story is much more than a miracle. Precisely because it isn’t really about Jesus’s power. It’s about his mission.
The story is told in three acts.
In the first, Jesus is going to this wedding with his disciples. It is clear that it is Jesus’s mother who is closer to the event itself; Jesus
and his entourage seem to serve as Mary’s +1. And then they find out that the host has run out of wine. Mary shames her son into performing a miracle: a situation that exposes a bold truth about the relationship between this mother and son.
In the second act, Jesus fixes to remedy this situation. He eyes what amounts to six barrels and tells the servants to fill them with water. These aren’t Hydro Flasks or S’well water bottles. These are the dirty tubs people washed themselves in. Jesus transforms a bathtub into a winery.
The third act turns to the steward, the host, and the wedding guests, who respond to the new wine, saying that it’s better than what was served earlier. Which really completes the miracle!
There is so much going on in these three parts, we can’t address it all. Let us simply settle on the way this is less about magic than the mission.
Water becoming wine doesn’t surprise us.
Not from Jesus. But what still tickles is the steward’s response. And not just that the wine is surprisingly good. It is surprisingly good because the steward expects the bridegroom to be cheap. Because everyone is.
A good case can be made that Jesus was helping the bridegroom save face, but I think it is much bigger than that. I think Jesus was trying to defy the world’s low expectations for each other. That all of us are liars. To this, Jesus says I’m not.
Jesus’s true miracle is revealing to the steward that for a world full of selfishness and greed, generosity is a superpower.