This Dazzling Moment in Life
When our son, Nic, was little he loved Blues Clues, the children’s show with host Steve and his cartoon best friend, a dog named Blue. In each episode, Steve would invite the viewers to join him in trying to solve a puzzle by collecting 3 clues that Blue had marked with her paw print: a straw, milk, chocolate syrup; the color green, a pond, hopping; music, cupcakes, and a balloon; water, flip flops, and sand. You’re good at putting clues together – which is good because that is what John invites us to do as we read his Gospel.
John is writing near the end of the 1st Century, scholars date the Gospel of John around 90-100 – after all of Paul’s letters, after the other 3 Gospels. It has been more than 60 years since Jesus’s ascension, and people who believed in him were still called “followers of the Way” and were still a sect within Judaism like Pharisees and Sadducees. John’s goal in writing his Gospel is to show that Jesus is part of the Israel’s relationship wit God – John starts “In the beginning was the Word,…and the Word became flesh.” Jesus is part of the story of God’s relationship with God’s people Israel – and to affirm that Jesus is the Messiah, the long-awaited Savior of the world by documenting the signs that Jesus performed that he was the Messiah.
N.T. Wright describes these signs as “moments when heaven is opened, when the transforming power of God’s love bursts in to the present world….The whole point of the ‘signs’ is that they are moments when heaven and earth intersect with each other…[stories] which point away from earth to a heavenly reality.”
The first sign that John records is the one we just read, so let’s collect some clues and then try to put them together to understand what this sign is telling us.
The story begins “On the third day” – what kinds of things happen on the 3rd day? In Genesis 1, on the third day, God restrains the water, the symbol for chaos and evil, separating water from land. When Abraham is tested, it is on the third day that he takes his son Isaac up to the altar to sacrifice him and when Isaac asks “Daddy, where is the lamb” he answers God will provide, and God does and Isaac is spared. It is on the third day that Jonah is vomited onto dry land and given a second chance to answer God’s call. It is on the third day that Jesus is raised and the tomb left empty. Third days are resurrection days. Third days are days that God acts.
And on that third day, Jesus and his newly called disciples are at a wedding. The prophets used marital metaphors to describe God’s covenantal relationship with Israel as a marriage. The relationship of God with God’s people is loving and deeply personal and faithful, and like a marriage it is not one-sided. In his letters, Paul used the marital metaphors to describe Jesus as the groom and the Church as his bride. And, in Revelation, the Kingdom to come, the New Heaven and New Earth, are likened to a bride adorned for her groom. Weddings are days of hope and love. God’s kingdom coming is a wedding.
Mary, Jesus’s mother, is at the wedding, too. Cana isn’t far from Jesus’s boyhood home in Nazareth. Some scholars speculate that one of Jesus’s family members might be getting married because Mary knows something that no one else there seems to know. The wine has run out. Weddings were 7 days long – feasting and dancing and celebrating at the bridegroom’s house. To run out of wine would reveal a lack of preparation, a disgrace to the family, a breach of hospitality, an embarrassment. The wine ran out before it was time for the party to end, and Mary goes to Jesus and he says, “It is not my time.” “My hour has not yet come.” Another clue. “Hour” in Scripture is a metaphor for the moment God acts, when prophecy is fulfilled. But Mary already knows, she knew when he was growing in her womb, she knew when they named him, she knew when they fled to Egypt to hide him, she knew when he was twelve and taught the chief priests at the Temple about Scripture, she knew who he was, whether it was time to reveal that to everyone or not, she also knew that he would not allow someone to be disgraced, that compassion would overwhelm his reluctance.
Mary turns to the servants, the wait staff at the banquet, and says, “Do whatever he tells you.” It is the essence of discipleship. Do what Jesus says.
Jesus turns toward stone jars that were used to hold water for people to use to get ceremonially cleansed for the occasion. It was a wedding, it was a religious festival, there were Jewish purification rituals to perform. N.T. Wright interprets the clue, “The water-jars used for Jewish purification rites, are a sign that God is doing a new thing from within the old Jewish system, bringing purification to Israel and the world in a whole new way.”
Note that there were 6 of them, 6 is the number of incompletion…it is not yet Jesus’s hour, but it is getting close – 7 is the number of fulfillment.
As Jesus directs them, they fill the jars with water and then draw some out to take to the master of the banquet. When he sips, it is wine, not water, fine wine. That is the effect that Jesus has, when we follow his direction. Transformed.
The master of the banquet goes to the bridegroom and we get another clue, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” Remember in Hebrew Scripture, God is the bridegroom. Jesus is a new covenant, new wine; God has saved the best until now.
An oh, how it is poured out. Each stone jar held 20-30 gallons, that’s the equivalent of 1,000 bottles of wine!
Rev. Lizzie McManus-Dail writes that “the party is at the tipping point: the moment when people are either gonna dip, or the party is about to go to the next level. The shoes will come off on the dance floor, mama is gonna bust those moves she hasn’t used since college….” the servants know it, somehow Mary knows it, and then Jesus “Do whatever he tells you” and they do – a dazzling moment, a glimpse of glory, the party will go on.
On Blue’s Clues, at the end of the episode, Steve sits down in his Thinking Chair to put the clues together. Resurrection. Kingdom. The hour for heaven and earth to become one has come. Jesus – Do whatever he tells you and be surprised by the transformation that happens. The Best. In Abundance. This is good news…of great joy!