About Me

Hi! Welcome to my space, where I hope to share with you some of my thoughts about life, theology and ministry. I am happily married to Sonia, and we have 3 gorgeous boys: Jack, Tom and Elijah. We live in the inner north of Melbourne, near where I serve as pastor of West Preston Baptist Church. I have a PhD in historical theology (on Karl Barth, who remains my theological hero), and I am currently studying towards ordination at Whitley College (www.whitley.unimelb.edu.au). In 2001, I published my first book, entitled 'Covenanted Solidarity: The Theological Basis of Karl Barth's Opposition to Nazi Antisemitism and the Holocaust', (New York: Peter Lang, 2001). In 2007, my next book, 'Barth, Israel and Jesus' will be published by Ashgate. I have also written a number of articles for leading theological journals, as well as for the forthcoming 'Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity', and the 'Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology.' I am passionately committed to inter-faith dialogue, to reconciliation, and to Jesus. I hope you enjoy this site!

The Barmen Declaration, 1934

Monday, January 15, 2007

The Wedding in Cana. John 2: 1-11

If you think about it, this was an odd sort of miracle for Jesus to do as the first public expression of his power. To get six large jars of water, each jar holding about 100 litres, and to turn that into something like 600 litres of top-shelf, vintage wine! It seems a strange way for him to announce his arrival. Remember that John the Baptist had told his disciples that Jesus was the One for whom they had all been waiting; the One in whom and through whom the Kingdom of God would come. As we looked at last week, the coming of Jesus was, in John the Baptist’s mind, associated with the coming of God’s judgment. Yet now, when Jesus does arrive, he comes dressed not so much as a judge, but as some sort of divine bartender!

This miracle had nothing to do with healing the sick, or saving a life, or forgiving sins. On the face of it, it was a thoroughly self-indulgent miracle. Yes, he was making sure that the host of the wedding didn’t lose face by running out of wine. But Jesus wasn’t usually that bothered by social etiquette, nor was he usually that interested in someone’s standing in the community—so why would he have been interested here in propping up the groom’s community image?

We know that later in his ministry Jesus was roundly criticized by many of his opponents precisely for being too self-indulgent. He ate too much, he drank too much, he hung around the wrong type of people... And so it’s quite possible that his reputation for being a glutton and a drunkard can be traced back to this instance in Cana. In other words, maybe all he was doing here was making sure that he and all the other wedding guests could continue to have a good time. The ultimate party trick, in fact! After all, Jesus had just been in the desert for forty days, and so he must have been pretty thirsty!

Or alternatively, maybe this was just a piece of divine experimentation. If the Gospel records are correct, that the affirmation of his identity as the Son of God only happened at his baptism, then this knowledge of who he was was still relatively new to Jesus; he would still have been coming to terms with what that identity would mean for him; and so maybe turning water into wine was just a fairly innocent experiment, to see just what he, as the Son of God, could do.

Both of these suggestions are probably a bit too cynical. And yet, there is something comforting in the fact that this first miracle of Jesus was so thoroughly human. There was no dramatic demonstration of his authority over nature; there was no violent expulsion of demonic forces; just a quiet solution to a potentially embarrassing situation. It’s interesting, in fact, that Jesus doesn’t draw attention to what he’s done; at least initially, it’s only the servants who are privy to the miracle. Not even the chief wine steward, or even the groom himself, know about the miracle until after it’s all been done. There’s no attempt by Jesus to draw attention to himself. As a first miracle, it’s a very gentle one, it’s not self-serving, but it’s one that shows Jesus to be completely in tune with the needs and desires of the people around him. While of course this miracle demonstrates that he is indeed the Son of God, it also shows him to be thoroughly in touch with the simple pleasures of being human. Jesus’ baptism shows us that he was able to stand in our place before God because he identified with us—but that’s not just identifying with us in our frailty and failings, but indeed also in our joys and celebrations. And his actions at the wedding in Cana show him doing exactly that: joining in with the celebration of human relationships and human love.

There’s a lesson for the church in this. While the church throughout its history has been busy being puritanical, and insisting that it’s job is to be the moral guardian of society…here we see Jesus lavishly and expansively celebrating the vitality and the wonder of human sexual love. Far from being self-serving or self-indulgent, this miracle at Cana is Jesus’ own wedding gift to the young couple. Whoever the bride and groom were, Jesus was clearly overjoyed by the fact that they were committing themselves to each other in this way; committing themselves to love and to be loved.

There is, however, still more to the story than this. This miracle is more than just the kind-hearted action of a uniquely-gifted wedding guest. It is more than just the celebration of a marriage union. Let me ask you this: have you ever wondered why Jesus chose a wedding for the site of his first miracle? The raising of Lazarus would have been more dramatic; the calming of the storm on Galilee would have been more impressive; the healing of the crippled man who was lowered through the roof would have been more public. So why a wedding?

When we look through Scripture, it’s clear that marriage is a commonly-used image for the relationship between God and his people. Throughout the prophets, God is depicted as the husband, Israel as his wife. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea…are all full of this sort of marriage imagery. One of the other readings set for today, in fact, says exactly this: In Is. 62, we read that

‘No longer will the nations call you [Zion] Deserted, or your land Desolate. Instead, you will be called Hephzibah [‘My delight is in her’], and your land will be called Beulah [‘Married’]; for the Lord will take delight in you…As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so your God will rejoice over you.’

And then in the Gospels, twice we see Jesus being referred to as the bridegroom; once in Matt.9, in response to a question from John the Baptist’s disciples; and once in Jn.3 when John the Baptist himself speaks of Jesus as the bridegroom and himself as the groom’s attendant. In both cases, the context is of being happy, full of joy, that the groom has finally arrived.

And that’s the point. That’s what the miracle at Cana symbolizes. Of course when Jesus turns the water into wine, he turns it into the best wine imaginable. Why? Because in Christ the best has now arrived. The groom is here. Now the celebration can really get under way! The wine that Jesus makes is the symbol of the union with God that finally reaches its consummation with the advent of Christ. And of course later at the Last Supper, Jesus again uses wine to symbolize the union, or the covenant, that he is about to seal with his own blood. The wine at Cana points ahead to all of that. This best wine that Jesus so miraculously produces is not just to help keep the party going in Cana; much more than that, it’s to celebrate the union of Jesus with his people, with us!, to whom Jesus has committed himself passionately and forever.

This is one of the things that we most need to grasp and yet most often forget. That God in Christ has committed himself passionately and forever to us. I suspect that we are generally happy to accept that God loves us in some sort of ethereal, transcendent, platonic way. But how well do we grasp the fact that God loves us with the passionate zeal of a new spouse? It’s harder for us to accept that he loves us in that sort of passionate way, because fundamentally we don’t believe that we deserve it. Of course we don’t deserve it. And yet, we need to hear that this is exactly how God loves us.

Why then did Jesus choose a wedding as the place of his first miracle? Because he wanted to state, right from the outset, what his intention was: to celebrate the fact that in Jesus, the bridegroom has arrived, and that the full intensity and wonder of God’s unending passionate love for us has come to its most perfect expression.

The only question left is this: given that marriage is a two-way street, that it only works when the love and the passion are mutual, and given the we always get the best of God…How often does he get the best of us?

Amen

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fantastic post! Thank you. I've heard the water-wine story elaborated upon but not quite to that extent. Thank you for shedding some more light and provoking some thought.

Anonymous said...

You know so often I think we think of Jesus turning water into wine like some stoney faced Professor Snape, doing it to show who he was in a serious "Here then, I've arrived" sort of way. It must have been some party, and it's great to think of him joining in with his friends and family. It must have been a shock to his closest friends and brothers to see what he did! So, rather than the Snape-ish "Here I am, aren't I powerful and a little bit scary. Put your trust in me" Jesus, it's refreshing to imagine a guy enjoying the company, revelling in the party and taking joy from the miracle that he does. Where's the killjoy religiosity here? We've lost something of the celebration in the church today haven't we?