Committed to a Future

 January 16 2022

John 2:1-12

         Have you ever thought how funny it is that there are things we do at certain holidays that is only done then, during those holidays, and no time else? Every time I sit down to Thanksgiving dinner I think to myself, this is the last time I will probably eat turkey, cranberries, and pumpkins pie for a whole year. Nobody even thinks that it’s the least bit weird that these very good foods are just simply, for lack of a better way of putting it, off the table, as far as what to eat for a whole year. Then there is Christmas where we bring a living tree into our homes and place it in a tub of water like it’s a giant flower in a very oversized vase. Try bringing any other kind of a tree into your house any other time of the year and I guarantee you, people will think there is something wrong with you. Then we come to New Years and you find that only on this one night is it acceptable to sing “Auld Lang Syne”. I mean, it’s a beautiful song, a song about about not forgetting the old times, those things that have past, the acquaintances that should not be forgot ; it’s a really great song yet if you try and sing it any other time of the year, you will probably get a few strange looks. I suppose, the reason for this is that this song is our way of having one long look back over the year that is giving way to a new one. This song is saying, yes, we must not forget the past as we get ready to head into a new year, into an unknown future which a year from now will be the days will remember as we sing this song once again.

         So, Auld Lang Syne, while a great song has a purpose which is that it allows us to have one last look back at the past, to remember and then we have to lay that past to rest so that our focus becomes the future, what lies ahead of us. Now, as I have been pondering on what possibly could lay ahead of us in this new year, I came across something that I had never considered before. The author of an article I read by the name of John Puddefoot, wrote that entering into a loving relationship is committing ourselves to a future which goes beyond our understanding and yet it is a future which we are passionately devoted to. Isn’t that deep? I love it! As I read this line what came to mind is that this describes being married to a “T”, doesn’t it? I mean, there you are with your significant other, saying vows of commitment before all of your friends and family and then comes that part, where you promise to stick together for better or worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part. What these are saying is that we don’t know the future, we don’t know if we are going to be eating steak or hotdogs, we don’t know if its going to be walking on the sunny side of the street or a lot of rainy days we can’t seem to get out from under, and we don’t know how our bodies and our minds are going to hold up, but regardless of what the future brings, we are going to face that future together. Even though this future is beyond our understanding nonetheless we begin our journey into that future passionately devoted to seeing what happens no matter what.

         This idea that love means that we are committing ourselves to an unknown future really helps me to figure out this story of Jesus and his followers at a wedding in the little town of Cana. And this idea of love committing ourselves to an unknown future also helps explain why John, in writing his gospel account, decided to begin this journey of Jesus and his followers here, at a wedding of all places, a wedding where we can’t help noticing that the wine only ran out after Jesus and company showed up. The reason it seems kind of a strange way to begin our story of Jesus and his disciples is that as we might recall, the issue that seems so evident in the first chapter of John’s gospel is this idea of knowing God. Those who followed Jesus are those who knew deep in their hearts that even though they were God’s people they had this nagging feeling that they really did not know this God that their people had a covenant with. Oh sure, they knew a lot about him, they knew his Law and they knew the scriptures, they knew all the rites and rituals but still, they couldn’t say with any certainty that they actually knew God. If they actually knew God then why were they so terrified at the very thought of God coming suddenly in their midst? This is what lured them out to the Jordan, to be baptized, as an admission that they weren’t where they needed to be in their relationship with God.

         Well, into this situation that these men found themselves there came one day, one who was baptized who was very different. As this one was baptized, a voice was heard, the sky’s were opened, and there came the Spirit like a dove and from all of this, John, the one who was doing the baptizing, knew that this one was the long awaited Servant as written about by Isaiah. This was the one that John the Baptist would now refer to as being the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world, the one so designated in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. John the Baptist would also know this one he had baptized, who the Spirit of heaven anointed, as being the Son of God, the one God would anoint to be king in the line of David according to the promise of God. So, the disciples of John the Baptist who were hungry to really know God didn’t have any trouble figuring out that this one, the one John the Baptist referred to as the Lamb of God, this is the one who would be able to teach them all they needed to know in order to know God. In their minds, they would ask this one called Jesus where he lived and then they would show up at his house and through some intense lessons around a campfire they would soon have all the knowledge that they needed. 

At least that was the idea. So, imagine how strange it must have been for these who desired to sit at the feet of Jesus to find him knocking at their door one morning telling them to get cleaned up, they were off to a wedding. They probably thought, a wedding, really Jesus? What about our lessons? Now, just in case we might not get the point that the future is the focus of this field trip, John begins our story, “On the third day…” Ok, John, on the third day of what? John never gives us what this third day is in reference to so we must take this as a clue from John which points us in the direction of the resurrection which as we recall was on the third day. The resurrection is the future of life beyond death which is the foundation of our hope. Here then is where this idea that a loving relationship means committing ourselves to a future beyond our understanding comes into play. Here John begins by pointing us to a future beyond our understanding which is a good way to describe the resurrection. John then tells us about Jesus and his followers being invited to a wedding which is as well we know is two people in a loving relationship making a commitment to one another. It is also this idea that a loving relationship means committing ourselves to a future beyond our understanding that is perhaps why God uses the theme of a wedding to describe his relationship with his people. In the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah, we read of how the Servant exclaims, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robes of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress as a bride adorns herself with jewels.”  And further in the sixty-second chapter of Isaiah, this theme is continued where God, speaking about his people declares, “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be call My Delight Is In Her, and your land Married, for the Lord delights in you and your land shall be married. …as the bridegroom rejoices over his bride so shall your God rejoice over you.” Here it becomes clear that God has a love relationship with his people and he is committed to experiencing a future with his people that is beyond their understanding. All of this has to be kept in our minds as John casually states that on the third day Jesus and his followers attended a wedding.

Well, as Jesus is there at the wedding with his friends, laughing and rejoicing, eating and drinking, having a great time along comes his mother, Mary, with a horrified look on her face. She pulls Jesus over to the side and whispers in his ear, “They’ve run out of wine.” Now, we’re not sure just what she expected Jesus to do, maybe stop drinking so much and tell his friends to take a water break, we just aren’t sure. Even Jesus isn’t certain why his mother has come to him. His response to her though seems rather cryptic though, “My hour has not yet come.” And to top it off the way he addresses his mother seems rather blunt as well, calling her simply, “Woman”. What are we to make of this strange conversation between Jesus and his mother?  The answer is found when we take into consideration what Jesus accomplished through his shutting down of the sacrificial system of the Temple which we looked at last week. There we learned that Jesus drove out all of the bulls and sheep and the pigeons along with all of the money-changers because the Temple had become obsolete with the coming of Jesus.  All these sacrifices at the Temple served to do was to remind the people that they were enslaved to sin and that they were in need of a Savior. Jesus, is that Savior, he is the Servant, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus took the sins of the world away by being obedient to the will of his Father and because of the obedience of Jesus we are set free from sin so that we too might be able to be obedient to do the will of God just like Jesus.

It is this being able to do the will of God which is the key to understanding the rather rude response Jesus gives his mother at the wedding. Just what was he thinking when he replied to his own mother, “Woman…”? Using the other gospel accounts to help shed some light on this we find in the third chapter of Mark that while Jesus is inside of a home his mother and his brothers show up. Someone bursts in to where Jesus is at and tells him that the mother and brothers of Jesus are waiting for him outside. Jesus responds to the messenger, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Looking at those gathered around him Jesus goes on to say, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother!” To us this also sounds rather rude, that Jesus would not address his own mother and his brothers instead saying that those who are willing to listen to his word and do what that word commands that these are now who are his mothers and his brothers. Yet, what Jesus is pointing to is that in the past family was defined in terms of the people who gave you life, whether through birth or adoption, family were those people who cared for you, watched out for you, the ones who taught you, and committed themselves to you because they loved you. Now, Jesus is saying that with his coming, family is going to be re-defined because of him. Family would now be those who committed themselves to doing what Jesus commanded them to do out of love for him. Anyone committed to loving others no matter if this meant that the future was beyond their understanding, these were the ones who were the family of Jesus. So, when Jesus bluntly called his mother, “Woman”, this is John’s way of telling us that Jesus was bringing a new way of relating to one another into the world. It was those committed to doing the will of God, these are what defined the family of God. This is what John writes about in the first chapter of his gospel, stating that to all who received Jesus, who believed in his name, these Jesus gave the right to become children of God, those who are born not of blood, not of will of the flesh nor of the will of man but born of God”. This is what Jesus gives a subtle nod to when he refers to his mother as “Woman”.

This understanding that Jesus has introduced doing the will of God into the conversation is important as we watch as Jesus takes care of this crisis at the wedding of Cana. The mother of Jesus tells the servants who were at the wedding to do whatever Jesus tells them to do which is also a subtle nod that this is about the will of God, the doing of what Jesus tells us to do. Jesus tells them to fill the six stone jars that were for the rites of purification. These were the jars which had been filled with the water necessary for the bathing of the groom and the bride before their wedding. Again, this is a subtle allusion to the bathing recorded in the first chapter of John where Jesus and his followers had bathed, been baptized, in the Jordan. The servants filled these jars with water as Jesus had instructed them to do and then just as Jesus instructed them, they drew some of it out and took it to the master of the feast. When the master of the feast tasted the water, he wondered where it had come from because the custom was that you always served the best wine first so that as they went along and the wine began to work the people didn’t care so much what the wine tasted like. This is what confused the master of the feast because the wine the servants had brought him was the good wine. Somehow, the best wine was here being served at the last not the beginning as was customary.

So, yes there was a miracle but just what was the significance of this miracle? We are told that this was the first of the signs that Jesus did but just what did these signs point to? What we know is that when Jesus stopped the workings of the Temple the powers that be would not accept that now that the Lamb of God had arrived that all other sacrifices became obsolete. They just could not accept that Jesus was and is the new age that had come right in the middle of the old age. Jesus was the new that did away with sacrifices by his once for all sacrifice for us, a sacrifice that made us holy and perfect, free at last to do the will of God. Yet, Jesus is not only the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world he is the Son of God, the anointed king, the long awaited Messiah who has ushered in a new age. This is the age that Isaiah foresaw as recorded in the twenty-fifth chapter of his book, where we hear this, “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. God will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. God will swallow up death forever…” This is how Isaiah saw the age the Messiah is going to bring about when he comes yet here is Jesus who John the Baptist declares is the Son of God, the Messiah, but where is the feast, where is this rejoicing, where is death swallowed up like well-aged wine from a cup? In this miracle at Cana, Jesus is telling those who are able to hear it that right there in their midst this is where the feast is at. Gathered around Jesus are those Jesus is going to set free to do the will of God so that they as well as us can at last love as Jesus has first loved us. This new found freedom to be able to love has profound implications. I mean, listen to what has changed now that we are at last being able to love as Jesus’ loves from what is written in the third chapter of the first letter of John. There we hear, “Now we know that we have passed from death into life…” How do we know that death has been swallowed up? We know this John continues because we love. It as John wrote earlier in this letter that whoever does the will of God abides forever. So, we do not have to wait to some unknown future to drink the aged wine and eat the delicious food because death is swallowed up whenever we do the will of God. 

To do the will of God is to enter into a loving relationship with God where we commit ourselves to a future beyond our understanding yet even though this is much like a marriage the difference is there is no better or worse in our relationship with God; no, there is always only better. Yes, in committing ourselves to God we may face afflictions but as Paul tells us, these are momentary what is eternal is the glory that awaits those who are committed to a life with God. So, when we drink the cup in remembrance of Jesus we remember that we do so at the feast where death has been swallowed up through the death of Jesus. Through his death we have been set free from sin to do the will of God and when we do the will of God we will abide in the house of God forever. Amen!