The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 16, 2021

Thanks again for your prayers!  I am starting to eat again and the cough is not as bad.

John 2:1–11

There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding. When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus told them, “Fill the jars with water.” So they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.” So they took it. And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from —although the servers who had drawn the water knew—, the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.

The earliest readers of St. John’s account of the miracle Jesus performed at the wedding at Cana would have been shocked by a particular detail: that Jesus makes the wine from water stored in vessels used for the ceremonial washings.  John, himself an observant Jew, makes this abundantly clear, and in such a way as to show that Jesus knew exactly what he was doing.  It is a very purposeful act.  John need not have mentioned it, especially if the point of his account was simply to describe the miracle.  Looking closely at what Jesus does here helps us to see the meaning of his action.  Indeed, John refers to the miracle as a “sign”.  Of course, all the miracles the Lord performed during his Public Life were signs, but John singles out a handful of these particularly as signs.  Let us see what this one means.

Now, Jesus chose to make the wine from water in the ceremonial vessels.  He could have simply made the wine out of nothing in the room used to store the wine or he could have increased what was still there as he would later increase the handful of fish and loaves to feed large crowds.  He could have done this without witnesses, though his Mother wanted the servants to be involved.  His deliberate choice to make the wine from water tells us something, as well as that it was witnessed by the servants, and that he used the ceremonial vessels.  In making the wine from water he shows how, throughout his ministry, he will take ordinary human words and artifacts and reveal heavenly mysteries with them.  Thus, he will use the Temple to teach about his Body, and “wind” to teach about the Holy Spirit.  He also uses water in this way in order to show how he will take what is good and make it perfect: the belief of an Apostle who sees, to the faith of a believer who does not.  In involving the servants, the Lord shows that though he does not need us to assist him in his work of salvation, he uses us anyway, for our own good.  He also uses servants rather than the steward because of their humility.  As we see in the account, the steward was a proud man, unwilling to admit his own failure to provide enough wine in the first place.  

The earliest readers, acquainted as they were with the teaching of the Pharisees, would have jumped at seeing Jesus use the ceremonial vessels for making wine which people would consume.  It is as though the Lord had chosen to employ a dirty bathtub for this purpose.  Beyond this, his action flaunts the Law as the Pharisees had been teaching it.  His use of these vessels to make wine for drinking amounted to a serious provocation.  The servants, knowing their place, did not object to the Lord’s orders.  The steward, had he known of this, would have absolutely refused to allow the wine to be served, miracle or no.  As it turns out, though, the wine Jesus makes is not only drinkable, despite the impurity of its origins, but it is “the good wine”, superior to all that had been served to that point.  When we consider the miracles from this angle, we see that the Lord’s least word surpasses the best the Pharisees can offer, and that his teachings show the worthlessness of theirs, as the steward, signifying the Pharisees and scribes, himself is forced to attest.  That Jesus uses water to make the wine rather than his wine from the remaining wine, shows that he begins with the pure Law as God had given it to Moses and fulfills it, revealing its true meaning.  The Lord does not add onto or reform the teachings of the Pharisees: he disregards them entirely.

We rejoice in our God who does not allow his people to flounder about on their own but who provides a clear road to heaven, brushing out of the way for them all the rubbish that false teachers throw onto it.