Sermon - An un-miraculous miracle?

Miracle at Cana, collage, by the artist Diamond.

A sermon preached at St Stephen Walbrook on Thursday 20th January 2022 (Epiphany 2, Year C) based on readings from Isaiah 62.1-5 and John 2.1-11

Good News in 100 words 
The gospel records few eye-witnesses to the miracle at Cana. On paper it seems a most un-miraculous miracle! Yet it’s a story that is part of the DNA of our lives, a story to which generations of people have added their own detail to fill in the gaps. That is our Epiphany. The seemingly unnoticed but life-changing revelation of Christ into our hearts, minds and bodies; whose miraculous love draws us ever closer to him and slowly transforms us from water into wine. 

Since I began training at theological college, almost like clockwork at some point during a dinner party - perhaps when a waiter brings a wine list, or someone brings a jug of water to the table - someone will say something like; “In a few years time, Phillip you’ll be able to transform this water into wine!” When I stopped working full time to try to focus a bit more on my studies, my leaving present from work colleagues was a beautiful copper water jug and beakers, with the expectation that I would return one day with them more appropriately filled. 

The miracle of the wedding at Cana - the transformation of water into wine - is one of those passages that everyone seems know to some degree. Yet, as we’ve just heard in this brief account, which only occurs in Johns gospel, what we know - in terms of the details - is apparently very little! 

In many ways it seems to be the most unmiraculous miracle.

Sure, we know we’re at a wedding banquet, but the bride and groom and their important guests go unmentioned.  We know that the party is taking place in Cana - a rural town near Galilee, which explains perhaps why Jesus and his mother - and the disciples had been invited - although we hear nothing more from them. 

In the last verse of the passage, we’re told that Jesus performed this sign to reveal his glory. Yet few people seem to have seen the sign, let alone much glory! We only know a transformation has occurred when the steward tastes the liquid and remarks what good wine it is. We don’t know when or how the miracle took place - although unlike the steward, the guests and the hosts, we know it has. As do the servants who filled the jars - and somehow the disciples also understood - and they believed. 

That’s it.  

Jesus revealed his glory not by drawing huge attention to himself - performing a great public display when the water jugs were brought to the dinner table. This sign takes place out of sight. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of miracle. But one which we are invited to believe.

Through the ages, people have added all sorts of extra detail to fill in the gaps. One tradition says this was a family wedding - that Mary was the aunt of the bridegroom. Others suggest it was the wedding of John the Apostle himself. Some commentators have said that Mary’s remark to Jesus to do something about the lack of wine was motivated by her annoyance that he forgot to bring a wedding present. None or all of these may be the case - we simply don’t know. Perhaps that’s the point; to entice us to bring ourselves, our imaginations, into the text - and it seems to have worked - if familiarity with the story in our collective consciousness is anything to go by. 

The apparent dearth of detail is more than compensated by the richness of symbolism in the story; the purpose of which, we are told, is to show the divine origin of Jesus - to reveal his glory. 

In John’s gospel there are no parables but ‘signs’ performed by Jesus and it has been noticed that in this, the first of seven signs, wine plays a pretty important role; just as in the last of the seven “I am” saying of Jesus - another characteristic feature of this gospel; Jesus says ‘I am the true vine.’

The six stone jars, waiting to be filled for the Jewish rites of purification, may symbolize the incompleteness of the old order - six being one less that the perfect number seven, which John seems so fond of using. 

While we’re not told how or precisely when Jesus transformed the water into wine, we are told the size of each jar, which had been filled to capacity (the servants having taken the initiative it seems to ensure there could be no doubt that they had fulfilled Jesus’s instruction). The volume of wine produced symbolizes the over-abundance of God’s divine providence that we see again in the multiplication of loaves and fishes. Later in the gospel, Jesus tells the disciples that he has come so that we may all have life in abundance; that inclusive invitation a particularly important message in this week of Christian Unity. 

This unmiraculous miracle is a sign that through Jesus - God with us - the purifying waters of the Jewish people will be transformed into vivifying - life giving - wine for all. New life for a new age. 

A new age fully revealed through Christ’s resurrection that follows the supreme example of the abundance of God’s love - the death of his Son on the cross (the only other time in John’s gospel when we encounter Mary - when Jesus also addresses her as ‘woman’). 

As the steward remarks, the best is yet to come. 

While the miracle at Cana is unique to John’s gospel there are frequent references in the writings of the prophets to an abundance of wine and great feasting in the days before the coming of the messiah; through whom the relationship between heaven and earth will be transformed - as if through marriage. Because, perhaps, it is through such committed relationships that we come close to understanding the love God has for us; when we glimpse what it means to find a new identity in relationship with another; even to the point of giving our life for theirs. 

Maybe it is with these images in mind that the disciples came to understand - and believe - what happened at Cana? 

The transformation described by the prophet Isaiah, which we heard in our first reading, occurs at a national scale; an event that would have certainly made front page news. The party at Cana is very different. The first sign in an unusual Epiphany but one that transforms the whole world. 

Jesus is having a good time with his friends. There’s an exchange of words with his mother, which seems to show some sort of tension between them. For all its apparent lack of detail there’s certainly no shortage of humanity here - no need for us to flesh out the story in that regard. Jesus - both human and divine - does that for himself. 

In the midst of the party this seemingly unmiraculous miracle takes place - we do not see the transformation, yet we know it has happened. At the end of the scene we are told that the disciples believed. Again. Andrew, Peter, Philip and Nathaniel having already believed enough to drop what they were doing and follow Jesus to the party. 

We are assured that belief is not a showy set-piece one-off event in history or a date in the diary for sometime in the future. Belief is about making space for God’s ongoing transformation, in the everyday reality of our lives.

At the Last Supper, Jesus instituted another sacrament - the Eucharist - in which we are all invited to participate and through which our transformation often seems to take place out of sight.  

That is the message of the apparently unmiraculous miracle at Cana. A miracle that few people saw, but one that is embedded in the story of our lives today. That is our Epiphany. The seemingly unnoticed but life-changing revelation of Christ into our hearts, minds and bodies; whose miraculous love draws us ever closer to him and slowly transforms us from water into wine. 

Amen. 

Image : Miracle at Cana, collage, by the artist Diamond.