John 2:1-11 January 17, 2010

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come." His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, "Fill the jars with water." And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, "Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward." So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now." Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

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The Wedding in Cana is one of the more familiar stories in the Bible, partly because it is the source of the "water into wine" miracle that most everyone knows about, and partly because somewhere along the line, the church decided that all weddings are sacred because Jesus attended this one. Our traditional wedding liturgy almost always includes some version of these words: "Marriage is an honorable estate, instituted of God, and signifying unto us the mystical union which exists between Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence in Cana of Galilee." Presence - that's it. All he had to do was be there. This is the only wedding we know of that Jesus attended, and John is the only gospel writer who bothered to talk about it, but in our tradition, because he was there, we affirm that all weddings are blessed.

The way John tells it, shortly after the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, right after he has gotten all his disciples together, Jesus takes a side trip to Cana with his mother, who, by the way, John never bothers to mention by name. Cana was a small town some few miles north of Nazareth. This story is the only place it is mentioned in the Bible. As to the wedding, we don't know who was getting married or how they might have been related to Jesus or his mother. John leaves out all the information we would usually want to know about a wedding. What were the bridesmaids wearing? How tall was the groom? Nothing. Instead, the entire focus of the story is on the miracle, the "sign" John calls it, of Jesus saving the party by keeping the wine flowing. This, according to John, was the first miracle performed by Jesus. It revealed his glory and made believers out of his disciples.

Now certainly this is a good story. John tells it well. But what it means isn't all that clear. I say that because what I think John wanted his readers to get out of the story doesn't really work for most of us anymore. If you read through the whole gospel, you'll notice that John talks a lot about "signs and wonders." Turning water into wine was "the first" of the signs, but there were lots of others. Jesus heals the paralytic. He feeds the 5000. He cures a blind man, walks on water and raises Lazarus from the dead. He even fills his disciples' nets with fish after they had caught nothing all night.

But it isn't just the miracles themselves. All of the gospel writers tell miracle stories, but John just goes on and on about them. Not only does he tell us about the signs, he also makes numerous other references to them:

2:23 - "Many believed in his name because they saw the signs he was doing."

3:2 - "No one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God."

4:48 - "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe."

6:30 - "What sign are you going to give us…"

11:47 - "This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him.'"

And if, after all this, we have somehow managed to miss the point, John goes on to make it crystal clear. "Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the messiah." (20:30-31)

For John, that seems to be the whole point: the signs prove Jesus was the Messiah. The other gospel writers didn't focus so much on the miracles, maybe because the people they were talking to weren't quite so "miracle" minded. But John was writing for a different audience. John was writing mostly for a Roman culture steeped in the Greek gods. In Roman culture, being able to perform miracles was the least the gods could do, assuming they wanted to be taken seriously. The idea of a god who couldn't perform signs and wonders would have been simply ridiculous. So, you might say John was simply talking about Jesus to these people in a way they could understand. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

The problem is, we're not citizens of the Roman empire. We don't worship a Pantheon of gods. In our more scientific times, signs and wonders don't make much of an impression on us, if we believe in them at all. And what that means, when we read a story like the Wedding in Cana, is that we're going to hear it in a very different way than they did. If it's going to have any meaning for us, it will probably need to be a different meaning than what John had in mind.

So we go back to the story. The question I find myself asking is, what does it say about the nature of God? The idea that God, or Jesus, could perform miracles isn't really what I care about, although it would certainly be handy to have someone around who could turn water into wine. We could see the story as a symbol of God's abundance; an affirmation of the goodness of life, divine approval for our human celebrations. Even Jesus can appreciate our need to "let the good times roll." How great is that? And why have so many of his followers over the years been so afraid of dancing, singing, celebrating and drinking an occasional cabernet?

That's one way of looking at the Wedding in Cana. But thinking about the story a little more deeply, it isn't long before some pretty troubling thoughts come to mind. O.K., so Jesus saved the party, but he seemed pretty reluctant about it, didn't he. His first reaction was, "So they're out of wine. Why is that my problem?" That doesn't sound much like the sympathetic Jesus we're used to. Then, Mary tells the servants to do whatever Jesus says, which suggests to me she had some idea that this actually wasn't going to be his first miracle.

Where I really get stuck though, is when I begin thinking about all the other weddings, about all the other parties when the wine ran out and Jesus wasn't around to make more. I begin thinking about all the prayers that go unanswered, about the desperate situations that arise in our lives in which no amount of begging the heavens for help seems to do a bit of good. And without planning for or expecting it, the Wedding in Cana leads me to places like Haiti.

This last week's earthquake in Haiti is so fresh and raw it's hard to talk about at all. The pain and suffering is just stunning. Overwhelming. I'm finding it really difficult even to follow the news stories. The whole country was already hanging by a thread. You would think this would be one of the last places on earth that deserved to be hit like this. Not that they deserved it. No one deserves something like this, regardless of what insensitive people like Pat Robertson might think.

I know a lot of people are really angry at Robertson for what he said, that the earthquake is God's wrath for a pact that Haiti made with the devil. I would like to think it was just a thoughtless and incredibly stupid comment, except that he's done this so often in the past. The Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, Aids, you name it … every time some major human disaster strikes, Robertson pops up with a microphone in hand claiming it is God's wrath for our immorality, as defined by him.

On the one hand, he makes me want to tear my hair out. People like Robertson are out there all the time defining the faith I love in ways that I find appalling and reprehensible. The truth is though, he is just doing what we all do. He is taking a horrible situation and making it fit in a meaningful way into his own worldview. Make no mistake; I do not share his worldview. I personally find the meaning he's making out of this disgusting and unacceptable. But, if I can step back from my anger just a bit, I'm forced to realize that all he has done is give his own answer to the question, "How could God let this happen?" We are perfectly free to reject his answer if we don't like it, but that doesn't get us off the hook of answering the question for ourselves.

How could God let this happen? Right now, we're too close to the tragedy to give it much thought. Right now, the right thing to do is what we are doing; get in there, dig people out, feed them, shelter them, heal them, mourn with them, and do whatever we can to get them back on back on their feet as soon as possible. Eventually though, once the worst of it is past, that question will bubble back to the surface. It always does. How could God let this happen? Why is it that God turns water into wine for some and lets the prayers of others go unanswered?

That is the question at the heart of our faith. In fact, that is the question all of our human religions try to answer, each in its own way. Why do people suffer? Simply shrugging it off isn't really an option for us. We need life to be meaningful. We need some understanding that helps us make sense of it all. Even if we choose to believe that the universe is simply random and chaotic - that God is a delusion, that "shit [just] happens," if you'll pardon the expression - that too, is a way of making sense of it all. As strange as it may sound, it is entirely possible to find our meaning in believing it is all meaningless. In it's own way, that too, is an answer.

But it's no answer for me. I know full well that, in God's universe, sometimes horrible things do happen. Unlike Robertson, and also, unlike the people who call themselves "The New Atheists," I don't pretend to know why. I don't believe either that God is punishing Haiti, or that God simply does not exist. What I choose to believe, is that Christ himself suffers with those who suffer. I choose to believe that God was right there before the earthquake in the day to day lives of Haitians, and that God is right there with them today in the rubble. The fact that people suffer does not have to mean that God is angry, or that God doesn't care, or that God doesn't exist. I choose to believe in a loving, gracious and forgiving God, in spite of the fact that life is often not loving, gracious and forgiving.

At the end of the day, after the dust has settled, the question will rise up in your mind, if it hasn't already. Why do we suffer? People have come up with all kinds of answers to that question and we often argue about who's answer is the right one. The truth is, there is no one right answer that works for everyone, but some answers are closer to the spirit of Christ than others are. The key word here is choice. What do you choose to believe? What is the answer that works for you? As we all know, sometimes we have fine wine in abundance and sometimes we have no wine at all. Whatever meaning you choose to make of that, I hope it doesn't keep you from celebrating the goodness of life whenever and wherever you can, and I hope it moves you to a Christ-like compassion.

Amen