Bible Text: John 2:1-11 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Epiphany 2021 | We’re used to saying that Jesus’ turning water into wine in Cana of Galilee was his first miracle. The King James even translates it this way: “this beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee.” But it’s not quite true. It wasn’t Jesus’ first miracle and the text doesn’t say it was – it says this was the first of Jesus’ signs, not his miracles. In fact, our Gospel begins with the words “after three days,” because three days earlier Jesus had already done the miraculous. He’d said to Nathaniel, “Before Philip called you, while you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathaniel, of course, was so impressed that Jesus knew his location that he calls Jesus the Son of God and the King of Israel. Why? Because Jesus had just performed a miracle.
This is not in the least to downplay what happened at this wedding in Cana of Galilee, Jesus turning water into wine. Quite the opposite actually. It’s to magnify it. It wasn’t technically his first miracle, but it was his first sign. Who knows how many miracles Jesus performed? St. John will say that Jesus did and said so much that, if it were all recorded, the world wouldn’t be able to hold the books that would have to be written. But here you have the first of his signs, not just a miracle, but a sign to you. It’s the same word the angel speaks to the shepherds, “And this will be the sign to you, you will find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” A sign teaches. The sign to the shepherds taught them that a Savior had been born to them, that the Lord God had come to them lowly and humble and poor, to share their misery and bear their sins. And this first sign in Cana of Galilee teaches. He manifested His glory, St. John says. And His glory is not to do cheap miracles. Not to wow the crowds. Not even to show off his unlimited knowledge by seeing Nathaniel under that tree. No, His glory is to suffer for us sinners and win us back for Himself and give eternal joy to His creation.
And this is what His first of signs teaches us. We could translate it, in fact, the foundation of signs, that every other sign or miracle Jesus performed is built on this one. Because here Jesus asserts Himself as our Creator come to make right what has gone terribly wrong. This was a creative act, to turn water into wine. And Jesus does it at a wedding, because marriage and family are part of creation, foundational to life. What God made was good. Everything in creation. But especially marriage and family. It’s only after God creates woman that the Holy Scriptures say, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Very good.
But things are not very good. Jesus did not come into a world that was very good. He came into a very bad world in order to make it good. And nowhere do we see this more clearly than in marriage. There is, of course, still nothing wrong with marriage. In fact, in all of the Bible, you’ll never hear a negative word about marriage. God praises it to the skies, before and after the fall into sin. It’s people who are the problem. And if we wanted to sum up what’s wrong with the world, what causes more grief and pain and hurt and poverty than anything else, it wouldn’t be bad government, it wouldn’t be lack of education, or lack of medicine, or plagues and diseases, no, it’s how we’ve treated marriage and family. First, we simply don’t understand what a blessing it is. A sick man, who’s poor and uneducated, and slaving away in a dead-end job, but who has a happy home, with a wife who submits to him and adores him, and children who respect him, is happier than a rich man, famous and healthy, with the best and most secure of jobs, who has constant strife at home with wife and children. This is simply true. Besides faith in Christ, besides your baptism, marriage and family matter more than anything in the world. They are simply foundational. Both to your life and to society. Creation can’t function without marriage and family. Chasing after career and money and fame and pleasure never made anyone happy, not without family. The love of mom and dad, the camaraderie of brothers and sisters, the union of husband and wife, the care for children, these fulfil the most basic human needs, they are built into creation, who we are as men and women. God honors it. But we’ve failed to, not just as a society, not just the people out there, but in the church. And I don’t mean simply by divorce or adultery, I mean by failing to see what a treasure we have in marriage and family.
We could go on to list all the sins against marriage and family in our culture – people completely ignore it, live together and fornicate instead of promising life-long loyalty to one another, perverted governments claiming men can enter into marriage with men, women with women, couples treating children as choices instead of gifts from God, laws promoting abortion and boys and girls mutilating themselves so they can pretend to be what they’re not, but time would run out. Suffice it to say that the key to tranquility and happiness and security in life, is strong marriages and strong families. The key factor in America, in Wyoming, in Casper, for the health, happiness, and financial security of a child is not the color of his skin, not the price of oil, not who’s president of the United States, not even education, it’s family, it’s whether you have a mommy and a daddy at home who love you and spend time with you. That’s both biblical and a statistical fact that even the heathen have to admit. The attack on marriage and family, as championed by groups like Black Lives Matter, is demonic, it’s an attack on creation, on human happiness. It’s what the devil did in the garden against Eve and it’s the source of all corruption in this world and in our lives.
So let’s realize then why Jesus performs this foundational sign at a wedding. Notice he doesn’t manifest his glory at a political rally or in a palace or among the rich or in a university, but with a poor wedding couple. Because Jesus doesn’t come to offer political solutions or financial advice or useless academic theories, no, he comes at the basic human level, in human flesh, to deal with your basic foundational problems. And he doesn’t come to give you some bare forgiveness, so you can have a ticket to heaven when you die. No, He comes to bring you forgiveness of real sins that really affect your life in the here and now. He comes to restore creation, to heal marriages, to bless families, to give joy here on earth through knowing Him as the Creator who has not given up on His creation, but comes to join it in flesh and blood, to become one flesh with it, to marry it to Himself, and then shed his blood for it.
What Jesus does at this wedding is a microcosm of what Jesus does for the entire cosmos. He saves this wedding. He takes shame and embarrassment and strife and turns it into pure joy. He takes lack and deficiency and turns it into over-abundance, good measure, pressed down, and running over. Six jars, containing twenty to thirty gallons each. That’s a ridiculous amount of wine, way too much. And it’s the best wine. And it’s wine, made to give joy to the hearts of men. This is what Jesus has come to do on a cosmic scale, for everyone. He comes as our Creator to take away the shame and guilt of our sin that so corrupts our lives and our marriages and our families and makes us miserable, to take it away and give us joy instead. And to teach us what is really valuable.
God became a man in Christ Jesus to make you His holy bride. He loves you to His death, spills His blood for you, to rescue you from every evil and cleanse you from all sin, to present you to Himself as His bride, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, so that you are holy and beautiful in His sight. And you as His bride submit to Him, respect Him as your Lord, receive His name, take His body and His blood into yourself, desire Him as a bride yearns for her groom. And this gives unparalleled joy. The blood he pours out in the wine of His Supper gives the joy of undying security, that you are blessed as Moses never was on this earth, that you can sing, My eyes have seen your salvation, that God doesn’t pass by you for you to behold His back, but comes to you, shows you His face in Christ Jesus, the face that turned itself to Jerusalem, the sacred head wounded and pierced with thorns, to shed divine blood for your life, to remove all sin from you and die for you His bride. This is the marriage that saves and gives God’s grace and glory.
This is why Jesus reveals Himself as your God and your Lord at a wedding. This is the great sign to you. So trust in Him, that He is the God who joins you to Himself and makes You His own, not to live for yourself but for Him who made you and redeemed you with His blood. For us, for Christians, to value marriage and family is to value Jesus. And to value Jesus is to value marriage and family. The Church submits to Christ and so the wife submits to her husband. Our Lord dies for His bride and so we husbands swallow our pride and love our wives, sacrificing our desires for their good, children respect their parents and parents raise their children for heavenly joy, and we all return, husbands, wives, sons, daughtres, bachelors and bachelorettes, we all return day after day, Sunday after Sunday, to the God who joins us to Himself and teaches us where true joy is found. Let us pray:
In Thee is gladness
Amid all sadness,
Jesus, sunshine of my heart.
By Thee are given
The gifts of heaven,
Thou the true Redeemer art.
Our souls Thou wakest,
Our bonds Thou breakest;
Who trusts Thee surely
Has built securely;
He stands forever: Allelujah!
Our hearts are pining
To see Thy shining,
Dying or living
To Thee are cleaving;
Naught can us sever: Allelujah!