Dear Friends,
This week’s joyful Epiphany readings (links below) continue to explore the great ‘revelation’ theme of this season.
The prophet Isaiah gives us the image of God rejoicing over his people in the same way a bride and bridegroom reveal and celebrate their love for one another. It is a fitting pairing for this week’s Gospel passage which recalls the first miracle which Jesus performed at a wedding feast in Cana. By turning lots of water into lots of wine, Jesus revealed his miraculous powers to his disciples and they in turn confirmed their faith in him.
Have you ever wondered why this household held so much water in the first place? We are told, ‘standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons’ (John 2:6). All this water would be used for ritual washing which had nothing to do with bodily hygiene and everything to do with making ‘dirty’ humans spiritually clean enough to enter into the presence of God. Lots of water and lots of washing had become a sign of a sort of moral purity, and then a substitute for moral purity. The religious people who would wash obsessively in this water could look down on the supposedly immoral people around them.
So, Jesus found himself attending a wedding in a very religious household in which 120 to 180 gallons of water had been stored just to make a few people feel worthy to talk to God and more pure than their neighbours. This is the setting (what sounds like a fairly sober and stuffy wedding celebration) in which Jesus takes this water and changes it into the finest wine. He sits among those who are misguidedly searching for God in rules and empty religious ritual… and proceeds to start a party!
Later in the Gospels we learn that Jesus loved to celebrate with the outcasts, telling them that God loves them, and that unselfish love for others is at the heart of true morality. No wonder that Jesus would be called ‘a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’! (Matthew 11:19).
He reveals himself as the one who takes our water for purification and turns it into the wine of acceptance, celebration and love. In our lives and in our worship we should respond accordingly to the one who lavishes such love on us.
Yours in Christ,
Ian