The New Wine of the Kingdom
Isaiah 62:1-5; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
Weddings! For most people they take a lot of organising and planning. Generally, there is quite a lot of angst that goes in to making the ceremony perfect, dressing the church, choosing readings and music; and then there are beautiful hairdos, dresses and suits to be arranged. But preparation for the marriage liturgy often pales into insignificance when compared with the work that goes into the wedding breakfast to follow. Tradition demands that even more energy is put into this part of the day. There is venue to be dressed up, food to be prepared, speeches to be made (in the correct order), a cake to be cut, the first dance and so on.
Of course, the effort put in to this is because at a wedding, families are doing more than simply providing nourishment for their guests. The primary point of everything is so that the happy couple and their family and supporters can rejoice. It’s a wedding after all. Celebration and rejoicing is compulsory! The reason for the mandatory nature of this is to reflect the nature of the relationship between the newly wedded spouses. The newly weds rejoice in each other and we all rejoice with them. The very idea of getting married involves feasting, whether small or large. Not all of this is easy. Being nice to family members for a whole day can put one under pressure enough. So at times like this a good wine is essential to enable the rejoicing and the celebrating.
In the texts before us today the first thing we note is way the bible uses marriage as a metaphor to describes the relationship between God and Israel. The prophets often describe God and Israel as a bride and bridegroom. “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isaiah 62:5). God’s relationship is not just like that between any old husband and wife. The relationship between God and people is like the newly married when everything is new and exciting and there has to be celebration. God never changes, yet God is always new.
“On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee” (John 2:1). There is rejoicing, and why not. These words have profound resonance in the bible. The third day is the day of the resurrection, Sunday, the day when the glory of God was revealed. It is also the third day in a great week, the week in which Jesus first revealed himself as the Son of God in the presence of John the Baptist. John introduces Jesus at the wedding as if this was the most natural thing in the world. The entire Gospel is an invitation to a wedding feast. “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for his son” (Matt 22:2). The church celebrates the incarnation, the Word-made-flesh, as a wedding banquet between God and humanity, between God and creation. The relationship between God and people has always been sung as a marriage. Jesus even speaks of the end of the world, heaven itself, as a nuptial banquet or even a nuptial meeting between bride and groom. Christ is the groom. Here at Cana he reveals himself as Son of God, with his people, at a wedding. This is the messianic banquet, a celebration of the incarnation as the union between God and humanity. In John’s gospel, this is the first sign that Jesus gives. It is given on the third day. The kingdom of God is made manifest in abundance and plenty and rejoicing. The bridegroom is with his bride and is rejoicing over her. This is another epiphany, and on this occasion it is the epiphany of our salvation, a picture of the kingdom of God, a foretaste of heaven.
The only problem is that the celebration has hit a snag. The wine has run out. Normally, this might not actually have been so important. The guests had probably had enough anyway and would have gone home satisfied. The hosts would have got over any embarrassment that may have arisen after a while. The shortage of wine is about the lack of well being, that certain something that gives a faith community a feeling of quality and depth, a sense of the numinous. When it comes to living the Christian life there are times when something is missing. Perhaps this is because of the temptation to turn the Christian faith into a formula to be followed. “Yes, I tick all the boxes,” I say to myself. I have spent time praying today. I have my quiet time with God and read the bible every day. I do someone a good turn every day. I have donated to the needy and I go to church every Sunday. Churches can do the same by picking out the list provided by the latest consultant: yes, we have updated the liturgy (or updated it too much); we have visited the sick, provided food for the local food bank. Our clergy pray the morning office. We have made our hearts open to newcomers and given them plenty of say along with better coffee delivered with our best smile. The point about the wedding at Cana is that in spite of all the boxes being ticked there is still something missing. There still needs to be that ‘something else’ and that ‘something’ is the very thing that counts most. There has to be new wine.
When Mary says, “Do whatever he tells you” her words also resonate through the bible. These are, in fact, the very words pronounced by Pharoah during the time of famine in Egypt when the people had nothing. “Go to Joseph; what he says to you, do” (Gen 41:55). Then Joseph opened all the storehouses. St John stresses the quality of the wine. “Everyone serves the good wine first, and the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus in his being is that good wine, the rich wine Isaiah so poetically describes. He wants us to experience that wine in our own lives and in our life together as a community of faith. He wants us to experience new wine as joy and love and hope and faith. He wants us to experience this in abundance. Just look at the size of the six stone jars. Each was full to the brim. Is our spiritual life marked by dryness and fatigue, or is there a deep down a gushing wine, the superabundance of the Spirit nourishing us day and night and never running out? What is your life tasting like? Is it a dry ticking of the boxes to make us feel spiritually on top, or is it abundantly rich with the best wine?
The good wine that Jesus describes is the joy of becoming comfortable with the truth of who God has made us to be. It is the joy of being in an intimate communion with Christ and knowing we are loved by him. It is the joy knowing our vocation and our calling and our gifts. It is delighting in sharing those gifts, living our vocation for God and growing into the fullness of Christ. It is our readiness to serve God and the community on concert with all the baptised. This is the wine that Jesus provides. He is one greater than Joseph. His blood will be the blood of the new covenant, poured out for many. His food will satisfy the hunger of the world. His feast foreshadows the consummation of the kingdom, while at the same time, pointing forward to his passion, death, and resurrection and to his saving work that he will accomplish on the cross. He lives and dies to give us a taste of the best wine.
In your prayer this week, ask the risen Christ to watch over our feasts, the feast that is our society, the feast that is our church in Opawa-St Martins and the feast that is the world wide Anglican communion. Ask Jesus to keep us attentive to what is lacking in these feasts, to avoid allowing our hearts to be consumed in worrying about trivialities and rivalries, or the wine of consumerism and materialism, so that with Christ we can see those who have no wine, no bread, and no joy. Ask God to show us how we can be stewards who distribute the new wine of the kingdom. Pray for the confidence to bring others to the banquet of Christ, and pray that Christ may make the good wine appear in our lives and in this church.
