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You may have already noticed that this Gospel – John’s Gospel – is not like the others:

There are no parables

No births narratives – i.e. Christmas stories

Miracles are called signs…

We are told in this narrative that this is the first of many signs that this Gospel will reveal the glory of God.

Signs are something that all of us are familiar with.

There are highway signs – Stop, Yield, Hwy. numbers, there are mall signs, advertising signs, parking lot signs, signs on my laptop that are called widgets and on and on.

John uses this story of a wedding to tell us something about the extravagance, the reckless abandon, the sheer magnanimity of the One we know as our Father in Heaven.

Becky’s reading of this Gospel today brought it all alive as only a drama teacher can do… We saw in our mind's eye a first-century Palestinian village, an embarrassed host who ran out of wine, an uppity Mary and the awkward posturing of Jesus, who both wanted to do his mother’s bidding but needed to let her know that he, not she, was in control of his life.

The teller of this tale does not tell us why Jesus was there or his mother – maybe the bride was a cousin or sister of the family… we are not told.

What we do know is that whoever wrote this Gospel had a different agenda than the other Gospel writers.

Jesus did this, the first of the signs in Cana of Galilee and his disciples believed in Him.

All I can say is that there are plenty of Christians today who would rather Jesus had failed at this miracle. When the translators finished their work and did the math of the volume of water turned to wine even they were taken a-back. Six stone jars each holding between 20 and 30 gallons … the last place I saw that much wine was when I watched Vince rack his latest batch of wine. There is something else in this passage that caught my attention.

“Everyone serves the good wine first and then the inferior wine AFTER the guests have become drunk… there is the implication at least that by the time Jesus was asked to do the miracle, the guests had plenty already. Remember in that time and place weddings lasted days not hours. What Jesus did not do was give a sermon on sobriety. As I just said, there are many who would find this extravaganza a stumbling block…

But then again so did some of Jesus' contemporaries who on occasion called him a glutton and a winebibber.

I think what is going on here is that by the time John wrote his version of the Jesus story there were some Christians who like some today had a hard time believing that God and Jesus where one and the same. They believed that if Jesus was God he couldn’t be like us, made of flesh and bone. He had to be more like, well, like God. Who was spirit and didn’t need to eat or sleep, or had no interest in drink and food much less in attending the wedding of a distant cousin. They were called Gnostics… but that is another sermon.

John’s Gospel sets the record straight. “In the beginning was the word and the word became FLESH… and lived among us and we have seen his glory” – glory “dozan”.

I’m reminded of a little book that a little girl by the name of Ashley gave to my wife, edited by Stuart Hample and Eric Marshall with the title Children’s Letters to God.

In it are actual letters children wrote to God. Here’s a sampling:

Dear God, I read the Bible. What does begat mean? Nobody will tell me.

Dear God, I went to this wedding and they kissed right in the Church. It that ok? Neil.

Dear God, Please send Dennis Clark to  a different  camp this year. Pete.

Dear God, How come you did all those miracles in the old days and don’t do any now? Seymour.

That is the question isn’t it? Especially in the light of this Gospel and the Haiti Earthquake last Tuesday. 

Like children we ask, “Dear God, why do bad things happen in this world?”

While the wedding at Cana doesn’t address that question directly it does so, I believe, indirectly.

As I said, John’s Gospel is not like the others.  The last vss. in today’s Gospel,

Jesus did this, the first of his signs in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his Glory – and his disciples believed in Him… so this word that became flesh – became a human being. In the last of the four Gospels he shows us what God is like…

Now I must introduce you to one more word in this story. The word is also in verse 11 –

Jesus did this, the first of his signs in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory… and his disciples believed in Him.

The word translated glory comes from the Hebrew word KAVOD which originally meant weight.

Middle Eastern potentates often were men of great girth, the bigger the sheik, the more camels and wives the more KAVOD. So over time kavod came to mean power. We still use it in that sense when we say “to throw one’s weight around.” To praise God’s glory is to marvel at the great weight, the awesome power of divinity.

What made the Hebrew people unique in the ancient world was that it was only to YAHWEH that the attributed KAVOD… no earthly king, no president, no political party no form of government be that a monarchy or democracy, no ideology or military has the ultimate KAVOD to save us. Anything other is called Idolatry.

What is so wonderful about this God of ours is that He also has endowed his creation with glory, Psalm 8.3ff.  “When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them?

Mortals, that you care for them. Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory, KAVOD and honor.

Ultimately God has in his heart a special place for his creation and an even more special place for the stranger, the homeless, the poor, and the oppressed.  It is God’s will, born of love, that KAVOD does not “trickle down” but flow up.

So, we begin by honoring the lowest of the low. What Scripture tells us over and over again, is that we meet God in no other than Jesus, “what you have done for the least of my sisters and brothers you have done for me …”

A wedding becomes a sign that God honors the custom of a Palestinian village no less than he honors us today as we again celebrate at the banquet of “the forgiven”. Eat this bread – drink this wine of abundance!

Can we do anything less for his children in Haiti?

Amen.