For Jesus speaks to you today from His Gospel saying,
“When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, [he] did
not know where it came from…”
The closest Jesus ever brings us to understanding this
“water into wine” miracle, in any sort of scientific way, is when Moses turned
the Nile into blood. Yet, there, it was not
such a grand and wonderful thing. Though truly a miracle of God, the Nile was the source of everyone’s drinking water, not to
mention food: fish and the like.
When the Nile was turned to blood, everything in it died and
began to rot away, stinking up the entire kingdom of Egypt
Thus, the miraculous sign of changing water into wine
presents us with a dilemma. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Clearly, the
wedding party thought it a good thing along with the rest of the drunkards. But
not everyone was happy about it.
When presented with the God Who changes water into wine, He
seems easy to believe in. He is the magician. The Santa Claus. The joy-bringer.
He attends our weddings. He brings gift-wrapped boxes overflowing with love,
commitment, and fidelity. He is there for our baptisms and our confirmations.
He makes friends from enemies, sons from orphans, and diners from the famished.
He stands ready in all our life events to transfigure the day into one brimming
with smiles, laughter, and unforgettable memories.
But where life goes up, it also comes down. So we encounter
the God that changes wine into water. He lurks in the corner of the courtrooms
as the divorce decree is issued, when what God had put together, man tears
asunder. He is there when the son we shipped off to war returns to us with a
missing leg, arm, or the desire to live. He is there when the cemetery dirt
clings to our polished shoes converting joy to grief, hope to desperation, and
life to death.
Neither God is easy to believe in. When we are prosperous;
when things are going well, the first thing we forget is our true source of
joy. We focus all our attention and worship on the gift, rather than the
gift-giver. We fill our glass with this gift-wine and become drunk on the
pleasures and blessings it seems to give. The man with wine forgets the water
and the God that transformed it.
The “wine-to-water” God is not easy to believe in either.
When gifts of God are removed or taken, a man’s anger burns hot against heaven.
A lost wife, an ended career, a dead child, a disappearing home, reputation,
money, or friends. Their apparent repossession causes great bitterness and
darkness inside a man. Instead of turning to the God Who can give real rest to
his restless soul, he bends towards promiscuity, alcohol, or a loaded pistol.
The man with water despises the God Who stole his wine.
The God Who changes water to wine and wine to water is one
God and there is no getting around Him. This one, true God is baptized into the
water for purification and comes out filled with mortal wounds and the filth of
the sins of all humanity. He drains all six stone jars filled with the wine of
God’s wrath and suffers horribly, finally meeting His end on a cross.
He forsakes kingdom, riches, and heavenly bliss. He is
forsaken by father , mother, brothers and friends. He is painfully aware of
rejection by those who seem close, yet betray in the end. He is stricken with
the sorrow of having plenty, but fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. He knows
peace and knows war. He knows love and loss; life and death.
This God-man, Jesus, is our God. He is the incarnation of
God in the flesh. He is the very source and embodiment of love and fidelity in
this way: that should water become wine or wine turn to water, He remains the
same. Though our fidelity is consistently flighty and temperamental, His goal
is always constant and true, that is to take us into Him.
He knows our every need and yet knows that without His death
and resurrection, even all the wine and water in the world would be but a
permanent death for us. It is not the temporal blessings that matter for they
neither aid us against sin and death, neither do they reveal the God Who gives
them. It is only in the cross of Jesus that we find our answers.
In that answer, we only find Jesus Who unites us to Himself,
baptizing us into His suffering, death, and resurrection so that it is no
longer we who live, but Christ Who lives in us. In faith, we gladly exchange
our sinful sight for divine sight where we lose focus on the water or the wine
that touches our lips and instead see the pierced hand of the loving God Who
holds the chalice.
It is not the water that Jesus changes into wine that is the
real gift to this wedding at Cana , it is the
One Who changed it. Jesus is the gift. The wages of sin is death, but the free
gift of God is Christ Jesus. God has become man and now greater things than
wedding magic tricks will all of us witness. The greatest being the free
forgiveness of sins for sinners.
Thus, it is not the wine of prosperity nor the wine of
despair that is offered to you this day, but the wine of Blood: the Blood of
salvation. Christ does not offer a temporary gift of happiness or celebration
in His Church, but a permanent gift of eternal life, in His Blood.
This is the final step that the wedding party was not privy
to: water turned to wine, turned to Blood. The shadow of a wedding that Jesus
and His mother attended did not get to see the true wedding of God and man, in
the purification of baptism.
And yet today, that same Jesus offers both to you free of
charge. He takes the water and the wine and the wedding and makes it new. Now
the water that dries up is the water of everlasting life. Now the wine that
intoxicates is the wine of forgiveness. Now the wedding of disappointment
becomes the wedding of God and His Bride, the Church. A perfect, holy union, made
just for you.
And this wonderful gift does not go away or change any more
than the giver leaves or changes. The forgiveness of sins is Christ’s one, true
message to the world. The salvation of all people is Christ’s one, true mission
to the world. And the eating and drinking of His wedding gift of His true Body
and true Blood are all the sign we need to know that He is thinking of us.
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