Isaiah 62: 1-5; Psalm
36: 5-10; I
Corinthians 12: 1-11; John
2: 1-11
This is a homily by Fr. Gene
Tucker, given at St.
John’s Church, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, January 17, 2016.
“MIRACLES OF CREATION AND RE-CREATION”
(Homily text: John 2: 1-11)
This morning, we hear John’s account
of Jesus’ first miracle, on the occasion when He changed water into wine at a
wedding in the town of Cana, in Galilee.
John takes care to tell us that this
event was “the first of his signs, and that this event “revealed his glory,” so
that His disciples “believed in him.”
John relates this first miracle to
His final miracle, His rising from the dead on Easter Sunday morning. John
gives us a hint of this connection in our text this morning. (More on that in a
moment.)
Before we look at the implications
of Jesus’ act in changing water into wine, let’s take a moment to remind
ourselves of the setting for this miracle. Then, we ought to consider just what
constitutes a miracle.
We are told that this wedding took
place in a town called Cana. If we travel to the Holy Land today, we can go to
a town called Cana, and there we will find numerous reminders of this wedding
and of the Lord’s generosity in supplying a large amount of very fine wine. But
the Cana of today isn’t the same as the Cana in New Testament times, for the
original Cana is located about six miles or so to the northwest. Cana was
located north of Nazareth, and west of the Sea of Galilee.
Next, let’s remind ourselves of the
importance of weddings in the first century. Wedding customs differed
significantly from our practices today. When a couple gets married today, there
is usually a rehearsal for the wedding the day before, and then the ceremony
itself, which is followed by a reception. But in Jesus’ day a wedding and the
attendant celebration would last nearly a whole week. So it was imperative that
the host of the celebration be prepared by having plenty of food and plenty of
wine on hand. Failure to supply these (and other) necessities brought shame on
the host, who was the bridegroom. But, we might ask, why was the celebration a
week long? Two answers arise in connection with this question: For one thing, weddings offered one of
perhaps very few opportunities for celebration in that day and time. We forget
how difficult life was in those days, due to poverty, oppressive Roman
occupation, and the dishonesty of the leaders of God’s people. Hope was in
short supply. The second reason for the celebration was the significance of
marriage itself, for marriage carried with it a hope for the future, as the
married couple shared with God in the miracle of the creation of new life. So
the prospect of children offered the hope that God had not abandoned His people,
and that God’s promise, made to Abraham, that Abraham’s descendents would be as
numerous as the sands of the seashore.
Another feature of this event is the
Lord’s puzzling response to His mother’s confidence in His ability to bring
about a solution to the problem of having no wine. To contemporary ears, His
response, saying, “Woman, what concern is that to you and me?” sounds harsh and
disrespectful. But in the culture of the day, a man would address a woman, any
woman (even his mother), in public in such a fashion. So Jesus’ response fits
the practices of the day, even though it strikes us in an entirely different
fashion.
Now, let’s turn our attention to
miracles themselves.
In a very basic sense, a miracle is
something that happens which falls outside our normal human expectations. Some
examples from the Bible will illustrate this point: The creation of the world
by the will of God is, in itself, a miracle. How could the world we live in be
created out of nothing? Genesis tells us
that God created it by an act if His will, speaking things into being. (See
Genesis, chapters one and two, for the account of creation.) The parting of the
Red Sea so that God’s people could pass through the waters on their way out of
Egypt is another miracle. (Exodus, chapter fourteen.) God’s provision of the
manna and of water in the wilderness is another example of a miracle in the
Bible. In each of these cases, God does
something that isn’t a normal event. Often, God makes something happen out of
nothing, simply by an act of His will.
Each of Jesus’ miracles falls into
this pattern: Jesus makes something out
of nothing. He creates (or re-creates) where human expectations don’t allow us
to think those sorts of things can happen: He changes water into wine; He heals
the man born blind (John chapter nine), He raises Lazarus from the dead (John,
chapter eleven). And then, in His greatest miracle, He rises from the dead on
Easter Sunday morning.
John links Jesus final miracle, His
resurrection, to this first miracle by recording Jesus’ comment to His
mother…He says, “My hour is not yet come.” Whenever we read the word “hour” in
the Fourth Gospel, it is a reference to Jesus’ death and resurrection. So here,
the Lord gives us a glimpse of the totality of His miracle working, for His
first miracle and His last miracles and closely linked. Both create and
re-create.
God’s miraculous acts allow us to
see a glimpse of God’s power. The unseen power of God is seen in the physical
world. The unseen and the spiritual enter the world of the things that can be
seen and the physical. They give us hope that God has not abandoned us, and
that God’s love continues to be seen in the world. They show us that God has
the power to overcome hopelessness, as when the wine had run out at the wedding
in Cana, as when the man born blind was able to see again, as when Lazarus, who
had been dead for four days, was raised to life again. The last and greatest
miracle, the resurrection of the Lord, is the foundation and basis for our Christian
hope of new and re-created life in this world, and in the guarantee of
everlasting life of the world to come.
Basically, miracles are sacramental
acts, for miracles have an outer and visible quality which affirms the
spiritual and inner reality of God’s power and presence. (A sacrament is
defined as “A visible and outward sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”)
As Christian believers and disciples
of Jesus Christ, we are called to live a sacramental life. That is, we are
called to be outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual grace of God
that has been given to us in our baptisms. By the ways we think, by the ways we
talk, by the ways we act, we are to show the signs of God’s indwelling presence
in the person of Jesus Christ, through the continuing power and inspiration of
the Holy Spirit.
We are called to be walking
miracles, by which we allow God to remake us, more and more, into the image of
Christ. By this process, we die to our old natures and are raised to a new
nature. We are re-created, remade and remolded, defying the odds of normal
human experience which would try to tell us that we are incapable of changing
into the likeness of God’s love.
By this process, we are able to work
miracles for others in the world, for people who have been created by the
miraculous power of God, people who are dearly loved by God, people for whom
there seems to be little reason for the hope of a better life. In so doing, we
set our own agendas aside and recall with joy the miracles that God has done in
our own lives. We set out in service to God and to others in gratitude to
re-create and renew the world God has made.
May the power of the Holy Spirit
enable us to see the work which God has set before us, that we may be
co-creators with God, miracle-workers in bringing a new and better world into
being, working against all human expectations that would dissuade us.
AMEN.
