JESUS BLESSES A WEDDING

John 2: 1-11

The Rev. Paul R. Coleman from Zelienople Pennsylvania once said that a man and a woman, who were friends for many years, died and went to heaven. They told St. Peter they wanted to get married. “Take you time and think about it” was St. Peter’s advice. You have an eternity here! Come back and talk with me in a year! Puzzled, they did as St. Peter requested, but in a year they still wanted to be married. So they went back to St. Peter and told him so. St. Peter sighed, scanned the horizon of heaven, and said to them, “Okay, I was hoping by now to have a preacher up here. But never mind, I’ll do the ceremony myself!

Yesterday our son, Matt, and Drew and Suzi Marshall’s daughter, Vicki, were married here! When I announced Vicki’s vows to Matt, as Drew announced Matt’s vows to Vicki, I almost added “for richer, or poorer, in sickness and in health, in baseball season, football season, during days of golf, etc!” There are so many stories and traditions surrounding weddings!

Up in Pennsylvania there are many Amish weddings each year in Lancaster County. The clue to the community that a wedding will be upcoming is this: the planting of more than 300 stalks of celery about this time of the year, because all the weddings happened between late October and the first week of January (no later.) That was the job of the parents of the bride to be. In their culture, weddings were only held Tuesdays and Thursdays so her parents tried to pick a date early that did not conflict with someone else’s. And while the groom and attendants wore church black, the bride and her attendants usually wore navy blue or purple! Isn’t it interesting what customs surround weddings! But in each case it is meant to be a celebration of love and marriage. Just a few weeks ago I told what happened in Jewish weddings in Jesus’ day. The father of the groom, when he believes his son is ready for marriage, looks over the prospective young women in his village or in neighboring ones, looking for someone from “good stock” someone with whom his family can have a relationship with her family. When he finds such a girl, he and his son meet with her family and see if the arrangement can be made. If all are in agreement, the father of the groom offers a handsome financial gift to her father in exchange for her hand in marriage. That is called the bride price. When agreed, then the plans for the wedding begin, without the young man and woman ever formally meeting. There were then, as now, very specific tasks for the bride’s family and for the groom’s family. Included in the tasks was making a guest list. It was usually limited by either money or number of acquaintances, or both. Did you notice that whoever was hosting the wedding chose to invite not only Jesus, but the newly-named group of 12 that included Nathaniel, the new disciple who, just a few verses earlier, had said concerning Jesus native village, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth? This wedding is unusual in at least that respect: the guest list that included Jesus, his mother, and eclectic group of men! “There was a wedding in Cana in Gallilee; the mother of Jesus was there, Jesus also was invited to the marriage, along with his disciples.” (Verses 1 & 2) Did you also notice in today’s passage, that John does not tell us whose wedding this is where this miracle is performed? That doesn’t seem important to the story. William Barclay adds interesting information about Jewish weddings in the first century: First, weddings took place on Wednesdays; second, the wedding festivities lasted several days and the ceremony took place late on that Wednesday evening after the dinner. Then the last thing that happened late that night was the couple was escorted to their new home- a room built on his father’s house! They were taken through the streets with torches and with a canopy carried over their heads, taking as long a route as possible so that the most people could wish them well. There was no honeymoon; the couple, instead, welcomed well-wishers into their new home for a week after their ceremony, during which time they wore their wedding clothes with crowns; they were treated like a king and queen and were addressed as such for that special week, as friends catered to their every whim! So it was to this event that Jesus had been invited. And it was at this event that the wine gave out. There was an old rabbinic saying: “Without wine, there is no joy,” not for drunkenness, but for the length of celebration and the fantasy treatment of the new couple. Drunkenness was considered a great disgrace, and often they would drink wine diluted with two parts water. But in a land where hospitality was natural and offered generously, it would have disgraced the family to have run out of wine, or food, anything set out for the wedding guests. When Jesus was alerted to the problem by his mother, literal translations of the words made it sound like Jesus answered his mother abruptly and rudely. Although I have seen weddings where nerves are stretched and anxiety is high, the word he used was one of honor, also used by Caesar Augustus, for example, when he addressed the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra. This was not an angry retort by Jesus, but a respectful term most often used in that day.

We know the rest of the story by reading it. Our family certainly had a gathering of people from coast to coast to attend our son’s and new daughter-in-law’s wedding. We arrived greeting each other, and we left related to each other. The wedding changed and made a difference in the lives of those who attended. In Jesus’ day, it was unique that the cast of guests included Jesus, his mother-Mary, and his disciples. The title of this event is sometimes: “Jesus attends a wedding.” But more often it is referred to as “Jesus’ first miracle.” Most of the times when I hear people hope for a miracle, it’s in response to an illness, or a natural disaster, or a terrible accident. “It’ll be a miracle if anyone lives through that.” “It will be a miracle if they win the championship.” “It’s a miracle that people didn’t lose their lives when that plane went down in the Hudson River.” But Jesus, perhaps as a deliberate act of God, has his first recorded miracle, not making the blind to see, not making the lame to walk, not making a possessed man to loose his chains, but hearing a concern from his own mother that he had the power to change. More wine. Was it the end of the world if the wine ran out? Was it a disgrace to the host family? Or was the point of the miracle to show those who newly decided to follow Jesus, (some of whom had just been called as disciples that week!) the power that he possessed, and to see that such power could, as I often say in weddings, “be used to make joys greater and burdens lighter.” Perhaps that day—setting the stage for Jesus’ ministry, and to foreshadow the wonderful heavenly banquet of abundance, God said “I want my kingdom to be about abundance. Enough to eat and more; enough to drink and more; enough joy to go around; and a way to say what has just happened—that a wedding of two young people in marriage can also be a time when miracles of differences, of deeply set traditions, and of supply and demand can be modified- by a Holy Smile from Heaven that blesses their union as well. Mary asked for it; Jesus delivered it; but it was God that provided the miracle. May God bless events in your lives with hospitality, traditions, and even, in those brief shining moments, ways to perceive heaven smiling … on our earthly endeavors.

Jeffrey A. Sumner July 5, 2009