The book of John is organized around seven signs. The Wedding at Cana is the first. Nowhere in his description of these signs does John use the word for miracle. The other Gospels are filled with miracles one after another but not John. Every supernatural event has a purpose or a teaching whereas miracles in the other Gospels may not. Every one of the seven signs in John – except this first one – are followed by teaching about the larger meaning of the sign. That’s not the case in the other Gospels. Jesus almost scatters miracles like seed in the course of his ministry but here each event is a symbol for something he wants to teach us about himself. They are not allegories where every detail in the story is a symbol for something else but the larger purpose of the story is to teach something specific about Jesus. Each of the seven signs is carefully chosen by John.

Here is the list and we will look at each one of them over the next several weeks.

Changing water into wine
Healing of an official’s son
Healing a lame man
Feeding a multitude
Walking on water
Giving sight to a blind man
Raising Lazarus from the dead

Let’s look at this first sign in chapter 2

Jesus, his mother and his disciples are attending a wedding. At some point his mother – neither she or the disciples or anyone else is named – informs Jesus that there is no more wine. For a wedding host that would be more than an embarrassment. It would be almost an insult to the guests. Wedding celebrations went on for days and to run out of anything – especially the wine – would ruin everything. Everyone would lose face and such a thing would be talked about for years afterwards.

His mother reports the situation to him. She does not say anything more than they have no more wine. She does not ask him to fix the problem or to take care of it although that is what his response leads us to think. Without saying it she is really asking him to do something about it. It’s subtle but he gets the message. “You need to do something to help this family.”

I’ve wondered for years about his response. It seems so cold and rude. “Woman, what do you have to do with me?” It sounds so much like his response to the Canaanite woman who begged Jesus to heal her daughter and he responded, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.” Even though some translations say he was using a word that really should be translated “Dear woman” or even “Dear lady” as if it was almost a term of affection, it is still difficult to justify Jesus responding to his own mother that way. What helps me a little is the story in Luke when the young Jesus is left behind in Jerusalem and his parents (again no names) find him after three days of searching. Do you remember what he said to their question, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

“Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”

And then it reads, “But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.” In other words, his response at the wedding may have been something we do not expect because we have a certain image of Jesus and his mother that is not totally accurate. She would be accustomed to his being completely focused on what he was here to do – even from a young boy. Not only accustomed but she treasured that fact in her heart. It was Mary who sang from the time she learned she was chosen, “My soul praises the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for. me..” This was not the insult or rudeness we might take it to be. It is the nature of their relationship. His mother has known from the beginning that this is an unusual child with a unique purpose for his life.

So she says to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Six large water jars were standing nearby. This was water used for washing hands and feet. It was not used for drinking. The insides of the jars were likely dirty and had not been cleaned out. After all, they were not for drinking but for washing hands and feet.

“Fill the jars with water.” How was that going to help? Was Jesus expecting more guests needing their feet and hands cleaned? We are not out of water. We are out of wine.

“Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” You can imagine their asking themselves again, “What is he thinking? We are taking water from dirty jars to the man in charge and then asking him to drink it? He will be insulted in front of everyone as he should be. First, he runs out of wine and now we are asking him to drink water used for washing feet.”

Maybe Jesus is making a point about being prepared for the wedding banquet and not running out of wine. After all, didn’t he later tell a story about the virgins waiting for the bridegroom who had let their lamps run out of oil? Remember what happened to them? ‘Lord, lord.’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’

This is not just an oversight. Not being prepared has consequences.

The master of the banquet will not see this as a practical joke on the part of the servants. This is as bad as taking food that has dropped on the floor at the table and serving it to the guests. Nothing good can come of this. He will spit it out and have us beaten and we’ll not only lose our jobs but never find another one. This is not going to end well.

We know what happens, don’t we? The servants don’t tell what is in the pitcher and he drinks it. It does not say he knew they were out of wine. It does not say they knew it had been changed. Likely, no one wanted to risk telling him. After all, he was the one who was in charge of making sure there was enough and this would be a huge mark on him. They don’t know anything has changed between the time they filled the jars with water and brought it to him. They are waiting for him to spit it out and scream at them and, likely, they have talked about how they are going to put the blame on Jesus and his mother. “Don’t blame us. We are just the caterers. It’s one of your guests and his mother who told us to do this. If you want to yell at someone, yell at them.” Instead, he goes to the bridegroom and says, “Everyone brings out their good wine first and then the cheaper wine when everyone has had too much to drink and won’t notice the difference. In all my years of doing weddings this is the first.”

Total surprise for everyone. No one says anything about it. Not even the servants. Everything just goes on as if nothing miraculous had happened. No announcement is made to the guests. No one interrupts the banquet to wonder what just happened or propose a toast to Jesus. There is no amazement or wonder. No one is healed or saved. Well, one thing was saved – the faces of the servants, the banquet master and the bridegroom. That was a miracle for them.

Some people have called this a luxury miracle, a one off or even an unnecessary miracle that serves no purpose. After all, only a few people know what happened. There is no real public display of divine power. In fact, all that Jesus does is instruct the servants. No stooping down to make mud out of dust. No touching. Nothing like the dramatics of what we see today: Nothing but words. Of course, that is part of what John is intending for us to understand. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God..but the world did not recognize him.” The Word becomes flesh and is not recognized. Water becomes wine and nothing is said about it. The wedding master is pleasantly surprised but not baffled or shocked. No one falls down in front of Jesus and thanks him. Life goes on undisturbed. Neither the bride or groom would talk about it for the rest of their lives. It’s the earthquake no one notices and the announcement of God’s new creation that no one hears or even mentions afterwards. The banquet goes on as if nothing had happened. In fact, had John not written about it we would have never known. It’s nowhere else to be found.

We want our miracles to be not only obvious but publicized and recognized. We want them to be stunning, if possible. Had we been his mother we likely would have been more specific about what we needed from him. Not just are they out of wine but we desperately need more wine. We need it now. We want miracles to encourage us and let us know that God is alive and active. He shows up. He is not silent or detached. We don’t think about the invisible miracles and signs of His presence that we take for granted. We don’t think about his quietly invisible signs of his presence and interventions in our lives that go unnoticed because he never draws attention to them. So much of our lives is miraculous even when we don’t recognize it. Our very existence is, as we saw last week from reading Colossians, held together by him. Nothing is said. He remains silent but without him the whole of creation would fly apart. Every moment is a miracle and a surprise. There is nothing normal or routine about our lives. The earth hurtles through space at over 65,000 miles per hour. Our solar system is moving at close to 500,000 miles per hour and our galaxy (The Milky Way) is moving at 1.3 million miles per hour. If the angle varied we would not have seasons. If the atmosphere varied we would freeze or be incinerated. If the speed varied we would fall into the sun or be lost into space. If gravity varied we would be either too heavy to walk or would drift off the planet into the universe. This is no unnecessary miracle even though it goes unnoticed by everyone at the party.

Everyone is present for the miraculous even in their ordinary lives and roles. What does John write at the end of this first sign? “This is the first of his miraculous signs Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory and his disciples put their faith in him.”

This is not our familiar definition of how God reveals his glory, is it? How did he do it with Moses? A burning bush. An earthquake and storm. Lightening and thunder. Glory that is so overwhelming that Moses is put by God in the cleft of a rock and so bright that his face is still burned and glowing when he comes down from the mountain. This is how we expect the glory of God to be revealed. This is what we want if we are to put our faith in him. But the glory of Christ is revealed here in the mundane and ordinary. It is revealed but only to a few disciples. They will live to see more than they could imagine – the deaf hearing, the blind seeing, thousands being fed and food left over, the crippled walking, the dead coming back to life and all of this begins with one unnoticed and mostly unremembered response to a wedding running out of wine.

Bob Deffinbaugh in Dallas says:

I fear we have a distorted definition of “glory,” very much like our Lord’s disciples had in the Gospels. We wrongly think that if the glory of God is present, it will be in some dramatic display of power, one that is visible and spectacular, one that is seen and acknowledged by all. Let me remind you that the glory of God was manifested in this miracle, even though few recognized it as such. We may be looking for the wrong kind of “glory.” All too often in the “triumphalism” of the church then and today, we look for the wrong kind of glory. The glory of God, as I understand the Scriptures, is manifested in and through the saints as they—like their Savior—live humbly and suffer patiently for the sake of Christ and the Gospel

Again, what does Paul say about the way Christ revealed himself to us and how we reveal him to others:

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death —
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Maybe the loud noise of our worship and witness and our desires to be heard by the world are doing nothing to reveal his glory or, worse, only increasing their blindness and deafness to the Word that has come into the world. Maybe it is confident humility and unquestioning obedience will speak to hearts and minds that are hardened and dark. Maybe the world has run out of wine and we we think that is not the opportunity for which we are looking. We want something bigger and more significant.

One final thought from Andrew MacLaren for us at this stage of our lives.

“The rude speech of the governor of the feast may lend itself to another aspect of this same thought. He said, in jesting surprise, ‘Thou hast kept the good wine until now,’ whereas the world gives its best first, and when the palate is dulled and the appetite diminished, then ‘that which is worse.’ How true that is; how tragically true in some of our lives! In the individual the early days of hope and vigour, when all things were fresh and wondrous, when everything was apparelled in the glory of a dream, contrast miserably with the bitter experiences of life that most of us have made. Habit comes, and takes the edge off everything. We drag remembrance, like a lengthening chain, through all our life; and with remembrance come remorse and regret. ‘The vision splendid’ no more attends men, as they plod on their way through the weariness of middle life, or pass down into the deepening shadows of advancing and solitary old age. The best comes first, for the men who have no good but this world’s. And some of you have got nothing in your cups but dregs that you scarcely care to drink.

How will we see our lives now? Will we see what has been as the best parts and now we just coast and remember? Or, will we allow him to take the water of our ordinary lives and turn it into wine for us to say the best has been saved to last and this is the time of our lives that will reveal the glory of God.