Full of Wine

Full of Wine

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

January 17, 2016

Scripture: John 2:1-11

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I’ve been working professionally with Bible stories for quite some time now. I’ve preached on them. I’ve written about them. Here’s one thing I’ve learned about the great stories in the Bible. No matter how often you read or hear them you never exhaust their meaning. The great Bible stories are like enormous onions. You peel off and take in one layer of meaning, but then you find that there’s another layer of meaning below that one, and another, and then yet another. It seems like the layers of meaning never end. That’s one thing that makes the great Bible stories great. Their layers of meaning never end.

Today we heard one of the great stories of the Bible, the Gospel of John’s story of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana. Jesus and his mother, who for some reason the Gospel of John never names but only calls the mother of Jesus, are there. The wine runs out. Somehow Jesus’ mother knows that he can and will do something about even though at first he says the lack of wine has nothing to do with him. Mothers are like that sometimes. They know us better than we might like. We’re told that standing there were six very large water jugs, “the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing.” They’re empty. John probably intends their being empty as a slur at the Jews, but we certainly don’t need to join him in that unfortunate endeavor of his. All that matters for us is that the jugs are empty. Jesus tells the servants to fill them with water, which apparently they do. Now there’s plenty of water on hand, but that’s not what’s needed here. The wedding party needs wine. So Jesus turns the water into wine. John tells us nothing about how he did it. We aren’t told that he said anything or did anything. We’re only told that “the water…had been turned into wine.” And not just any old wine but “the best” wine. With that revelation the story ends, although John has a comment about it before he moves on.

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed it before, but this story has all sorts of interesting details; and those details all give us different meanings in the story. John gives us one meaning in his closing comment. He says: “This, 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.” John is telling us that this is a story about who Jesus really is and about how his signs, or miracles, affected his disciples. Fair enough. That’s one meaning in the story, and it is an important one. In turning the water into wine Jesus reveals the glory of God that he embodies. When his disciples see it they believe in him, or as our translation says, put their faith in him. John calls us to put our faith in Jesus too.

That’s one meaning of the story, but there are lots of others; and it is one of those others that I want to look at this morning. There are several characters in the story—Jesus, his mother, the servants, the character our translation calls “the master of the banquet.” Some translations call him the steward. I guess there’s also a bride and groom, although they’re very much in the background, make no appearance, and aren’t even named. The story also has props in it, six large stone water jugs. Let me suggest that we look at those jugs not merely as physical objects but as things that have metaphoric or symbolic meaning in the story. This morning I ask you to think of those stone jars as representing us. As representing our spirits. And I ask you to think of what happens to and in those jugs as symbolic of what can happen to us when we fill our spirits with Jesus Christ. Let me explain.

The jugs are empty, and I see the jugs as us. Folks, so many of us, so many people generally, have times when we are spiritually empty. When our souls are empty. When inside we are parched and dry. I don’t suppose stone jugs yearn to be filled, but we do. Our spirits dry out. We become empty jugs. There’s nothing in us to keep us fresh. There’s nothing in us that we can offer to other people. We yearn for more. We yearn to be filled.

And in our story Jesus fills the jugs. But notice, he doesn’t fill them with wine. Not at first. He has them filled with water. The servants, mere human beings like us, do all they can to fill the jugs. They fill them with water. Now, water is a very good and necessary thing. We all need it to live. So did the guests at this wedding at Cana. But water is also a very ordinary, worldly thing. It’s physical. It can symbolize things spiritual for us, but in itself it’s just a physical necessity.

Water wasn’t what was really needed at this wedding. Wine was. Wine with which to celebrate. Wine with which to toast the happy couple, or at least I hope they were happy. Wine to lift people’s spirits and make the occasion more festive. The master of the banquet in John’s story talks about people having too much to drink, and that’s always a problem where alcohol is concerned. But we know that wine is a good thing to have on special occasions even if we know enough and are able to control ourselves enough not to drink too much of it. The wedding banquet needed wine.

So do we. Not physical wine, although I enjoy a nice glass of wine as much as the next guy. No, what we need is spiritual wine. We need to be filled with the wine of the Holy  Spirit. We need to be filled with the wine of God’s love and God’s grace. We need to be filled with hope, hope for this life and beyond this life. We need to be filled with passion for justice. We need to be filled with peace.

These things that we need and so many more are the wine with which Jesus Christ can fill us. He can take our emptiness and turn it into the best wine. He can take the world’s bland water and make a vintage we could never find at an upscale wine boutique. Perhaps it’s a bit odd for a pastor to suggest that his people become filled with wine. OK, so it’s odd. And of course I don’t mean go get drunk. That’s never a good idea. Still, let’s be filled with the wine that Jesus offers us. The wind of the spirit. The wine of what Martin Luther King called unarmed truth and unconditional love. At Pentecost people thought the disciples were drunk. Let’s have them think we’re drunk, not literally of course but so filled with the wine of the Holy Spirit that we think and act like new, transformed, God- and Jesus-loving people. Jesus filled the empty jugs with the best wine. He turned mere water into a fine vintage. May he do that with us too. Amen.