We all love sweets. How many out there have a sweet tooth? How many are just downright chocoholics? Human beings, with the exception of only a few, seem naturally to be drawn to sweets. We associate sweetness with pleasure, joy, even ecstasy, and we associate sweet treats with rewards and the ability to eat the luxuries we crave.
In Jesus’ time, you couldn’t go down to the grocery store to buy a cart full of chocolate, ice cream, or good ‘n plenty. The “sweets” of the first century were primarily honey, spice, and fruits and the juices of those fruits, pressed into nectar and wine. Wine in Jesus’ time had little alcohol content. It was closer to grape juice with just a slight bit of fermentation. The signal of the best wine was not its alcohol strength but its pungent sweetness. Wine was a thirst-quenching sweet treat.
Although a staple of the Mediterranean household, the best wines were saved for special occasions, feasts, betrothals, holy meals, banquets –and weddings.
Weddings were often 7-day events, filled with feasting, drinking, celebrating, and enjoyment. Families celebrated the unity of their households, the marriage of sons and daughters with the hope of future children, and the abundance of God’s blessings upon them. God’s blessings were described most frequently in the scriptures as a land of milk and honey, abundant food and feasting, running water, and sweet wine. This is God’s future promise to Israel:
“I am sending you grain, new wine and olive oil, enough to satisfy you fully,” said the prophet Joel. “On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine –the best of meats and the finest of wines,” spoke the prophet Isaiah. “He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for people to cultivate- bringing forth food from the earth: wine that gladdens human hearts, oil to make their faces shine, and bread that sustains their hearts, said the psalmist” (104:14-15).
God’s blessings are sweet –with overflowing wine. Why? Because a land filled with agricultural richness, good soil, and fruit bearing trees, makes for a land of grapes, olives, and other fruits. The life offered people by God is a life filled with the very best things we can possibly imagine. For people in Jesus’ time –this was overflowing wine, abundant food, cattle and crops, and a season of plenty. This is the “sweetness” of God’s promise –not only to have food enough, but abundant food. Not only to have staples of meat and bread –but sweet treats of honey and wine. Not only to be served a “daily bread” but an overflowing cup.
God’s promise is not just about simple forgiveness, but about extravagant over-the-top salvation.
A celebration with abundant wine is a celebration of God’s promise fulfilled. What better place for Jesus to perform his first miracle than a wedding. For He is the true Bridegroom! The ultimate “sign” of God’s promise come to fruition. And His promise is the ultimate sweet feast!
When Jesus agreed in John’s account to serve up the wine that was running low, he took the opportunity not only to serve but to send a message –about who he was, about God’s brand of holiness, and about God’s providential time of jubilee which was coming to pass in that time and place.
Jesus did not absentmindedly choose the six stone water jars in the ceremonial washing area. He would need those jars in order to make “holy” the act that he would commit. The six jars he chose (significant perhaps in the 6 days of creation…the last in which God created humankind) were not just any jars, but ceremonial jars used in pouring pure water for mikvehs, for hand washing, and for other ceremonial washing rituals. Each one of the jars held 20-30 gallons of water. This “holy” water could only be used to “cleanse” one from sin in order to partake of traditional Jewish rituals. And yet that water was still incomplete, imperfect. No matter how much washing one underwent, one still could not relieve oneself of the “sin” that only God can heal. Ceremonial washing was a human-designed method of cleansing sin.
Unlike the bottles of wine made from human hands through wine presses and grown in the vineyards of Israel, the wine made from this “holy water,” designed for holiness rituals, was transfigured wine, God-breathed wine. And like the wine that graced both the beginning and ending of the marriage ritual, it would be “holy wine,” a sign of God’s abundant blessings –not the usual “last” wine saved for the end by the father of the bride, but the very best wine ever made, designed by God’s own self, graced and given by the Son, signaling not the end of the wedding, but the beginning of something very, very new and wonderful. Something amazing and sweet, sweeter than imaginable –the beginning of God’s fulfillment of blessings poured out among His peoples in the person of Jesus, through the person of Jesus. A marriage of God and people.
We may do all of the rituals we like, all the worship, all the manner of signs that we feel create holiness, but only God can transfigure a human heart. Only Jesus can change the water of our own efforts into the sweet wine of God’s promise.
God is the only one who can turn what is profane into what is truly holy. We can create rules and holiness rituals and pretend to host worship. But only God is authority in any of our celebrations or worship places. Only God can perform the miracle of forgiveness and grace that results in the kind of joy that overflows in our hearts and tastes sweet to our tongue.
A covenant is like a dance –a wedding dance in which we celebrate and fill our glasses to toast the union of ourselves to God, but in which God responds by transfiguring the liquid in that glass into a holy union of promise, filling us with the best and sweetest wine ever created and laying out an eternal feast that we could never ourselves conceive.
The stewards could have refused to follow what Jesus suggested. They could have disdained to fill those ceremonial jars to the brim with water. But they did as he asked. And when they drew from the jar that he indicated, it was fine wine that they tasted.
We are called to fill our churches, fill our selves, fill our worship with as much prayer, song, scripture, praise, and celebration as we possibly can to honor God and God’s son Jesus, to celebrate our covenant with Him with our lives dedicated to a future as His people.
But look for the signs! For in return, your lives will be transfigured. “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” said the psalmist. For God offers us complete and eternal change. Not just a change of mind, but a change of heart. Sweet salvation!
No amount of ritual or trying on our own account will ever be sufficient to reach God’s promised and eternal kingdom. No amount of prayer, no amount of scripture, no amount of love, no amount of mercy, even no matter how sweet on our part.
Without God’s gift, these are empty acts, and bold attempts to reach an unattainable hill of honey, cake of sugar, mountain of grapes, kingdom of plenty.
What makes God’s covenant true, good, and beautiful is the gift of Jesus –God’s salvation gift who will be the fulfillment of God’s eternal plan to return us to that place of paradise where we live in unity with God in an eternal marriage, without want, without bitterness, without pain, without thirst.
Jesus is the wine. Jesus is the blood. Jesus is the living water.
Jesus is abundance of life.
Sweet, sweet salvation.
Based on the Story Lectionary
Major Text
John’s Witness about Jesus’ Miracle During the Wedding at Cana in Galilee (John 2:1-12)
The Lord Will Prepare a Feast (Isaiah 25:6-9)
Minor Text
The Creation Story –the Third Day (Genesis 1)
Moses First Miracle Turns Water to Blood (Exodus 7:14-21)
Honor the Lord with First Fruits (Proverbs 3:9-10)
Psalm 104: The Lord Gives Water
The Lord Has Made Proclamation (Isaiah 62)
Again You Will Plant Vineyards (Jeremiah 31:1-14)
The Mountain Will Drip with New Wine / The Time Has Come (Joel 2:15-24; 3:17-18)
The Lord Will Restore His Vineyards (Amos 9:11-15)
Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians Church Regarding Baptism in One Spirit (1 Corinthians 10 and 12)
On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine –the best of meats and the finest of wines. On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his peoples’ disgrace from all the earth. The Lord has spoken. In that day they will surely say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.” (Isaiah 25:6-9)