Do you mind if I start today with a terrible joke? Did you hear about the two TV antennas that got married? I understand that the wedding was terrible, but the reception was excellent!

I’ll let you think about that for a moment. Our lesson today from the Gospel of John is about a wedding reception that went from a near disaster to a roaring success. And it became a roaring success, of course, because Jesus was there.

You know the story well. “On the third day,” says John in his Gospel, a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. The third day John refers to is the third day after Jesus had left Judea. It was a two-day walk to Galilee, and so he and his disciples would have arrived on the morning of the third day.

Cana was a very small village, about 3.5 miles from Jesus’ home in Nazareth. …