Wedding, Water, Wine & Woman?

Three pretty significant things happen in the text for this past Sunday’s message. Feel free to check that out here. The Bible story was from John 2:1-12. It’s a familiar passage commonly referred to as the Wedding at Cana or the Water into Wine Miracle. Many of us approach this passage with questions and wonder what Jesus was up to with this miracle. We ask questions like why was it at a wedding? Why did he start with water? Why did he choose to do this miracle in the first place? And why did he call his own mother – woman!?!? This post will hopefully address a few of these questions.

What is the significance of the wedding? Well if you’ve ever been to a wedding you know there are generally a few things that happen. It’s a party. It’s a joyful occasion! The food is good! And it’s the celebration of a unity or bond that can’t happen anywhere else in our world. With that picture in mind, look again at this first miracle of Jesus. He’s at a party that celebrates the coming together of two different people. This, in and of itself, is a reminder that through his life, you and I will come together with God as one in Christ. The Bible uses wedding imagery on more than one occasion when it talks about the church and Jesus. Jesus is called the groom of the church. And if you and I together are the church, that makes us his bride. But there’s more…

The book of Revelation also uses marriage imagery. In Revelation 19 we read, Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready. This draws the image of a wedding better than the first. The wedding in which Jesus turns water into wine is a flawed wedding. They didn’t prepare well. They didn’t have enough for the party that would follow. But the wedding talked about in Revelation won’t have this problem. It will be stocked for a never ending reception. So in short the wedding of Cana is a little foreshadowing of a much greater wedding that will happen!

Why turn water into wine? This question is a little more challenging because it’s just speculation at best. But if we look at it through the lens of the church today and our theology and practice we can make some pretty spectacular connections! The most obvious connection is from baptism (water) to the communion (wine). When Jesus took the water from the normal watering hole and placed it in the large jars and turned it to wine, it’s like he was showing us that the waters of baptism and the bread/wine of communion aren’t the end in themselves but they’re preparing us for something significantly bigger! These prepare us for a life lived in perfect union with Jesus. Pretty cool, huh! But again there’s more…

Not only is the water into wine a significant part of this miracle but so is the container in which Jesus performed this miracle! The stone water jars are pretty significant. You see they were intended for Jewish rituals of cleaning. Nothing could go in these jars except water. Anything else would render them unclean and ultimately useless! By using these jars, Jesus was essentially telling them that outward cleaning with water wasn’t gonna do the trick anymore. They needed something deeper and more complete to ensure cleanliness. Therefore the jars could now be used for other things.

Why did Jesus call Mary “woman” and not “mom”? Let’s be honest if you called your mom woman you’d likely get a hand to the back of the head! It’s just not respectful to do that, so why did Jesus do it? This is where we see the continued story who Jesus really is fleshed out a little more completely. Our particular tribe believes that Jesus is both true man and true God. True man means he had an earthly mom who gave birth to him. It means that he’s a real flesh and blood human! But the fact that he’s true God means that while Joseph cared for him as his son, he wasn’t really Jesus’ father. In this particular passage we begin to see Jesus start to shift roles from Mary’s son to Son of God. You see there are only two places in the bible where Jesus calls Mary woman. The first is here at the beginning of his earthly ministry. The second is when he’s on the cross and essentially ending his earthly ministry of saving the world. Jesus wasn’t being disrespectful or rude. Quite the contrary. Actually he was showing the world that he was ready to begin his work – the reason for which he came. He was stepping into his God-purpose, a purpose that would ultimately be fulfilled at the cross (the second time he called Mary “woman”).

So there you have it! A wedding with some water changed to wine and a slightly awkward renaming of Mary to simply woman. A significantly bigger picture than we might anticipate. I hope this little unpacking of the biblical story has proven meaningful for you. Next Wednesday we’ll do the same thing with a new Bible verse.