The Wine Runs Out: A Situation Comedy in the Gospel of John

March 10, 2021                       John 2: 2-11

¹On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. ²Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. ³When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ ⁴And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ ⁵His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ ⁶Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. ⁷Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. ⁸He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. ⁹When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom ¹⁰and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ ¹¹Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples; and they remained there for a few days.

            One of the theological blanket statements that I do accept is that Jesus experienced temptation and the human condition in the same way as I have, and every human has, but without sin.  How about farce?

            Yesterday, I found myself going on about the modern wedding in relation to the ancient wedding (and a lot more about current wedding practices, which I am far more familiar with).  So how about using that as a lens for reading this passage?  Mom was invited (her name is Mary, I do not imagine her place holder said “Mother of Jesus”), as was Jesus, and his disciples, in my interpretive conclusion, were invited by extension.  It is a community gathering, the more the merrier, etc., etc.

            And they have no more wine, the booze gave out.  Now, we concluded with the Mother of Jesus (her name is Mary) approaching the Son of the Mother of Mary (Jesus) and telling him “They have no wine.”  I am sorry, not naming Mary in the text as the mother of Jesus is annoying me more than I thought it would (see yesterday for explanation of THAT). 

            Also, if we read the Gospel literally, assuming it to be the historic record of Jesus, he has four disciples in tow.  Why do we make that assumption?  Because the text does NOT speak of the other eight.  But there are many moments in the life of Jesus that are NOT recorded in the Gospel.  Jumping ahead to the very end of John’s Gospel, he gives this reason:

This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. (last verses of John 21)

            So what if, for interpretive interest, Jesus comes to the wedding with twelve disciples in tow.  So, there is wine for the wedding, and now twelve angry…er…thirsty men who were previously unexpected.  What if the disciples drank all the wine?  What if Mary, when she comes to her son, in the fuller context of their conversation, has been the one deputized to explain to her son that his ‘extended guests’ are the ones responsible for drinking all the wine?

            “They have no wine,” says Mary (“Because your friends drank it all.”)  Jesus response, “Woman, what is that concern to you or to me?  My hour has not yet come.”  Now, I will admit, if it were the disciples who drank the wine, Jesus’ initial response comes across as a little callous.  A fairer reading of Jesus' response, I think, is, “What do you want me to do about it because my hour has not yet come?”

            Now that is an important piece, “My hour has not yet come.”  Jesus has an ‘hour’, that which he knows to be the time of his arrest and eventual death.  This expression recurs at various times in the gospel, this being the first. 

            Mary may not understand, in this early story of Jesus’ ministry, what ‘my hour’ fully means, but can you imagine her standing there, looking up at her Son? (I always imagine the Son being taller than the Mom, I was, my own son is)  The Gospel does not record Jesus’ response.  How does one record the moment when the grown son’s eyes drop and he does exactly what his mom wants him to do?  Who does not live for mom's smile of approval?

            Notice how she seems to have already set things into motion.  The servants are already there, like, when the news came that the wine gave out, Mary told them to follow her when she took up the matter with her Son.  Maybe Jesus saw them standing behind his mom and knew this was an argument he would lose before it began.  He does not actually disagree with her, he only goes so far as to try and deflect the conversation. 

            So Mary looks to the servants and tells them to do whatever Jesus tells them to do.

            And Jesus does not do miracles by half measure.  There are six stone water jars, somewhere between twenty and thirty gallons.  Lets take the average, twenty five gallons each, six of them, so one hundred and fifty gallons when Jesus ordered that they fill them with water.  Then Jesus said to take some to the chief steward, the supervising official at the wedding (SPOILER: It was wine).

            So let us pause for some math.  On the one hand, using the Weight Watchers Measured Wine Glass that I have, the average glass of wine is 6 ounces (yes, I have a Weight Watchers Measured Wine Glass).  On the other hand, we now have one hundred and fifty gallons of wine, which is 128 ounces per gallon, making 19200 ounces of wine (fluid ounces).  If we divide that by the average glass size of 6 ounces, that means there were now available 3200 new glasses of wine.  So, if the twelve disciples were, in our little situation comedy, responsible for drinking up the last of the previous supplies, there is more than enough wine for them, and for everyone else.

            In other miracles, Jesus fed 5000 and 4000, and here, if we use modern serving sizes, he provided the toast for 3200 wedding guests.

            But the comedy is not over.  The steward drank what was offered, and it was better stuff than they’d originally been serving.  Now the text specifically says that the steward had no idea where this stuff came from, although the servants certainly did.  So he went to the bridegroom, assuming he was the one who’d had this new stash opened.  And here comes the punchline, “Wow, usually we serve the good stuff first, set them a little sloshed, and then serve the junk, once they are too drunk to care.  But you saved the best for last!” 

            At this point, the servants would look to Mary, smiling because they are in the know, Mary will look to Jesus, smiling because she is in the know, and Jesus too will smile because he has done a miraculous thing as God’s Son.  The last scene, Jesus goes off to dance with the celebrating guests (DANCE??  See note below).

            The wrap up to this story is that Jesus did the first of his miracles in Cana of Galilee, revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him. 

            So there we have a measure for the future, a question to bring to the text.  When Jesus provides a miracle, how does it reveal his glory?  A mentor of mine, Raymond Dillard, professor of Old Testament back when I first went to Seminary, wrote a book about Elijah and Elisha, and how they point the way forward to Jesus.  It is an awesome read, and the last thing I know of that he published.  What he said about miracles is that they are redemptive.  We see God’s redemption, we see the redemption of Christ working out in them.

            How is water into wine redemptive?  To me, it is the celebration of the wedding that is not disrupted.  So the miraculous power of Jesus is going to keep a wedding celebration on track, scale up to bring the dead back to life (Lazarus), and function at every level in between. 

            How awesome is that?

Pastor Pete

Notes: Dancing. 

            For a time I attending a church that was very stringent about the activities that should be refrained from because of their sinful potential.  I stumbled into it when I suggested we sing “Lord of the Dance” during a praise time and they thought I was being funny (and apparently not entirely appropriate in my choice of humor).  Aside from the stereotype (and they were serious) of dancing as “sex standing up”, they pointed to the Gospel and said there was no place where it was recorded that Jesus got up and danced.

            This came from the same kind of cherry-picking legal enforcement that said we should not drink either because Jesus was against alcohol.  The work-around to explain away this passage was dizzying!!

            If I am going to accept the presupposition that Jesus had the full experience of humanity, I am going to accept that he danced.  And where better than at the celebration of a wedding?