Of Water and Wine and Trust - Reflections on John 2:1-11, Epiphany 2, Year C

I have too many times, I suppose, joked with people that when I was in seminary, now over 50 years ago (!), I failed the worship class that taught us how to do this water into wine thing. I kept turning wine into water! I did this, I would say, because I do not, as Dracula does not, ever drink wine. Lame, I know, but I have never allowed the lameness of a joke to stop me from using it over and again. But, surely, for the writer of John’s gospel, this scene is no joke; it is, in fact, as he says, “the first of his (Jesus’) signs,” of which many will follow in John’s story. 

When I first read this story, many, many years ago, I admit to thinking of it like a very nice parlor trick. Is it not delightfully pleasant, I thought, that Jesus, John’s manifestation of the Word of God, God in the flesh, made all those wedding guests happy and surprised as they drank at the end of the festivities the best wine of all, when usually, as John makes clear, hosts served the best wine early in the evening, while trotting out the poorer wine later when many of the guests were too tipsy to know the difference between good wine and bad. (Of course, if I had been at the party, I would not have been able to tell good from bad either.) But surely, John must have something more in mind than the Son of God’s ability to perform magic, doesn’t he? 

And of course he does have a good deal more in the composition of this tale than an example of magic. John’s gospel is unique in multiple ways from the Synoptic three that preceded him, the most unique perhaps being the very careful interweaving of actions and symbols, often across long stretches of the story. This will not be the last time that John will bring us to the city of Cana, where John spends considerable time linking this wedding at Cana tale to a second Cana miracle (4:43-54). The second Cana miracle points directly to this story in John 2 by stating at its beginning “Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine” (John 4:43). When John makes such direct connections obvious to his readers, we are called on to pay careful attention to both stories and to assess their literary and theological connections that John has baked into his telling.  

What ensues between the two Cana miracles is crucial to recognize the narrative flow of the gospel. Jesus first encounters Mary, his mother, and the disciples at the first Cana miracle, but then meets Nicodemus (3:1-21), John the Baptist (3:22-36), the Samaritan woman in two separate encounters (4:1-15, 16-30), and the Samaritan villagers (4:39-42). Meetings between Jesus and various Jewish characters occur in the first miracle story, while meetings between Jesus and various Gentile figures led us to the second miracle story. Thus, in the first section of John’s work, the influence of the Word of God made manifest in Jesus expands into all the world of people.  

Jesus’ treatment of his mother in this first Cana story deserves comment. "When the wine failed (ran out), the mother of Jesus (she is not named Mary here) said to him, ‘They have no wine’” (John 2:3). Jesus’ reply is curt and hardly what one would expect from a son to his mother. “O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come” (John 2:4). Many attempts have been made to soften this harsh reply, but those who make these attempts have plainly missed the boat of John’s style and intent. This interaction is not so much one between Mother and son as it is John using the interchange to score important theological and literary points. Jesus retorts that the “woman” (note not Mary or “his mother”) has nothing to do with him. This implies that Jesus’ only serious connection is between him and his Father, of whom he is the enfleshed Son. And when he says his hour has not yet come, he implies that what is about to happen (the changing of water into wine) is not his “hour;” it may point to it, but that hour will come only toward the end of John’s story. 

And Mary’s reply to Jesus’ apparent rudeness is equally instructive to the careful listener. She does not speak to Jesus, but to the attending servants: “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). And in the rest of the passage all do precisely that. Most especially, Mary demonstrates exactly how one is called to respond to the Word of God; she trusts Jesus completely without reserve. Her demand of the servants is to put into action anything he tells them to do. In short, Mary is the first person in the narrative to show in her actions that the correct response to Jesus is complete trust in his word, that word that is finally the Word made flesh. From that trust comes the miracle at Cana (vss.8-10), the appearance of the “glory” (doxa) of Jesus, and the faith of the disciples (vs.11). Mary becomes nothing less than the very model of how all who confront Jesus should act, out of pure trust in the truth of “the one coming into the world.”  

I have always had difficulty with this gospel; it seems so elevated beyond human reality, removed from the natural interactions between Jesus and those around him. I have come to the conclusion that to assess John’s gospel like that is to miss the point of his writing. He is not, as for example Mark is, giving us tales of the earthly Jesus, but rather uses the stories he knows of that Jesus and provides philosophical and theological insights for his hearers, who are plainly not the same sorts of readers and hearers that Mark, Matthew, and Luke write for. John must be heard on his own terms. For example, Jesus’s so-called “rebuke” of his mother in John 2:4 is not a personal and painful attack on the woman who bore him, but a sign that he must be connected only to the God who formed him, and attentive to the “hour” that will determine his final revelation of glory in the world. Mary does not speak in John 2:5 as if she had been rebuked by an ungratful son, but as one who demonstrates the proper response to the Word of God, made flesh in Jesus. She trusts him and resolves to do whatever he says. The implication for John is: so should we.