The Best for Last

 

Jesu Juva

St. John 2:1-11                                                                 

January 16, 2022

Epiphany 2C                                                  

Dear saints of our Savior~

          Today we have the very first of Jesus’ miracles: water into wine, and wine of the highest quality.  Although this is the first miracle of Jesus, it probably isn’t His best miracle.  That is to say, it just doesn’t carry the same profound gravitas as when Jesus stood outside the tomb and said, “Lazarus, come out!”  Or when He stared down the wind and the waves and said, “Peace!  Be still!”  Or when He told the paralytic, “Rise, pick up your bed, and go home.”  Running out of wine at a wedding reception just doesn’t seem to be the end of the world, after all.

          But there is a lot of comfort in the fact that Jesus first chose to reveal His extraordinary power in a very ordinary situation.  It’s the kind of situation in which we all find ourselves from time to time.  Our problems are not all earth-shaking matters of life and death.  Sometimes the wine runs out.  Sometimes the car won’t start.  Sometimes the furnace goes kaput.  Sometimes our organized little world starts to unravel . . . just like that time when the wine ran out at Cana.

          Personally, I never get tired of preaching on this miracle.  Preaching a sermon on the wedding at Cana is a little bit like opening a bottle of fine wine.  It’s a vintage you know quite well.  You know its bold, zesty flavors as well as its more subtle surprises.  It never fails to satisfy.  So let’s savor this old vintage from John chapter 2.  Let’s sniff the cork, twirl the glass, let it breathe, and prepare for a few surprises.

          The very first detail St. John gives us is that all this happened “on the third day.”  Now, this doesn’t merely mean that it happened on a Tuesday.  This phrase is pregnant with possibilities.  Did you realize, for instance that the “third day” of creation was the day on which the Lord called forth vegetation from the earth—including grapevines—each according to their kinds?  And by the time Saint John wrote down these words, he knew the significance of “the third day,” just like you know it and confess it:  On the third day He [Jesus] rose again from the dead.  On the third day death was destroyed by the only Son from heaven, and the party of all parties got underway in heaven.  The wedding at Cana is a preview—a sign—a foretaste of the heavenly feast to come.

          This was a wedding feast.  And that’s more than just a coincidence.  It’s not just an insignificant backdrop for Jesus to manifest His glory.  Wine and weddings go together wonderfully.  Wine is all natural.  Wine is the natural, normal way for grapes to get used.  Marriage, like wine, is also a natural, normal occurrence.  The joining together of a man and woman is all-natural; it’s as organic as creation itself—as old as Adam and Eve.  At the very least, our Lord’s presence at these nuptials shows that marriage matters to Jesus.  Marriage is His gift—the foundation on which all human life is based.  So, let’s honor marriage—let’s honor families and parents and children and babies as some of the most precious gifts God has ever given.

          And speaking of parents, the mother of Jesus is also in attendance at this wedding.  It’s Mary who first tells Jesus that the wine had run out.  Woman, what does this have to do with me?  My hour has not yet come.  He calls His mother, “woman,” and some people think that’s a bit disrespectful.  But He also called her “woman” while hanging from the cross:  Woman, behold your son.  And no one thought it was disrespectful to commend His mother to the care of His beloved disciple.  When Jesus talks about “my hour,” He’s talking about His death on the cross.  That’s why He came.  Manifesting His glory wasn’t the main thing for the Son of Man, unlike suffering and crucifixion.

          We honor the Blessed Virgin Mary for her faith.  And in this little episode we see her faith in action.  She’s confident Jesus will act.  She doesn’t know what Jesus will do; but she tells the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.”  Those happen to be the final words of Mary recorded in the Scriptures.  Let those words be her lasting legacy.  For we really can’t go wrong taking Mary’s words to heart:  Do whatever [my Son] tells you.  After all, He’s the one who died on the cross and rose from the dead to save you.  If Jesus says to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, then we should do it.  If Jesus says to forgive those who sin against us, then we should do it.  If Jesus says not to separate what God has joined together, then we should work to protect and preserve marriage at every opportunity.  Do whatever He tells you.

          Things start to get interesting when Jesus tells the servants to fill up six stone water jars—jars that were supposed to be used for the Jewish rites of purification.  That’s important.  The Jews washed themselves with water from these jars to make themselves spiritually clean—to make themselves more acceptable to God.  But

you know what happens next.  The master of the feast takes a sip of the new wine from those very same jars and immediately calls over the groom.  Listen, buddy, someone’s made a mistake here.  You’re supposed to serve the good wine first.  Then, after everyone’s senses are a little dulled, you slip in the cheap stuff.  But you have saved the good wine until now.  You have saved the best for last.

          Let me help you savor what’s going on here.  When Mary says, “They have no more wine,” she might just as well have been talking about the Jews of the Old Covenant.  Their time was just about up.  The time for a new covenant was drawing near.  They were hopelessly mired in the law—in keeping rules and regulations and ceremonies—with nothing to show for it but six stone jars of water.  That’s about as far as the law of God can take you.  At best, it can only give you clean hands; but it can’t purify the heart of a sinner.  And that’s a problem.  “The law came through Moses,” St. John wrote in chapter one, “but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

          Beloved in the Lord, savor what this sign means.  Drink deeply of the new joy He brings.  In Jesus the old has gone, and the new creation has come.  In Jesus, Old Testament bath water becomes New Testament wedding wine.  Jesus fills up the commandments of Moses with His own perfect obedience.  That’s why He came—to fill it up to the brim with Himself, and then to die an innocent death on the cross, to pour out His blood like fine wine from heaven to make glad every heart with the joy of His forgiveness, life and salvation.

          When the bartender says, “You’ve saved the best until now,” that’s more than a comment on the wine.  It’s a comment on Jesus.  God has truly saved the best for last in His Son, Jesus Christ.  In many and various ways God spoke to His people of old by the prophets, but now in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son.  The promises, the prophets, the priests and the ceremonial laws of the OT—they were good gifts of our good God.  But something far better comes our way in Jesus.  He is truly the best vintage, God’s private reserve, set aside from before the foundation of the world and appointed to be poured out generously in the fullness of time.

          Jesus’ coming spells the end of all attempts to wash ourselves up and clean up the mess of our own sin.  You can’t do it no matter how much you wash and bathe and soak and scrub.  You will never be pure enough.  But Jesus does it for you in His dying and rising.  He takes your sin and gives you His purity.  All who believe in Him are completely cleansed and purified by grace.  And that’s something worth celebrating and, I’m sorry, but grape juice just doesn’t cut it.  Jesus has come and brings pleasure eternal.  In Jesus you have a place at the wedding feast of the Lamb in His kingdom, where the meat is richly marbled and the where the wine never runs out.

          Have we made too much of this first sign of Jesus at Cana?  No way!  In fact, there are a few drops more of this text left to enjoy.  We can’t quit until you recognize this:  that what goes on right here at Our Savior every Sunday is more marvelous and more meaningful than what happened at the wedding at Cana.  Here Jesus takes water and makes water a sign—a baptism—a sacrament of His death and resurrection life which is given to you in the splash of your own baptism.  Here Jesus takes bread and gives it as His body; here Jesus takes wine and gives it to you as His blood.  Right here every Sunday we have a wedding feast where Jesus is the groom, Jesus is bartender, Jesus is even the food and drink.  And best of all, you are His honored guests.

          One day it will all be clear—how our God always saves the best for last.  And, He has one more vintage yet to uncork—that’s you.  You are still aging in the bottle, so to speak.  God isn’t finished with you yet.  Your hour has not yet come.  It will come soon enough, at a time when the world’s party will have run dry, when Jesus appears in glory to raise the dead to life.  And then, with a new, resurrected body and joy overflowing, you will fully experience what today you can only believe:  God has saved the best for last, and the best always comes with Jesus.

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.