"My Cup Overflows"

Dr. George Sinclair

Isaiah 62:1-5  and  John 2:1-11

January 17, 2010

              Why do we cry weddings?  The bride enters. The church fills with her radiance. The groom is standing uneasily because he’s seldom been in church, much less one full of people staring at him. He is handsome in his rented tuxedo; his shoes don’t fit and he is wrung out from the night before; but it is show time.  And we tear up.  Oh, I know the Mother of the Bride has her reasons. And the Father of the Bride has his, but you’re in the 12^th row—not even a cousin and the tears come.  What’s that about? 

Here’s my take. . . Here are two young people—usually young, I know love can strike at any age—but here are two young people, just getting started, not a care in the world, not a worry. Life is good and always will be.  You ask them why they’re getting married. And they look at you with such innocence:  “We’re in love.”

And you want to tell them, “It’s going to take more than love. To stay married, to thrive in marriage, you’re going to need patience and lots of it, courage and lots of it, forgiveness and lots of it.  But you can’t tell them that. I’ve tried and they just look at you like, “Dear sweet man, we’re in love. What could possibly go wrong?”

We cry at weddings because we know what can go wrong.  We’ve seen marriage hanging by a thread and we’ve felt the deep sadness when there are lawyers to pay and seven year olds to tell that “Daddy’s moving out and you’ll see him on weekends.”  We cry at weddings because life can break your heart.  But that’s not the only reason we cry. We cry because we want to believe with the fools in love. And in that moment we do believe with them that love is enough, that they have spoken the truth, “till death do us part.” We want to believe that nothing can separate us from love.  Nothing.   

“No longer are you going to be called Forsaken, but My Delight.”   When Isaiah reached for a way of reassuring the exiles that God’s love never fails he drew upon the deep language of marriage.  “No longer are you going to be called Desolate, but Married.”  When you marry you get a new name. The exiles were getting a new name.  “For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” God shall rejoice over you.  You are no longer forsaken, you are no longer desolate.  God shall rejoice over you. John makes the very same affirmation—water turned to wine, a wedding at Cana, the best saved for last.  God delights in his creation. The Builder marries his creation and our cup overflows.  Goodness and mercy pour out on a dry and barren people and there is joy, welcome, abundance.  God’s love never fails.

How do you start a gospel?  John takes us to a wedding.  John takes us to Cana.  The Wedding at Cana is one of three times Cana is mentioned in the New Testament. Cana was the home of Nathanael and perhaps Simon.  Cana was also the site where the Capernaum official pleads for Jesus to heal his son.  Otherwise, The Place of Reeds of uncertain location in Galilee is never mentioned. But we remember The Wedding at Cana.  Cana was where Jesus made all of that wine—turned water into wine.  People, who couldn’t find the Gospel of John if their life depended on it, know Jesus turned water into wine at Cana.

It’s a great story.  John calls it the first sign.  In John’s gospel, Jesus doesn’t do miracles, he does signs. The Wedding at Cana is his first sign, a sign which revealed Jesus’ glory. When Jesus reveals his glory his disciples believe in him.

John says the wedding took place “on the third day.”  Well, why the third day, third from what?  With John you can never be sure.  His time references are tricky. Up until this point, John’s only used three time references and those three are the same: “the next day, the next day, the next day.”  Counting by 24 hour time periods, John sure enough gives us three days before the wedding, which would make The Wedding at Cana on the third day of Jesus’ ministry, which also happens to be the day of Nathanael’s call and Nathanael was from Cana, the Place of Reeds. 

So maybe John means no more than the Wedding at Cana took place on the third day of Jesus’ ministry, the same day Nathanael was called.  But, we all know since the beginning, the church has testified that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day.  So, we suspect John’s deft chronology is also his sly way of saying, “Pay attention. What happens at Cana on the third day, the first of Jesus’ signs, the first to reveal his glory and create faith, is a preview of things to come. Pay attention.  What happens at Cana on the third day is really, really important. It will tell you who Jesus is. It will tell you what Jesus is about.”

For John, it’s not by accident that Jesus happens to be in Cana on the third day.  And what Jesus does in Cana—the water turned into wine—is not a little magic to impress the locals or otherwise rescue his family from social embarrassment. The sign revealed Jesus’ glory. The Wedding at Cana opened the disciples’ eyes.  

The disciples aren’t the only guests. The mother of Jesus was at the wedding. And notice John doesn’t call her Mary. He never does. Mary will appear at the crucifixion and be entrusted to the Beloved Disciple but even then she is not referred to as Mary but as the mother of Jesus. 

First century Palestinian weddings lasted a week.  In a subsistence economy, a week-long celebration was a very big deal.  You could save up for a lifetime and still not be ready for a wedding and apparently this family wasn’t.  The mother of Jesus states it boldly, “They have no wine.” I can’t help but think of Isaiah’s “I will not keep silent.”  The mother of Jesus will not keep silent: “They have no wine.” The mother of Jesus states the obvious, but also, more than the obvious.

The folks in Haiti don’t have much wine right now, do they? Their wine has run out.  Children without parents, “They have no wine.”  Parents without healthcare for their children, “They have no wine.”  Friends who don’t forgive friends, “have no wine.” Stuff happens, stuff that we never in our wildest dreams think could happen.  And every ounce of our courage, every drop of our patience, all of our best intentions cannot undo the draught life becomes.  Wine runs out.

“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent.” 

It takes courage to “not keep silent.” It takes faith to acknowledge scarcity.  Oh, you can pretend it’s not there—“Those people in Haiti, they’ve never had anything anyway. What will they care?”  You can paper over scarcity: “A little rain falls in every life.”  You can even preach a false gospel, “God’s trying to get their attention.” or “What a great opportunity for people to come together and do some good.” 

“They have no wine.”  There’s a gap between life as it is and life as it should be, a gap between “’till death do us part” and the broken promises our lives become.  “They have no wine.” 

Mary sticks her neck out.  Don’t put a halo around it. The mother of Jesus is kvetching. She’s pointing to the obvious that others are too polite or too busy or too beyond caring to notice. She laments scarcity: “They have no wine.” 

Do you ever complain to God? Is your heart ever broken and you must let God know?  Do you ever lament?  I don’t think we ever get through to God and I don’t think God ever really gets through to us if we’re never broken, if we never despair, if we never reach the end of our rope, if we never lament the problems or circumstance we can’t manage or fix or shake.  To meet God we must acknowledge that “wine runs out.”  Human strength, human conviction, ingenuity, courage, determination are not enough. Wine runs out.

“Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.”  That’s a lot of water, one hundred and eighty gallons, enough wine for 4,000 toasts, which I kind of doubt describes even the biggest wedding Cana ever knew. So, what’s John up to?  Why so much wine? 

Think about the jars, the purpose of those jars. Why are they there? The water jars were there for the Jewish rite of purification.  We’re talking more than hand washing.  Purification was about getting clean on the inside—spiritual soap—getting right with God.  The Talmud specified one cup, a cup would do not for one person but for a hundred people.  A cup was enough to purify a hundred people.  I know, you’re doing the math—16 cups times 180 gallons—that’s 2,880 cups or enough purification for nearly 300,000 people. How many people do you reckon lived in Cana, the Place of Reeds, a couple hundred, a few thousand?  For purification purposes, Jesus made more than Cana could use in a lifetime or ten thousand lifetimes. So what’s John up to?  Does it take that much to get clean? What does it take to get clean?  And why wine and not water? You don’t wash with wine. You wash with water.

We all know John’s not talking about water—John is mixing his metaphors. He’s got baptism and communion rolled into one—the Lamb of God who gives his life for the sins of the world washes us in his blood—water into wine—and on the third day he is glorified.  Jesus pours out his life for the sins of the world. Jesus pours his life out for the whole world, for all time, for every one, mercy in abundance, abundant mercy for a love-starved, hope-scarce world.  We drink the wine. We’re washed in the blood.  God’s love does not fail even for a hopeless, love-starved world.

John saved his best line for last, for the steward who “tasted the water that had become wine.”

“Where’d you get this stuff?” The steward knew etiquette.  He knew house rules. You serve the good stuff first.  You want to make an impression—you spare no expense, so you bring the good stuff out first. The stuff in the box, you save for later when nobody cares.  “Where did this good stuff come from?”

Well, it’s an important question.  Where do you find grace?  Where do you find drink to satisfy your thirst?  We look many places. We drink from many wells. Where have you been looking lately?  Where do you hope to find love? Where are you looking to find some reason to believe that life truly isn’t full of sound and fury signifying nothing? There are plenty of places people look.  When he was with us, Miroslav Volf used a wonderful turn of phrase: the managed pursuit of pleasure.  That’s not a bad place to look: the managed pursuit of pleasure.

I had a friend in high school.  We played ball with each other as kids and against each other as we grew older.  He went off to college. I went off to college and ten years later we ended up in the same town.  He had a successful dental practice. I was his pastor.  He built a fine home on a nearby lake. He had a wife and two beautiful children.  He bought a boat, jet skies.  He really liked cars so he bought a Porsche and then another one.  He loved computers so he bought lots of equipment. He enjoyed Carolina basketball and from time to time hired a private plane so he could attend games.  After a few years he bought a place in the Caymans.

One day, and who knows why, we talked about all of his stuff.  I said, “You’ve got a lot of nice stuff.” And he said, “The thing is, once I get it, the thrill is gone.” 

The managed pursuit of pleasure.

Of course there are other places we look.  Where are you looking?  What fills your cup?  What sustains you?  Even in a world of abundant pleasure, our cups run dry.  Some say we have a God shaped hole in our hearts: “My soul longs for the LORD.”  I think it’s true.

Drinking from the cup of mercy is the only way to know.  Being washed in mercy is the only path to abundance.  And the path is not a principle. The path is not a code or an ethic or reason. The path is a person, the embodiment of God’s reason. The path is Jesus who gives more mercy and more goodness than we will ever need or use in a lifetime.  To have mercy in abundance, drink from the cup of God’s mercy. Jesus never fails.

“Jesus did this, the first of his signs in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” Our cup overflows.  Amen.