An end. . . and a beginning. . .

Sermon for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany of Our Lord, preached on Sunday, January 16, 2022.

There are always competing emotions at a wedding.  Sadness and happiness.  Sadness because somebodies little boy and little girl are growing up and leaving home.  Happiness because a young man and a young woman are beginning a new life together.  There is an even greater sense of something coming to an end and something beginning anew in the account of Jesus at the wedding of Cana in Galilee.  This is not confined to a family giving a child away but to the fulfillment of one covenant and the establishment of a new and greater one to supercede it.

It was a day of firsts.  St. John is clear that this is the first of the Lord’s signs to manifest His glory and call forth faith from His disciples.  Perhaps it seems a rather small miracle.  After all, this is the same Lord who acted in the Old Testament to manifest His hidden glory and the same Lord whose birth was the intersection of heavenly glory on an earthly plain.  Though we might presume that turning water into wine was the miracle, greater things than this happened on this day.  Though few people got that water had been turned into the best wine, even fewer saw this as the introduction of the God in flesh who was come to be His people’s Savior, fulfilling all righteousness for them and delivering sinners by His blood.

This new covenant does not reside in jars of water for purification and it does not reside in jars that become containers of the best wine saved for last.  The new covenant is in the blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  Jesus permanently destroyed those earthenware jars.  Once wine had soaked into them, they were stained forever and could no longer fulfill their original purpose.  In the same way, His blood on the altar of the cross would make it impossible for any animal blood to atone for sin.  The old covenant would be destroyed just as those jars could no longer deliver on the promise for which they had been made.

Instead, Jesus would establish a new rite of purification.  His blood that cleanses us from all sin would be splashed upon sinners in the water of baptism.  The rites that once had to be repeated over and over again would be replaced by the one baptism of the one Lord who would impart the one saving faith by the Spirit – once for all!  The old covenant is not cast aside because it is bad but because their rites have been fulfilled in Christ.  The two covenants cannot stand side by side but the new must fulfill and replace the old.  What was once meant to be temporary was replaced with that which is permanent, the eternal covenant of His blood.

Our Lord Jesus came to a wedding.  He stood with the guests who watched as one family’s tears giving away their daughter were met by the tears of another family whose son was receiving her as his own.  Everyone there thought Jesus was merely a guest – even the servants and apostles who knew about the water turned into wine did not realize that Jesus had come to be the bridegroom, to take the Church as His own bride, and to present her to the Father pure, holy, spotless, and perfect.  This was no deception but the preview of all that He would accomplish by His suffering, death, and resurrection.  The turning of water into wine is not a symbol – the water was real and the wine was real.  Just as baptismal water is real and the cup of Holy Communion is real.  They are not symbols but means to a greater reality that can only be seen by the eyes of faith.

The guests were already feeling good.  They had enjoyed plenty from the wine that was spent.  The old covenant did all that it could do and Israel was content with it.  But Jesus had come to give more, to bestow a greater grace that defied every human logic or reason and was generous to a fault.  Jesus is embarrassingly lavish with His grace – giving to those who neither deserve it nor are worth it the greatest treasure of all – forgiveness, life, and salvation.  God’s grace always seems foolish to it because of its generosity.  We would never be so free as God is but His grace freely given does not come without cost.  The wine prefigures the blood that must be shed and the blood that becomes the new drink of the Kingdom forevermore.

And then there is again this little detail.  It happened on the third day.  St. John is not simply framing out in time when this took place but marking this miracle in the redemptive time of the third day, when the reign of death and the victory of the grave is end and sin can no more threaten.  The bride, the groom, the guests, the servants, and the disciples are all there to see the day of salvation begin.  And so is Mary, the mother of our Lord.  One more thing for her to ponder and treasure in her heart.  And one more thing for us to grasp by faith.  Jesus lives to save and He saves by His blood and everything in the past gives way to this wedding and everything in the future happens because of it.

As long as we are in this flesh and living in this mortal life, we are at the wedding.  He cleanses us that we might be His Church, the bride.  He washes us clean with the new water of purification in baptism.  He gives us the best of wine which is His blood for the sins of the world.  We have the Spirit and a future.  Though we do not yet know in full what that future will be, we know this.
We will be Christ’s and He will be ours and we will together stand before the Father, celebrating the marriage supper of the Lamb in His kingdom without end.

All that is left is for us to hold onto this gift by faith, to daily be persuaded by the Spirit that this is enough to face whatever comes our way – even death – and, to find the comfort Christ has placed in this promise.

His hour has come and He has fulfilled all of its promise.  But your hour and mine is not yet.  The day would come for blessed Mary, His mother, and His disciples, and for the servants witnessed the miracle at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, but for us it is not yet.  Until then, we must live not by sight but by faith, trusting in what He has done to accomplish what He has promised.  There will be pressure to give it up, persecution from the enemies of Christ, trials that will test our faith, and troubles that will try us with doubt.  But no one and nothing can separate us from the love of God that is ours in Christ Jesus.  The hour and the day of our redemption is coming.  There will be well marbled meat and good wine, enough for everyone who has loved the Lord’s appearing and enough to keep our joy full forevermore.  Amen.