The wedding at Cana in Galilee is both an end and a beginning. It is the end of the individual lives of a man and woman and the beginning of their new life together as one, husband and wife. It is also the end of the age of the prophets and their signs of what is to come and the beginning of our Lord’s epiphany of words and works that fulfill all the promises. It is the end of the old covenant with its ceremonial rites of purification and the beginning of the New Covenant of Christ’s blood, as the old jars of water for ritual fulfillment of the law are permanently stained with the wine that will be Christ’s blood shed for the sake of the world.
St. John uses precise language here. This is the first of the signs that Jesus did but certainly not His first miracle. From of old all the signs and wonders God did were done through the Word that was now made flesh. This is not quite the start of Jesus’ public ministry – the miracles of His annunciation, incarnation, baptism, and temptation all happened before this. He had already called His disciples. But it was the first of HIS signs that mark the character of all that Jesus came to do.
With the end comes a beginning and with the beginning there is an end. The mother of the bride sheds tears at Cana because her daughter is not hers anymore. She is her husbands. There is always sadness with an end and a beginning. John the Baptist is the end of the prophets. The long line of patriarchs and prophets, judges and kings is complete in Christ. The priestly line is also ended in Him who is both priest and victim, Jesus Christ. The temple which had stood as the sacrament of God’s presence with His people is replaced by Him who will be raised up on the third day and deliver the people’s sacrifice of praise to the Father and the Father’s gifts of grace to the people.
With the end comes a beginning and with the beginning there is an end. I am living testament to the truth of those words. This is not without tears in me nor in some of you. There is always sadness with an end and a beginning. John the Baptist knew the truth of this from his prison cell as he sent his followers to Jesus. I know it now as I must relinquish to others the role I have known for thirty two years. I take no comfort in this and my heart aches. My consolation is not in the worthiness of those who succeed me. There is something more here than the transfer from one generation to another of the stewardship of the work that is always the Lord’s. No, if we are to be comforted it must be from the Lord alone.
Neither the bride or groom or their families or the guests or the steward of the feast knew what was happening. They focused on the wine – the lack of it or the best given at the end. The Lord always saves the best until last. This does not mean that the best is yet to come. This is foolish; Christians are not optimists. We do not think nor dare we hope that things are actually getting better. You had no idea what the future would hold when you called me to be your pastor 32 yes ago. I had no idea what the future would hold when I packed up my family to head to Tennessee from New York 32 years ago. Neither of us knew the hardships, trials, joys, and blessings would be down the road. But we did know Christ. In that we are like the disciples of Jesus and the servants seeing the miracle hidden from eyes.
I will not say to you that things will be fine under Pastors Smith and Martin. If I should, dismiss such sentiment. None of us knows the future and our enemy is powerful. But our trust is not in flesh and blood. We have only one confidence, one hope, and that is in Christ alone. The promise of God is not resident in people but in the means of grace. His covenant is the covenant in His blood, shed upon the cross, risen never to die again, and present here among us in a miracle much like the wedding feast in Galilee and the Manna in the wilderness. It turns out this text is especially fitting for this day, for an ending and a beginning. Though the wedding guests, the wedding family, the bride and the groom, and nearly everyone else that day was in the dark, you are not in the dark. You know that any past we celebrate was God’s work and that the only real future also belongs to Christ. He knows what that future is and He is with you as we all stumble our way into it. Trust not in princes or rulers or pastors. Trust in the Lord. He is the only One who fulfills the end and opens the beginning. He will not disappoint you.
Where is the Lord? He is in those unglazed clay jars ruined for their old purpose of holding water and destined for a new beginning of wine that is Christ’s blood. Christ takes the past and fulfills it perfectly and then ushers in the new beginning of His redeeming work. He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Hebrews tells us that the New Mediator who is Christ is greater than all the old patriarchs and prophets who came before Him, greater than Moses and greater than John the Baptist. Their enduring work was to point to Jesus; if my work is to endure, it is because it pointed you to Jesus. Christ ends a past so that He may open a future which cannot be imagined or known except by faith. None of us can see it clearly now but we do know this: it will be better than every yesterday and bigger than every dream. Now we see through a mirror dimly – it is called faith.
You are those clay jars, the work of God the potter, fashioning you for Himself in the waters of baptism, keeping you pure by holy absolution, and filling you with the new withe new wine of His blood in the Holy Communion. This is Jesus, the new wine. He weeps with Mary and Martha at Lazarus’ death. He aches for the pain of the nursing mothers of Jerusalem. He claims the uncleanness of the leper, the evil of the demon possessed, the disability of the lame, the blind, the deaf, and the mute. He even owns the death of those who die. It seems wasteful and shamefully extravagant. Those who have already drunk too much should not drink more. But Christ has more to give to those willing to drink from His cup.
Your future is not tomorrow but eternity. For one day Jesus will do for this baptismal font and altar and pulpit what He did to those water jars for purification. He will ruin them because they are needed no more. This is the future you await. Not simply another generation of leaders or another pastor to stand where I stood but the eternal tomorrow. God is among us not to get us through another day but to bring us to the eternal day. On that day, the end of the world will cause us no sorrow because the beginning of forever will fill us completely. This needs to be your focus. Not another day or week or year or generation but remaining in Christ to receive the fullness of the new and everlasting day He has come to give you.
That is why we are here now. We are kept in Christ not by our wills or our desires but by the Word of God preached and taught, by the water of baptism that washes us clean, by the voice of absolution that claims our sins for His blood, and by the holy food of His flesh and blood in this Eucharist. We are not waiting for a better tomorrow but a new and eternal one, not for the realization of our dreams but for Christ’s promises to be fulfilled, not to make it through a life but to eternal life. In that journey there will always be endings and tears. Our comfort lies in the beginning and the joy that is without end with Christ, our Lord.
Did you notice that St. John posits this miracle on the THIRD day. He is invoking the resurrection, pointing us to Christ, and to our own joyful resurrection. You do not make it to the end by getting through another day. You make it through another day because you have a vision of the end. You are not looking for the next of anything, much less pastors. You are looking for the end, the consummation of all things, when Christ shall come. You are waiting for trumpets to sound, for the dead to be raised, and for your place at the great marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom without end, today in Clarksville, tomorrow in Jerusalem on high. Amen
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