What's in the Barrels?

Luke: Well, it was pretty bare-bones. It needed a little embellishment. ... And I used it to accent Jesus' compassion.

John: Compassion, blah-bassion! That isn't going to help me. I'll give Matthew a call.

Matthew: Hi, John.

John: Listen, Matthew, I'm a little stymied here. I need a good story to jump-start my Gospel. How did you start your Gospel?

Matthew: I started it with a genealogy, what do you think?

John: Oh, great.

Matthew: Well, the Jewish community is my target audience! Mennonites will love it too, but they won't be around for another 16 centuries!

John: Couldn't you think of something more boring!

Matthew: Hey, don't knock it. You wouldn't believe how interested some people are to find that their second cousin, five times removed, is the daughter-in-law to their wife's niece!

John: What I'm looking for, Matthew, is a story – a story about Jesus that focusses on who he is, not what genealogical branch he's dangling from!

Matthew: Who's your audience?

John: Well, it's mixed. Some of them are Jewish, but they're primarily Greek-speaking, so I'm writing in Greek, but I can assume a lot of Old Testament knowledge. Say ... do you remember the story of Jesus at the wedding in Cana?

Matthew: I remember that he was there. Who doesn't go to a Jewish wedding! You talk boring – what's so special about Jesus at a Jewish wedding? We were all there!

John: Yeah, but do you remember anything special about the wine?

Matthew: Yeah, there was a lot of it. But that's not surprising, you know how long those weddings go! A week, for sure.

John: Yeah, well, I think maybe you were too busy drinking the wine and didn't notice where it was coming from.

Matthew: Jesus' mother took care of the arrangements. She said not to worry ourselves.

John: I know, but she was pretty worried when early on they ran out of wine.

Matthew: They didn't run out. There were barrels of the stuff!

John: Barrels, huh? Those weren't barrels, Matt; those were big jars of water.

Matthew: Sure didn't taste like water.

John: That's because of something I know and you don't! Gotta run, Matthew. And thanks for solving my problem! See you Saturday.

Why this Story?

Well, that was a fanciful way to compare the way the various Gospels introduce Jesus' public ministry. The Gospel of John is different from the other Gospels. While Matthew, Mark and Luke follow a narrative thread, John takes risks with the narrative material, using it to do much more than tell a story. While John calls the Cana wedding wine-and-water exchange Jesus' "first" miracle (John 2:11, KJV), careful attention to chronology was the furthest thing from John's mind. There are theological layers in John's account, and to introduce Jesus' public ministry with the wedding at Cana carried some risks, and not just with those who consider it their Christian witness to refrain from drinking wine. Most of those came later. In Jesus' day wine was a common beverage at meals, at various social occasions, and especially at weddings.

However, why did the first "sign," as John calls it (John 2:11), have to be an event overflowing with wine? For one thing, it could be misinterpreted, and it was. As Matthew tells it, there were rumours floating around that Jesus was "a glutton and a drunkard" (Matthew 11:19), or as the King James Version phrases it, "Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber!

And why did the first sign have to be a wedding? Weddings are all about the bridal couple, sometimes all about the bride, and... sometimes ... all about the bride's mother! A dramatic sign at a wedding would divert attention from, and be unfair to, the wedding couple.

It wasn't as if John didn't have a wide selection of stories from which to draw. Why didn't he start with the second of his seven signs, the healing of a government official's son. (John 4:46-54) Starting with that story would have lent some dignity to the Gospel, but what does John do? He introduces the healing of the government official's son by bringing up the wedding again, writing, "Then Jesus went back to Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine." (4:46, TEV)

John could have used the story of the feeding of the five thousand with five loaves and two fish (John 6:1-14), the fourth of his seven signs revealing Jesus' identity and purpose, as his introduction. That would be more in keeping with our understanding of the Gospel. Mennonite Central Committee has committed a sizeable amount of money to help the people in Haiti after the horrendous disaster there. I assume the money will be used to buy staples and such. We would certainly have significant questions if MCC used that money to bring a shipload of wine into the country.

I don't have a problem with Jesus attending a wedding. Dorothy's uncle, a farmer, refused to go to his son's wedding because it took place at harvest time – one should know better than to schedule your wedding when there's work to do – but I like to think that Jesus was a more engaging fellow, and I can imagine him enjoying a wedding, and – yes – even helping out with the refreshments. What puzzles me is not Jesus but John – John's choice of this story to launch the public ministry of Jesus.

What Was John Trying to Tell us?

What was John trying to tell us? Well, for one thing, the theme of abundance is obvious. The wedding was running low on wine, and in the corner stood "six stone water jars, ...each holding twenty or thirty gallons." (John 2:6) Jesus asked the kitchen staff to fill them right up to the brim. (2:7) That's 120 to 180 gallons of water, only when the wine steward, upon Jesus' suggestion, sampled the water, it tasted a lot like wine! (2:8-9) 120 to 180 gallons of wine! That's the equivalent of over a thousand bottles of wine! Jesus did not scrimp on quantity, and apparently the quality was pretty good too! (2:10) Wedding celebrations went on for a week in those days, but even so, 180 gallons seems a little over the top!

John's Jewish readers would have caught the Old Testament allusions in the story, for according to Jewish belief the Messiah would come some day, and when the Messiah came God would celebrate his arrival with a huge feast. The prophet Isaiah tells us that on that day God will prepare a feast of rich food ...and the finest of wines." (Isaiah 25:6) The prophet Joel says that on that day there will be silos full of grain, casks of wine and barrels of olive oil." (Joel 2:24, The Message) The "vats shall overflow with wine". (NRSV) The prophet Amos writes that on that day "the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it." (Amos 9:13). Wine will flow like water! One of the books in the Hebrew Pseudepigrapha describes the abundance this way: "Each trunk of the vine will have one thousand branches, and each branch will produce a thousand clusters, and each cluster produce a thousand grapes and each grape ...five hundred litres of wine". (2 Baruch 29:5)

In other words, the theme of abundance is a messianic theme, so John chose the story of the wedding at Cana to tell us that Jesus is the Messiah. There were those in John's community who didn't accept Jesus as Messiah. They had no problem with his signs and miracles, but that didn't convince them that he was the expected Messiah! John chose the wedding in Cana story, not so much to show Jesus' power as to reveal Jesus' identity and purpose. He chose the story not so much to show what Jesus could do, as to show who Jesus is. It may be one of the reasons that John doesn't call Jesus' dramatic acts miracles, but "signs". A sign is an indication of something else; it points to a deeper reality. We get an indication of John's intention, when near the end of his Gospel he writes, "Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:30-31)

A Cornucopia of Themes, including Transformation

The story of the wedding at Cana suggests a cornucopia of themes. Much like the wine in Jesus' story flowed in great abundance, so too various themes flow from this story. The theme of abundance is not the only theme. For example, the wedding imagery is very suggestive. In Scripture it's a commonly-used image for the relationship between God and God's people. God is often depicted as the husband, Israel as God's spouse. Our Old Testament reading from Isaiah uses marriage imagery. (Isaiah 62:1-5)

The theme of joy is also a prominent theme. According to John, Jesus' ministry was a joyful one, with no trace of the asceticism of either the Essenes or John the Baptist. On another occasion Jesus asked more severe people of faith, "Do you expect the guests at a wedding party to be sad as long as the bridegroom is with them?" (Matthew 9:15) The fact that the big jars or barrels that usually held water for rites of purification were now filled with wine is a statement as potent as the wine itself!

Weddings are usually synonymous with joy ... usually ... I've had occasion to observe a great deal of tension at some weddings, although its cause is usually someone other than the bride or groom. We read, later in John, that Jesus came that we "may have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10) Jesus came so that his "joy may be in (us), and that (our) joy may be complete." (15:11) I think that a joyful tone is an appropriate tone for the story of Jesus. As Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), a famous nineteenth-century preacher, said: "Sepulchral tones many fit (someone) to be an undertaker, but Lazarus is not called out of his grave by hollow moans." (Sword and Trowel, July, 1875) Less than a month ago we celebrated the One whose birth was declared "good news of great joy for all ...people" (Luke 2:10), so joy is an appropriate theme for the story of Jesus.

There are a number of themes that emerge from our Gospel reading, but the one that appeals to me is the theme of transformation. The vivid transformation of water into wine points to the fresh winds of change Jesus brought with him. A change for the better – from water to wine; from the old to the new; from the lifelessness of stiff legalism to the liveliness of the gospel, the good news. It's a change from worship-by-rote, to a new worship, "in spirit and (in) truth". (John 4:24)

The transformation theme suggests that we too can experience change for the better. As John's Gospel moves on, we witness Jesus walking with people in difficult circumstances, but he transforms those experiences, taking people from the embarrassing insufficiency of their own resources, to abundance of life in him. His new take on things astonished the Samaritan woman. (John 4:1-42) His new approach astonished the man who had lain beside a pool for 38 years, hoping that someone would roll him into the water so that he would be healed of his infirmity. (5:1-18) Jesus got the man to break out of the cycle of futility and disappointment. Jesus' surprising approach to his disciples' lack of imagination about meagre provisions – their failure to think outside the little basket of loaves and fishes – astonished them! (6:1-13)

What's in the basket? Five little loaves and two tiny fish. Look again! There's enough there to feed five thousand people! What's in the barrels? Nothing! And there will continue to be nothing unless you fill them full of water! What's in the barrels? Water. Look again! There's enough wine in them to keep this wedding going for weeks!

Perhaps what we regard as a meagreness of provisions may have as much to do with the meagreness of our imagination than with actual provisions. The astonishing transformation of water into wine serves as a metaphor for what Jesus wishes to accomplish in our lives. Jesus can transform our experience. He can take what is dull and drab and transform it into something vivid. He can take what is stale and flat, and transform it into something that is, if not sparkling and exciting, something with depth that gives meaning to our lives. Jesus brought into the inadequate and insipid religious life of his own people the ferment of a new message, with powerful implications and that inspired, and continues to inspire, great things.

What's in the Barrels?

A hundred and eighty gallons suggests a lot of storage. Initially these jars-as-big-as-barrels were empty, then they were filled with water, later with wine. Normally these big caskets were used to store water that was used for cleansing purposes, to ensure the ritual purity of the community; as such they represented the old way of living a holy life. They suggested what not to do. These barrels held 180 gallons of laws, sub-laws, and sub-sub-laws, inside of which were rules and regulations. If you didn't follow all the laws, rules, and regulations, and the rituals pertaining thereto, what you got was 180 gallons of guilt!

What's in our barrels? What do we keep in storage? Well, I've got one barrel filled to the brim with disappointments. I've got another barrel filled with resentments. Another barrel I reserve for petty jealousies and grudges. That other barrel in the corner ... well, I don't even want to open it. Who knows what toxic stuff is inside. I try to keep a lid on that stuff! Jesus transformed 180 gallons of guilt into 180 gallons of grace (Edward Markquart), and he would welcome transforming what's in our barrels into something of grace and beauty – into the new wine of love and grace.

John concludes his introductory story by pointing out that this was the first of the signs that Jesus did in Galilee, and that by this sign Jesus revealed his glory. (John 2:11) In John's more philosophical introduction he wrote, "We ...beheld his glory, ...and from his fulness have we all received, grace upon grace." (John 1:14, 16) From his fulness – barrels and barrels of fulness, baskets and baskets of fulness, with baskets left over – from his fulness, we have received grace upon grace upon grace.

May we grow in our experience of joy and astonishment, and may the water of our disappointments and discouragements turn to the wine of grace, hope, joy, and vibrant and abundant life in Christ. AMEN