Epiphany 2 The Sunday of Water into Wine January 15, 2017
Epiphany 2
John 2:1-11
January 15, 2017
“More Wine?”
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jesus turns water into wine today. Wine is a great gift of God. The Scriptures have many good things to say about wine. Wine is often a sign of God’s blessing, for one thing. Paul, for another, tells Timothy to have a little wine for the sake of his stomach. Proverbs chapter 31 says that wine is good for those in bitter distress. It says, “Let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more.” Isaiah says that God has prepared a feast for us which includes well-aged wine. Melchizedek, the priest of Salem, brought out bread and wine to bless Abram. Wine is a good gift, you see.
So bring out the wine! Gladden your hearts, as the Bible says, with the fruit of the vine. But, of course, be careful. All good things in moderation, they say. Because any good thing that God gives, sadly we are prone to abuse. He gives us good wine, but what do we do? We abuse it and drink too much. That’s why the Bible also has to give us all these warnings about drunkenness. Wine is good. Drunkenness is not. So enjoy it, but enjoy it moderately, right?
Makes sense, but now we come to this curious case of the wedding in Cana. There was wine at the wedding. That was good, right? Weddings are a fine time to enjoy some wine, as we often do. But, after a long while at the wedding reception, these gluttons had drank up every last bit of it. There wasn’t a drop of wine left. Can you believe this? The steward makes it clear that a number of them, in his words, have drunk “freely”. They’re drunk, he means. A bunch of sinners, these people are. Abusing God’s good gift, right?
So what does Jesus do? Surely He comes out there and lectures them all on the virtue of temperance and moderation, right? Surely He comes out there and yells at them to repent of their gluttony and to sober up for the kingdom of heaven is near! That’s what Jesus did, right? Surely He wouldn’t allow one more drop of wine to be served to these ungrateful, sinful drunkards, right?
Oh, but no. That’s not what Jesus did. That’s not what He did at all. Jesus, in a surprising twist, gave them approximately 150 more gallons of wine. If you do a little math, just to give you a better mental image, that’s about 750 bottles of wine (in the standard size we think of). 750 bottles of wine for people who have already drank too much wine. And, of course, in another wild twist, this isn’t just some cheap “off the shelf” wine. This is the finest wine these folks have ever tasted in their lives. Except many of them won’t even notice because they’ve already had so much wine that it doesn’t matter anyway.
So now, you tell me, where’s the sense in that? Jesus should’ve yelled at ‘em and sent ‘em home empty-handed to sober up, right? But He didn’t. Instead, for these overindulgers He does His first miracle and shows them His glory. To a bunch of people who barely even noticed. But, from all of this, His disciples believed in Him. And we—we get to understand better about the grace of God.
See, they didn’t deserve more wine. A sensible person would’ve said, “No more wine? So what? They’ve already had plenty.” But not Jesus. Jesus gave them more anyway. That’s the glory of Jesus. It’s called grace. We know that word, right? It’s called “giving extraordinary gifts to people who don’t deserve it at all.” That’s what Jesus did for His first miracle. Gave miraculous wine to people who didn’t deserve any wine. And that’s what Jesus continues to do for you and for me all the time. He gives us gifts that we don’t deserve at all. Even knowing full well that we’re going to abuse them.
That’s the love that God has for you and me. See how glorious His grace is for us sinners. It’s the finest wine you’ll ever taste.
See, we do this with all of God’s gifts. We waste them. He gives us time. We waste it. Don’t we? We squander our days away. He gives us nature. The trees, the animals, the beauty, the resources. We abuse it and destroy it. He gives us marriage and sex and children. We give Him divorce, perversion, and abortion. He gives us food and shelter. We take it for granted and complain that we’re bored with the same old house and the same old meals.
And just when you think God would come out and say, “Enough with you ungrateful drunkards. I’m not going to put up with you anymore….” Then instead, He gives us the greatest gift the world has ever known—His Son.
And even God’s own Son was abused by us. He was rejected, persecuted, put on trial, punished, and crucified. And yet this, too, is all part of God’s glory. Because by dying on the cross and then rising on Easter morning, He has given us salvation. The forgiveness of our sins. The only way God saves us is by pure grace. By giving undeserving sinners like us more and more and more wine.
One place God does this is in the Lord’s Supper. He gives more and more and more wine. More and more and more grace. There’s no doubt that we don’t always appreciate the Lord’s Supper as we should. There’s some Sundays we’re disappointed that we have the Lord’s Supper because Church will be longer. There’s other Sundays were we just go through the motions and don’t really think about what gift God is giving up here. And then there’s all the times we receive the Lord’s Supper and don’t change our sinful ways at all but go right back to our sinful thoughts even while we’re walking back to the pew.
Now does God say, “Enough with you sinners. No more wine of the Lord’s Supper for you?!” No, God is a God of grace. The wine never runs out. He makes sure of it. He always has more and more grace. So that we receive the Lord’s Supper as often as we can and we thank God for being so good to sinners such as us.
God is so good. You can trust that. Jesus’ mom, Mary, seemed to understand that. When the wine ran out at the wedding, she didn’t know exactly what Jesus would do about it. But she trusted that God was good and so she just simply asked Jesus to do something about it. She said, “They have no more wine.” And even though Jesus said, “What does this have to do with me?” He still took care of it.
God is so good to us. We can ask for more and more wine, for more and more grace, for whatever it is we need—and God will listen to our prayer. Don’t you often feel like you don’t deserve to ask God for anything because you haven’t always been grateful for what’s He’s already given you? Or because you have often abused the things He’s given you? Well, of course. God already knows that. Jesus knew they had abused the wine at the wedding. But He still gave more.
So God will do with you and me. Of course, we don’t deserve His gifts. But He still promises to give more and more. So ask God for what you need. For what you want. He will listen to your prayer. He will give it to you in His time and in His way.
And all we can do is just like Mary said, “Do whatever He tells you.” Those are words of faith. Just trust Him. Trust Jesus. And do what He tells us to do. He tells us to believe in Him. He tells us keep His Word. He tells us to love God and love our neighbor. He tells us to receive the Lord’s Supper. “Do this in remembrance of Me,” He says.
He tells us to turn to Him in every trouble. And that’s what we do. We turn to Him in every trouble. When the wine runs out, we turn to Him. Even if we don’t deserve any more wine, we know God is full of grace. He loves us and forgives us. He keeps the wine flowing for us. All the way into eternal life.
So this was Jesus’ first miracle where He manifested His glory. His glory is that He is God in the flesh to give grace to sinners. To give wine to people who don’t deserve any more wine. And His disciples believed in Him. And so do we.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.