John 2:1-11

A Mother's Trust 
 
Have you ever heard the phrase: “Behind every saint stood a mother who was praying for him”?
 
Everyone, if he’s been in church long enough, has heard of St. Augustine. If you’ve been in this church long enough, you certainly have heard of him, because I have quoted him frequently.
 
Undoubtedly, he’s one of the most influential teachers of the Christian faith in history.
 
Indeed, it’s almost impossible to overestimate his impact on the church and its theology.
 
Fewer church people, however, have heard of St. Monica.
 
But without Monica, his mother, there would be no Augustine, at least as we know him today.
 
A devout woman, she instilled in him the Christian faith from a young age.
 
But as he grew up, the young Augustine strayed, preferring the party life.
 
He went to school in Carthage (the ancient equivalent to Michigan State) and descended into debauchery, pursuing pleasure of all kinds, living for himself alone.
 
One can only imagine his mother’s grief.
 
But this was only the beginning of her travails.
 
Upon returning home from school, Augustine announced to her that he’d joined a cult.
 
Normally a calm woman, Monica kicked her son out of the house in a fit of anger.
 
No doubt this tense episode was the culmination of years of heartache.
 
What did Monica do?
 
I can tell you what she didn’t do. She didn’t harangue him with endless lectures about coming back to the church. 
 
She didn’t follow him around everywhere and scold him about his bad behavior.
 
Parents know how difficult it is to allow their children the freedom to make their own mistakes in life, and it’s only natural for them to want to protect them from physical, emotional, and spiritual harm.
 
But Monica resisted the impulse. Instead, she placed her trust in God to bring her son back, even as she endured all the uncertainties.
 
Monica exemplifies a mother’s trust.
 
T0day we have before us another exemplary mother. Indeed, for many Christians in the world she is the mother from whom all motherhood derives its name. We are referring to Mary, the mother of Jesus.
 
In John’s gospel she appears here, in our lesson, at the beginning of Jesus’ public life, and then only once more, at the end, beneath the cross.
 
At all events, she shows herself to be a woman of faith, as we will soon see.
 
The scene is a wedding, and Jesus and his disciples are also there.
 
Now in the ancient Near East, a wedding was not a Saturday afternoon affair in May, as it is here.
 
A wedding was a protracted event that could last as long as seven days.
 
In the small villages on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, a wedding was a grand reunion, a time for renewing ties with family members and friends.
 
We can imagine that everyone is enjoying himself. The food is good, the wine is flowing.
 
That is, until it isn’t. According to our lesson, Jesus’ mother is the first to notice the problem.
 
Parenthetically, we know from experience that at weddings everything has to be perfect.
 
There’s the wedding dress, the caterer, the photographer, the guest list, the church, the minister, the music, the reception—and all the rest!
 
Anxiety runs high. If something goes wrong, if someone’s not fulfilling their responsibility, tempers flare, feelings get hurt.
 
This can make guests feel uncomfortable. It can dampen the festive mood.
 
Understandably, Mary does not want any of this to happen.
 
We are right in assuming that her own family and friends are among those at the wedding reception. After all, her son Jesus is there. Maybe she even feels some responsibility for the success of the event.
 
In any case, she does not want things to go wrong for them. Sensing a disaster in the making, she turns to Jesus.
 
“They have no wine.”  Note it’s not a direct request. Indeed, it is one of those lines that lends support to the claim that John’s Gospel has elements of humor.
 
“They have no wine.” Implied here is: “What are you going to do about it?”
 
Then comes the puzzling response of Jesus: “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come” (2:4). 
 
It seems rude, or at least brusque and distancing, to address his own mother as “woman,” as he does again in 19:26, when from the cross he entrusts her to the care of the beloved disciple (David Ford).
 
I wonder if this, beneath the surface, speaks to how we sometimes experience prayer.
 
We need help. We go to God with our request, and he seems indifferent. God seems distant to us, perhaps occupied with more important concerns.
 
We feel as if God is saying to us: “What’s your concern to me?”
 
Note that in the Gospel of John, Jesus acts in sovereign freedom. He does things his own way, when the time seems right to him.
 
“Jesus, you ought to go up to the festival. No one who wants to be a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world” (7:4).
 
The response?
 
“You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my hour has not yet come” (7:8).
 
“Jesus, your friend Lazarus, whom you love, is sick” (11:3). 
 
The response?  
 
“When he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days” (11:6). 
 
This sovereign freedom of Jesus is in keeping with how Israel understood her God. The Psalmist declares: “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him” (115:3).
 
The prophet Daniel declares that God acts according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, 'What have you done?'" (4:35).
 
Mary goes to Jesus because she knows he has the power to intervene. He can rescue a wedding in crisis.
 
Mary knows all this. But she also knows she cannot control the outcome. She can’t force his hand.
 
He’s free to respond in whatever way he sees fit. And she respects this freedom. That is shown in her words to the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.”
 
You see in these words that she releases her concern to him. She trusts that his will and her good will coincide, even though she does not know in advance what he’s going to do.
 
What she does know is that she can let go of the wheel, place the situation in his hands, and rest.
 
She does not cease trusting in him. Without weakening in her faith, she stands firm.
 
During Advent, we said about Mary that she is the model of all disciples. This is how the church has honored her down through the centuries.
 
Incidentally, we should not hesitate to embrace these honorific titles for Mary. She is not the exclusive property of the Roman Catholic Church. Remember that she belonged to the whole church, before there ever was a Protestant Reformation.
 
At the very least, she certainly provides us here today with a model of faith.
 
Can we follow her example?
 
Or do we give up when we sense that God is rejecting our prayer and withholding the help we need from him?
 
If we’re men and women of faith, we do well to follow Mary’s example.
 
We won’t fret when a disaster is in the making. We won’t panic when a situation escapes our control. Instead, we will go to God and patiently wait on him. We will listen for his word. And when we hear it, we’ll accept its guidance, all the while trusting in him for the outcome.
 
This is what the servants do. They obey the instructions of Jesus and fill six stone water jars with water.
 
The water is for ritual cleansing. Stone jars were used by Jews who could afford them because they did not transmit impurity as vessels made of other substances did.
 
But true cleansing happens, not with old rituals, but with Jesus. Perhaps this is another layer of meaning we can see in the transformation of water into wine.
 
Later Jesus makes this clear when he speaks of himself in the upper room as the one who provides washing to his disciples (John 13). Later he tells the disciples that they are clean by the word he has spoken to them (John 15). 
 
But we’re speaking about faith. We’ve been saying that our lesson calls us to be men and women of faith, of whom Mary serves as an example.
 
It’s important here to clarify that this is not a blind faith.
 
In an earlier generation, people spoke of a “higher power.” In an effort to overcome addiction or find healing, for example, we must surrender to a “higher power.”
 
Today, some people speak of the “universe.” The “universe” knows what we need, for example, and at the proper time we will “manifest” it in our lives.
 
But John isn’t interested in telling us about a higher power or a universe. He is interested in telling us about Jesus.
 
We want to know that help will come when we ask for it. But John wants us to know the One from whom our help comes when we ask for it. That is John’s interest.
 
And this makes sense. After all, we want to know that the One from whom we ask help is worthy of the trust we place in him.
 
Why should we even trust in him at all if he is not constant and faithful and generous? 
 
We know that this is John’s interest, because he consistently refers to Jesus’ miracles as “signs.”
 
This word is found only in John. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there is another word for “miracle,” which, when translated, means “act of power.”
 
For these three Gospel writers, a miracle signifies divine power, which evokes the human response of awe and wonder.
 
But the purpose of a sign is to disclose, to reveal that which lies concealed. Signs are not only acts of power; they also unveil the God who is at work in Jesus, the God who reveals himself in Jesus. 
 
Incidentally, this is why this lesson comes to us in the season of Epiphany.
 
In Epiphany, we peer behind the veil to see what God wants to reveal to us, what God wants us to see. And we respond in faith. In John, signs are done to evoke faith.
 
When the servants draw out the contents of the stone jars and give some to the master of ceremonies, he tastes it and is amazed.
 
It is not only wine, but the very best wine! He praises the bridegroom of the wedding for saving the best for last. 
 
The observation by the headwaiter is another example of humor in John’s Gospel. The taste of people who are drunk is not as discriminating as when sober. Therefore, save the wine of inferior quality for last!
 
We should not miss the humor. Clearly, humor is good and godly for John, and it should be for us too!
 
But we should not stop there. There are multiple layers here.
 
“You saved the best for last!”
.
Consider that people in the ancient world thought that the oldest was best. Ancient wisdom was the truest, the golden age was in the past.
 
In this perspective, God has done a very surprising thing.
 
He has saved for last his very best gift to Israel and the world. His best gift was not in Israel’s past, when he gave Moses the law and Israel the land.
 
His best gift is Jesus. In Jesus, he shows that he has saved the best for last.
 
That is why Bible students say that the miracle at the wedding at Cana points to the consummation of God’s history with his people.
 
In this miracle is reflected those Old Testament prophecies about the messianic age, which is often depicted as a great wedding banquet.
 
That is why the church pairs this lesson with that in Isaiah 62, which Kathy read for us.
 
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 (Isa. 62:5).
 
And when this joyful day arrives, all the good things we enjoy will flow and overflow in unending abundance.
 
The prophet Amos: “The time is surely coming, says the Lord, when…the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. (9:11, 13–14).
 
In sum, the sign that Jesus performs in response to Mary’s pleading points to the abundant joy, of which the wedding is a symbol, that awaits God’s people.
 
And this is to God’s glory, which at the same time for our good.
 
Wine and feasts and banquets and weddings point to God’s ultimate plan for his people. Our final hope is the new creation that God is preparing, one in which God’s people will flourish and take delight in all good things under the reign of Jesus, the King of Israel, the Son of God, the Messiah. 
 
Mary says: “and all I thought I was asking for was more wine.” Yes, but she got so much more. Not only did Jesus rescue a wedding in crisis, he rescued a people in the crisis of sin and death and will make them his bride.
 
And Monica says: “And all I asked was that my son come back to the church. Yes, but she so much more. Not only did he come back to the church, he became one of the great leaders in the history of the church, enriching us even today with his insights into these lofty truths.
 
But this is the abundance of God.
 
“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen" (Eph. 3:20-21). 
​


  
​
​






​