There’s an old commercial for Paul Masson Wine that debuted on April 2nd, 1979, featuring legendary actor and director Orson Welles. As the commercial begins, Welles turns down his radio, which is playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. He pours a glass of white wine while he explains that it took Beethoven four years to write that symphony, and then he says in his captivating baritone voice “Some things can’t be rushed: Good music and good wine.” Then the winemaker’s tagline: “We will sell no wine before its time.”
Vinification—the slow work of bringing wine to its time—is a years’ long undertaking; without waiting, there is no wine. Many things must go right long before a wine is poured. Timing is everything.
“My hour has not yet come,” Jesus says to His mother, Mary. But this wedding celebration at Cana, it needed reviving. The party was not even halfway through, and the hosts had run out of wine. Wedding celebrations in Jesus’s day were weeklong affairs. Running out of wine just a couple days in is an embarrassment. Timing is everything.
But it makes for a strange debut for the Savior of the World, don’t you think? Turning water into wine might be a miracle depending on who you ask, but at a wedding celebration, among the distracted, there’s a good chance Jesus’s first sign is received as nothing more than a party trick. The fourth gospel writer calls this Jesus’s first sign. With it, the wedding celebration will go on. But that’s not really the point of the passage. That’s hardly how Jesus saves. I like a glass of dark red blend or a Merlot, but there’s no salvation in it.
This story isn’t about the wine. If it was, we would have details. We would know how these six huge jars were filled and from what source and who filled them. But John doesn’t convey anything like that because it’s beside his point. It’s not the what that matters; it’s the Who. Let’s not miss the miracle. With Jesus around, greater things are at work.
Prophets like Jeremiah, Hosea, and Amos—they spoke of a time when Israel would be freed from scarcity, from want. A Messiah would come close to God’s people. He would usher in a new age marked by bounty. God’s people would be rescued from their need and be met with abundance.
Chances are, we all have experienced some form of running short. It’s the rare person who has always had enough or had what it takes to make it through on their own. If you can’t think of a time when you’ve run short, scripture’s got you covered:
“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
The issue isn’t being empty. Nor is being depleted. The issue is not even running out. The issue is where we go to be filled with the right things—the things that make for gospel freedom, salvation.
If we want to know who to pay attention to in this story, we might start with Mary. When the wine ran out, Mary’s first instinct was to turn to Jesus. She knew that no other way would do. How about you?
We should follow Mary’s example. Because Jesus is among us—in our company—there is no more lacking. Is our first instinct to reach out to Christ? Is He really where we go when we come up empty? Don’t we usually scramble around first? Throw our own ideas at a need?
See, going to Jesus was Mary’s first idea. Mary knew that where Christ works, Christ provides; He takes the stagnant water of our lives and transforms it. And in response to Jesus’s direction, the wedding servants went to work filling those vats to the brim with water. They brought what they could to Jesus, but it was Jesus who made their effort useful. We bring what we can to Jesus knowing it’s not enough until He takes it and transforms it for His greater purpose. We have only to place ourselves in from of Him. He will do the rest—even when the parties die down and we go about our every day because Christ is with us and one of us, this life is blessed, full—to overflowing.
It’s still Epiphany. This is a season full of signs, and they keep coming. That’s one way that John’s gospel differs from the first three. There’s not one parable in John’s gospel, but it’s packed full of signs. They’re easier to miss, though. We should watch for them or else we’ll overlook them.
Each of the signs in the fourth gospel is a glimpse into who Jesus is, and each one is bigger than the one before. John scattered them about, so we will have to search them out. Each one has much to say about the difference Jesus makes in the world and our lives in it. Maybe this first one signifies something like this: If this life of faith was up to us, we would quickly run out of the stuff that it takes. Maybe, we don’t have it in the first place, so it’s good that Christ is here with us. It’s good that it’s not up to us. It’s His grace that carries us through. Because of Jesus, we have a hope that will never run out. Just when we think some part of us is depleted, that we are exhausted and run dry, Jesus comes along and fills these empty vessels to overflowing again.
There’s a tale of a poor man who spent his life saving up to go on a cruise. That’s all he ever wanted to do. Week by week, paycheck by paycheck, he would stash away a couple of pennies. For decades he saved and saved; and when he was old, he finally had enough money to afford a cruise ticket. Knowing he could not afford the elegant food pictured in the brochures, the man packed up a week’s supply of bread and peanut butter—that was all he could afford.
The first few days of the cruise were thrilling. The man ate peanut butter sandwiches in the morning, then went up to the deck and spent his time relaxing in the sunlight and wading in the pool. By midweek, though, the man noticed that he was the only one on board who wasn’t eating luxurious meals. And everyone was eating all the time, no matter what time of day it was, and there was food everywhere.
The man had grown tired and weary of peanut butter sandwiches. They never filled him up. In his frustration, he walked up to one of the porters and asked, “Tell me how all these people have enough money to afford to eat all this food! They must be rich!”
“Sir,” the porter said, “Don’t you have a ticket?”
“Sure I have a ticket, but it was so expensive, that I can’t afford anything else.”
“But sir, didn’t you realize? Meals are included in your passage. You may eat as much as you’d like! Anything you see, it’s yours!”
There’s abundance. It’s been given to us. It’s called grace, and it overflows. We should drink deeply of it.
One of the Gospel’s most important messages has to do with different levels of knowing. Knowing about Jesus and knowing Jesus are different things. There’s belief and then there’s relationship. It’s not until we drink of this Jesus life that we will really know Jesus, taste this Jesus-life, get it deep down inside of us.
One of my favorite images from scripture is from Ezekiel, where a divine messenger needs the prophet to understand something of God, so the messenger tells Ezekiel to swallow scripture. Eat this book. Get it inside of you, then you will know.
God’s abundant grace, this life with Jesus around—taste it for yourselves. Then will you find that it’s a bit like drinking the best wine there is when all you’ve ever had—when all you’ve ever expected—was the cheap stuff.
Now, we give ourselves to this gospel vinification, this slow task of living into this Jesus-life, letting it come to fullness in us. It’s right in front of us and it’s ours for the tasting.
All praises to the One who made it all and finds it beautiful! Alleluia! Amen.