Sermon for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany

January 17, 2010, Solemn Mass

by the Reverend Stephen Gerth

Year C: Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 96:1-10;1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11

Three great gospel lessons gather around the feast of the Epiphany. The first is the coming of the wise men found in Matthew; the second is the baptism of Jesus found in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Today’s gospel lesson is John’s contribution, as it were, Jesus’ first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.

John’s gospel begins with the famous prologue, “In the beginning was the Word.”[1] The narrative continues, not with the baptism of Jesus, but with the testimony of John the Baptist about Jesus.[2] Then, Jesus suddenly appears; four men end up following him, Andrew, his brother Simon, who is immediately named by Jesus as Peter, Philip and Nathanael.[3] Then we are told there was a marriage in Cana. Jesus is there with the men who are now called disciples.[4] The mother of Jesus, whose name is never given by John, is there. She will appear only twice in the gospel in person, here at the wedding and at the cross.[5] But she is known. When his critics reject his teaching, “They said, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?  How does he now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’”[6]

Raymond Brown wrote that no one at the time Jesus lived seemed to expect the Messiah, were he to come, to perform any individual miracle.[7] The Messiah was to come to save Israel, God’s people. I think this is an important point for how the first and second generation of believers heard the gospel. The idea that a Messiah could do something for a person was new.

Much has been made in some Christian traditions of the role of Jesus’ mother in this story; if you want something from Jesus, ask his mother. But a careful reading of the narrative and this gospel puts the all of God’s action beyond the initiative of human beings, and even in a sense, beyond Jesus.

When God’s glory and purpose are revealed through Jesus, it happens when the Father commands it to happen, when he wills for his Son to hang on the cross.[8]

Across John’s gospel, Jesus’ miracles require explanation.[9] Jesus himself, it turns out, over and over again, is not enough. After healing the man born blind, they are ready to stone him and he says, “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”[10]

The things Jesus does are signs through which the glory of God is revealed so that people can believe in Jesus, when they believe, can receive life.

All in all, John doesn’t relate many episodes.

There are two signs at Cana, changing the water to wine at the wedding, and later, curing an official’s son.[11]

In Jerusalem, at the pool by Bethsaida, he will heal a paralytic.[12] In Galilee, he feeds the 5000[13] and walks on the sea.[14]

Again, back in Jerusalem, he will heal the man born blind.[15] And just outside Jerusalem, he will do the greatest sign of all; he will raise Lazarus from the dead.[16] And it is for this sign, in John, that he will be killed.[17]

Again, it is what Jesus does, the sign itself, that reveals God’s glory, not the encounter with Jesus. But this isn’t where John wants us to remain. Today’s gospel concludes, “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”[18] By the end of John’s gospel, Jesus says to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”[19]

Stay with me.

Then the author of the gospels immediately writes, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”[20]

For us, hearing the gospel, the words of this text of John and the other gospels, are where you and I encounter, to speak in John’s world, the sign that reveals God.

This is one key in John to understanding Christ’s, God’s work among us. The other key is the presence of the Holy Spirit that the Father and the Son give to Jesus’ friends in the hour of Jesus’ glory, the hour he hangs on the cross.

Many of you know we began last Sunday the annual reading at the Daily Office from Genesis. The way things are set up, we hear it at Morning Prayer in even-numbered years and Evening Prayer in odd-numbered years. Interestingly, the reading does not begin with the seven-day creation account; we always hear that at the Great Vigil of Easter. Instead, it begins with Adam and Eve. This thread of narrative suggests there is something wrong with humankind, that God has made a mistake. In this morning’s reading, God is sending Noah and those who will be saved into the ark; the flood is coming.

The first creation account, the seven-day account, is a different voice about the work of God, a voice that echoes in John’s understanding of the presence and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Remember, of course, how John’s gospel picks up the phrase from Genesis, “In the beginning.” When he has created man male and female, Genesis says, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”[21]

Daily we human beings experience and know of things that are not right. We cannot escape or explain away this reality. I grew up, for whatever reason, hardly knowing how good I was, how good the world can be. I heard too much Matthew, Mark and Luke as a child, and not enough John.

At the end of Matthew, “I am with you always,”[22] I am programmed by life, by family, by a lot of Christian church to think, yes, I am with you if you do what is right. But that’s not the only message the Church has received. There are always reasons to fear, but John’s Jesus simply asks us whether we believe.[23] And even then he is always the merciful Good Shepherd.

After the man born blind is healed and cast out of the temple, Jesus himself seeks him out. He asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of man?”[24] The man replies to Jesus, “‘And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?’  Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and it is he who speaks to you.’  He said, ‘Lord, I believe.”[25] That’s all Jesus wanted to know.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Copyright © 2010 The Society of the Free Church of St. Mary the Virgin, New York, New York.

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