The Sign of Creation

The Sign of Creation

John 2:1—11

By Everett Wilson, Pastor

This may be the only wedding story in the world that doesn't mention the bride. The gospel writer couldn't have gotten a job with local newspapers. When I was young, even the smallest of small town papers contained elaborate descriptions of the weddings, so detailed that you felt you had been there. The paper always gave more attention to the ceremony than to the reception, because the reception in those days was usually limited to punch, cake, printed napkins, and if you were really upscale little slabs of ice cream. If there were a wedding dance with free booze, there was probably more news, but not anything the reporter dared to write about.

Of course John wasn't looking for a job in the local newspaper, or even for the bride's scrapbook—in any case, he wrote his story at least thirty years too late for that. Besides, he didn't care about what the bride looked like like, but only about what Jesus did. He wrote it for people like you and me, who need desperately to see the glory of Jesus revealed today. This was the first of the signs by which Jesus revealed himself, and in one respect it was the biggest. It was the sign of creation. In order to turn water into wine, he had to give life to the water. Yes, wine is mainly water, as are all liquids; but you don't make wine by mixing water with something else, like KoolAid. Wine is fruit juice that becomes wine; it ferments without spoiling. That means it is a product of life, not directly of creation. No one could give life to the water but the Creator himself, the Lord of life. The first of the signs was not only first in time but first in precedence.

We return to the first words of Genesis: in the beginning God created. Without the creation, there would have been no beginning. There is continuing debate whether creation is ongoing. We do not need to enter that debate because the Bible does not address it. Whether it is ongoing or not, it still had to begin. In the account following, comparatively few acts of God throughout the biblical history may be called creative. They usually consist of God intervening and somehow manipulating what he has already created. Healings are like that. The parting of the Red Sea is like that. People earnestly attempt to explain these away as odd coincidences and so on.

But once in a great while God intervenes with an act of creation. This is one of them. When Jesus turned the water into wine, he was announcing his presence as the Creator of the universe.

We talk about the wedding only because it was the setting for this sign. In the events of a small-town wedding the Creator acts—and very few people knew what had happened. The mother of Jesus knew, the servants who drew the water knew, Jesus knew, his disciples knew; but the bridegroom didn't, nor the guests, nor the banquet master.

Because the banquet master had not been told where the new wine came from, he accused the bridegroom of withholding his best wine until the guests had already had enough of the cheap stuff. That was no way to honor your guests! You were supposed to give your guests the best you had; only when they weren't sober enough to tell the difference anyway, but still wanted to keep drinking, that you broke out the cheap stuff. If you did it the other way around, the cheap wine first, you were saying that your guest were not worth your good wine. So the words of the banquet master, "You have saved the best till now" is a polite way of calling the bridegroom a cheapskate.

But "the best till now" has another meaning to John and to us. John is a master at seeing a meaning deeper than the original speaker intended.

To us, "You have saved the best till now" is not a reference to the bridegroom's hospitality, but to the timing of God. It is God himself who has saved the best till now. The wine out of the water jars, the sign of the presence of the Creator in their midst, signals the very best thing that has ever happened to the world: God has sent his son to us. The first sign, water into wine, is the sign of creation. To repeat: Wine does not come directly from water; it comes through the life of the vine. Jesus turned the water in the jars into living water. This is not manipulation. This is creation.

Most of the people didnt know what had happened, but the people who needed to know at that time knew it. To the servants it was probably a puzzle, but not to the disciples or to the mother of Jesus. The mother of Jesus had every reason to believe it beforehand, because she ordered the servants to obey Jesus; and the disciples had to begin learning it if they were going to become the apostles of the Lord.

But even the people who didn't know were blessed. They drank the wine. And the bridegroom, with all that excellent wine left over, probably made a profit on his own wedding (in those days the bridegroom, not the bride's father, footed the bill).

But if that were as far as the blessing went, the wedding was nothing special. The guests had no special story to tell, except that their hangover was worse than they expected because they had drunk too much, or that they could kid the bridegroom that they had outsmarted him by drinking all his cheap wine and forcing him to break out his good stuff after all.

But what they thought and said is just guesswork. What is not guesswork is that you can be in the presence of great blessings, you can be participating in something that is literally out of this world, and not even know it. "How was the wedding at Cana?" a friend asks a guest. "Okay, I guess," is the answer.

Would we have responded differently had we been there? Maybe, maybe not. We do know this, however: the same One who changed water into wine has met with his church every week at least since Pentecost. Everytime we say , Let us pray, we are engaging his attention. Every time we sing his praise, we acknowledge his presence. Every time his message is truly preached, the word we speak is his. How was it, ask people who were absent. Sometimes we have a hint of what is going on, but sometimes we may say, "Okay, I guess."

The reason why is that creation is a moment in time. Even those who drank the wine and recognized how good it was were not transported directly and permanently into heaven. They had had a flagon or two of excellent wine, so good that you can imagine one guest saying to another, "I know you've had enough, but youve got to try this!"

The moment passes. They have to leave the party, just as we have to leave the church. Tomorrow is another day, without miracles of any kind.

So what good was the wine? It was a foretaste, a sample. If the memory of that wine stayed with them, they knew that there was something remarkable and wonderful in the world that was vastly different from and better than their everyday experience. They didnt know all about it, but they knew that they had tasted it, and that it was the best.

Believers have this foretaste of heaven. One of the most popular of all hymns reminds us of that:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine;

0 what a foretaste of glory divine!

A believer is one who knows the touch of God—somehow, somewhere, maybe beyond reach and memory. For some of us it is fleeting, like the remembered taste of something delicious. Sometimes people waste their time and opportunities by staying at the miracle site and expecting the miracle to continue. Maybe the foretaste will become permanent if we change our style of worship, or if I pray harder, or work harder. If I prove that I deserve it, maybe I'll never have to leave the wedding feast!

Miracles do not continue. They're called miracles partly because they are interruptions, not precedents. But doesn't make them less real. The miracle happened, and the wine was real!

The Lord who is in the midst of his church is the Creator, though he is not always creating. When an act of creation occurs, it is always in God’s time, as God’s act, and for God’s reason—a total surprise and act of grace, like the wine at the wedding. When it comes it will be just as real, and just as fleeting, as it was that day. When and if it happens in our presence, we will see what is always true—that the church lives in the presence of Jesus, the Creator. Amen.