Epiphany 2: 19 January 2025
Readings: Is. 62.1-5; 1 Cor. 12.1-11; Jn. 2.1-11
Theme: Water into Wine
This is surely one of the best known and most loved passages in the gospels. Everybody loves a wedding! This is the first of the signs Jesus unfurls before the eyes of the public and it is an incident that is unique to the gospel of St John. So, it is clear that this is a sign which points to a deeper meaning, unfolding the expansive theology of St John before our very eyes at the scene of the wedding feast of Cana. Set within the context of Isaiah 62, it evokes multiple resonances with the transformation of the people of Israel that is promised by God through the prophet Isaiah following their release from Babylonian exile in around the year 538 BC.
What better sign could be given by St John of this transformation from a forlorn people to a holy one than the transformation of the water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana. The long awaited transformation of the people of Israel is now being enacted through the advent of the messiah, Jesus. Jesus is the one who enters into the ordinary; the ordinary of the flesh, the ordinary of the wedding, the ordinary of the running out of wine at a celebration, and transforms this ordinary into the extraordinary of the new wine of the kingdom of God. This is the best wine and it is saved till last so that all those who have drunk of the ordinary wine may know that there is more to taste in life than that. A little like following a trail through many pathways, the journey is necessary so that the arrival has some depth to it as an accomplishment of something.
Set in this context of Isaiah 62 a number of points issue from this text which are good for us to contemplate as we enjoy this Epiphany season. The first point is that that transformation of the people of Israel which this miracle of the changing of water into wine symbolizes is given to us as the first sign of the public ministry of St John. But as a sign of what? What is it that this miracle is meant to signify? Fortunately, we do not have to divine this for ourselves. St John does that for us at verse 11, it is to reveal his glory: ‘Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.’ In other words, this is a sign of the glory of God, revealed to his disciples so that they, and in due course in history, we, may believe in him. It is an unfolding of the meaning of the mystery already given in the prologue of St John which heads up the gospel: ‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.’ The glory of God is to be found in the Son who is full of grace and truth. In other words, the glory of God is the transforming presence of God in the flesh which reveals the adoption process of all of nature which the act of incarnation has now inaugurated and which will be finally consummated in the resurrection of this flesh, through the paschal mystery of Jesus’s death and resurrection. This is why the water is changed, or perhaps better, transformed into wine, because this symbolizes the transformation of all flesh into the new body of Christ. Our mortal flesh will be given new life through its marriage with the flesh of God. As the old saying goes, ‘grace builds on nature it does not destroy it’. Water is transformed into wine.
The second point that we can draw out of this wonderful passage is that this transformation is only possible by divinity and humanity marrying in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth. The transformation of death into life, of the lifeless flesh of our mortal bodies into the animated flesh of our grace filled bodies occurs through their participating in the wedding feast of Cana. Cana is the symbol of this transformation which the life of grace enacts in the life of a disciple and of a whole people, the people of God, the people of Israel. But what is grace? What is it that does this transformation? It is nothing less than the freely given gift of the transforming life of God which we are invited to participate in through taking part in this wedding feast of Cana. We too are invited to come to the Lord, as Mary represents in this passage, and acknowledge that, ‘we have no wine’. The realization of who Jesus is allows us to finally understand who we are. We are ordinary water and he is our transformed water which is the new wine of the kingdom. His coming in the flesh has allowed us to walk across this bridge because it has joined the water of nature with the wine of divinity. This means that we too can share in the glory of God, but only if we participate in the process through which this glory is revealed. The self-giving sacrifice of love which reveals the glory of God in Jesus on the cross, ‘the hour of the glorification of Jesus’ (13.31), is the baptism we are invited to enter into so that we too may taste the new wine of the kingdom.
So, as we celebrate this second Sunday of Epiphany, of the revealing of who this little child really is for us, let us once again resolve to follow him in this our own life’s-journey of transformation, so that we too may taste Cana’s new wine and see the goodness of the Lord in our own mortal flesh both in this life and in the next.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.