Epiphany 2 Sermon 2021
Epiphany 2 – John 2:1-11
St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, Laramie, WY
17 January A+D 2021
Genesis 3(:17) we learn that after Adam sinned, God cursed the ground for his sake.
In toil you shall eat of it
All the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.”
This describes the whole plight of fallen man in relation to the earth. Before he could easily and freely take fruit from any tree in the Garden of Eden, but now he has to till the ground for his food by the sweat of his face. The earth has become for us a hard place. To get food he must work, as St. Paul explains this passage, “If a man shall not work, neither shall he eat.” (2 Thess. 3:10)
God still gives us all that we need to support this body and life, but we get it through toil and labor. We are forced to look to the earth to find our sustenance as a constant reminder that we were taken from the earth and will return to the same. No matter how hard we work or what food we find on earth, we are still appointed to die for our sin. This is God’s wrath and just punishment against our choosing our own way. We have inherited from Adam the curse that is on all those who disobey God and think they have wisdom above Him, as St. Paul says (Eph. 2:3), that we were “by nature children of wrath, just as the others.”
But Jesus has manifest His glory to us. It is the glory that we hear of in Romans (3:23), “For all of have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” This is the glory of knowing God, trusting in His grace and favor towards us, and possessing His righteousness and goodness. The glory we have fallen short of God Jesus has manifested to us. And He teaches us poor children of fallen Adam how to view God’s glory in today’s Gospel lesson, where Jesus makes water into wine with the glory that He hides in Himself. That God would teach us to seek this glory always and only in our Brother Jesus, let us pray,
A pledge of peace from God I see
When Thy pure eyes are turned to me
To show me Thy good pleasure.
Jesus, Thy Spirit and Thy Word,
Thy body and Thy blood, afford
My soul its dearest treasure.
Keep me
Kindly
In Thy favor,
O my Savior!
Thou wilt cheer me;
Thy Word calls me to draw near Thee. Amen.
Noah, after the flood, must have been excited to plant a vineyard and make wine. He worked by the sweat of his face. He planted the seed, watched the vines grow, waited for the rain, harvested the grapes, and crushed them so that the juice became wine. When he finally got his wine, he got too excited and drank too much, and it led to a lot of shame in his family and a curse on Ham’s son Canaan. The Scripture says (Ps. 104:15) “wine gladdens the heart of man.” But there is also Solomon’s warning (Prov. 20:1), “Wine is a mocker, Strong drink is a brawler, And whoever is led astray by it is not wise.” The faithful Noah worked hard to make the wine that he drank, but in his weakness, his labor led to his sorrow. His hard work to make wine finally wasn’t worth it. After joy came sorrow.
The wine that Jesus gives comes after only ordinary and easy labor. He tells the servants to fill the earthen vessels full of water to the brim, and they draw it out and bring it to the master of the feast, who, when he tastes it, marvels at how it is the best wine. The joy that Jesus gives comes after sadness and lack and want. With no wine, the people will be disappointed, the newly wedded couple will be embarrassed, and the feast will be over. But Jesus reveals His glory. It is the glory of God that we have all fallen short of, that our labor will only make us fall shorter of, but which He reveals freely to us in our lack and need. He gives joy after sorrow.
We need to know God’s attitude towards us, and we can’t find it in our own understanding. God needs to reveal to us His glory, or we will inevitably not find it. We will fall short of it. Let man work all he wants to find glory, he works with mere earth to which he returns. We need Jesus to show us who God is. And so God conceals His glory for the sake of sinners. Just as He only showed Moses His back, as it were, in the cleft of the rock, because if Moses saw God’s full glory he would die, so we need to find God’s glory in the person of His Son, the Son of Man Jesus Christ.
Jesus had already shown that He was more than a man to His disciples in John 1. Philip told Nathanael that he had found the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. And Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him, and said of him, “Behold, and Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!” Nathanael said to Him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael answered and said to Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” And He said to him, “Most assuredly I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
We see no small thing that Jesus revealed here. A man saw Nathanael when he was not in his presence. Only God could do such a thing, and so Jesus had already revealed His divinity to His disciples. Why then does John say of Jesus’ changing water into wine, “This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him.”?
Because Jesus’ knowing all things does not make Him our Savior. That Jesus knew where Nathanael is certainly shows that He is God, but this is not how God wants us to view His glory. Man, with His own reason, can figure out that God knows everything. But God knowing everything is actually very frightening. There are no secrets with Him. He saw you and He sees you, everything you think and say and do is not hidden from Him. He considers all our hearts. He knows our sins, our excuses, and He knows our lack. He knows what we need. We need to know Him not in our labor and understanding, but in His mercy and grace and desire to help us.
The glory that Jesus manifested at Cana is a foretaste of everything He would do for us poor sinners. Jesus told Nathanael, “Hereafter you shall see the heavens open and angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Jesus points Nathanael to His time that has not yet come.
When Jesus’ mother Mary tells Jesus that they have no wine, Jesus answers, it seems, somewhat brusquely. “What is that to me and you, woman?” Scholars like to point out that Jesus calling his mother woman was not an offensive way of speaking as it is today. The reason for that is not because the word “woman” has changed its meaning, but because we have become offended at what God has made. Jesus calls His mother woman to remind her of His and her place. She gave birth to Him, and He gladly gives her the honor due to a mother. She wants Jesus to do something, to show the world who He is, but Jesus tells her, “My hour has not yet come.” It is not Mary’s place to tell Jesus when His hour has come. And what is Jesus’ hour?
It is exactly what He told Nathanael. “Hereafter you shall see heaven opened and the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” This is Jacob’s ladder. This is Jesus’ cross. Heaven is opened by Jesus taking our sorrow and sin into Himself on the cross. Jesus’ hour is the hour of pain and sadness, when He falls short of the glory of God by taking all our sin upon Himself, and in so doing reveals to us the glory of God to us. After sorrow comes the joy. After lack comes riches, after shame dishonor, after death comes life.
This is why Mary isn’t offended at Jesus words to her. She knows there is much she still has to learn about her Son. She has often been confused about events in Jesus’ life, but what does the Scripture say? Mary kept these things and pondered them in her heart. Mary is a picture of Christ’s holy Church. We receive Jesus’ word, and we wait for His hour to come. And as Mary told the servants to do whatever Jesus told them, so the Church tells us to listen to Jesus. And when we listen to Jesus, He will manifest His glory to us. He will show us who He is and why He came to this sad earth. He came to change water into wine, to change lack into abundance, sorrow into joy.
God made marriage to be a joyful thing. The first wedding had God himself present. He brought the woman to the man, and the man said, “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” God has preserved marriage even after the fall. He desires all those who feel desire for the opposite sex to prepare themselves for marriage and find a spouse in holiness and honor, for the sake of mutual companionship, for children, and now to avoid shameful behavior.
But the world only sees the labor and hardship of marriage, and so she despises it. Why should one person bind himself to another so that he isn’t free? The woman has to experience pain in childbirth and in raising children, and is now subject to her sinful husband. The man has to work not just to feed himself, but his wife and children. By all appearances marriage seems to be labor and sorrow. Why celebrate it so? The romantic love that the world thinks marriage is all about can’t sustain the suffering required of a man and wife for each other in marriage.
But the world doesn’t know God’s glory. She falls short of it. And our flesh doesn’t understand God’s glory. We fall short of it. We don’t labor to gain God’s glory. Then we will be drunk and sad like Noah. Marriage is not a cross that God lays on us, though God lays many crosses on us in marriage. Marriage is God’s institution for our good. He makes one flesh out of two. He teaches us to love each other in marriage. We need Jesus in our marriage.
But Mary must wait. The Church needs to wait. God lets us undergo suffering. The bride’s family didn’t have enough money to supply enough wine for everyone. So also we the Church can work and work all we want. By ourselves we won’t have enough joy; we won’t have the glory we need. We need to watch and wait for Jesus’s hour to come. We need to learn that what we need is not more of our work on the earth, but to listen to the true Bridegroom of our souls, Jesus, to fill our need.
We fail to love each other. Husband is insensitive to wife and ignores her needs. Wife is frustrated with husband failing to do what he should do. Children disobey and don’t honor their parents. Parents exasperate their children by requiring too much of them. Brothers and sisters seek their own good and forget the kindnesses shown to them by others. We aren’t enough for each other. The wine always runs out, no matter how hard we work. Because life isn’t simply having enough food and wine that we eat and drink and tomorrow we die and return to the earth in which we worked. Life is knowing God or it is no life at all. To sin is to fall short of God’s glory, and to fall short of God’s glory is death, sorrow, hurt, regret, and shame which nothing we work at can take away.
But Jesus is enough, and He brings enough with Him. He came uninvited to this earth. The eternal Son of God, in whom is all the Father’s glory, because the Father is in Him and He is in the Father, this same God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made Man. He wedded Himself to our human nature. He permanently joined Himself to us. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.
Now see Him come to a wedding invited. What does this God and Man in one person do when he is invited to a wedding? He says, “My hour has come. They need me. I see that your work doesn’t work. It’s not enough. Adam’s work isn’t enough. Noah’s wine wasn’t enough. I am enough for you. I will take the ordinary water of life and change into wine that gladdens the heart of man, and you will not be ashamed with Noah, because it is not your work and your labor that gives you this wine, this joy, this peace, this celebration of marriage. No, it is My work. It is my divine power that is hidden entirely in flesh and blood like yours.
The hour that Jesus changed water into wine points us to the hour that came for Jesus to attend another wedding.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. Eph. 5:25-27
He gave Himself up for you. When you had fallen short of the glory of God; when you couldn’t look to the earth for life, and when you looked at heaven, you were ashamed, then He came down to earth and joined you in all your lack, in all your need, taking all your sin, and laboring with blood and sweat on His face until all He had and was He gave for you. On the cross Jesus revealed His glory. It is hidden beneath the stripes and wounds of lash and whip and fist and nail and spear. It is hidden in suffering you deserved, but He has suffered it all. It is hidden in death you have earned, but He died for all, and therefore all died, and your baptism gives you His suffering, His death, His obedience, His innocence, and the life He won by removing the curse from Adam and blessing you with all that you need.
You need love. What do you need in your marriage, in your work, in your short life here on earth? It is always more love. What do you lack? Maybe you lack money or comfort or love from others that you thought if you had, then you could be content and say you have enough. But only Jesus is enough. And He willingly comes to your marriage. You invite Him when you listen to Mary, when you go to Church, and the Church doesn’t say, “Do what I say.” She tells you to listen to Jesus.
Pour the water of your sorrows into the vessels. They’re meant to purify the Jews, but they can’t. The Law doesn’t give you the peace you need. Your labor doesn’t change sorrow into joy. Jesus does. He changes water into wine. He takes your sin and gives you righteousness. He sees your lack of love and pours His love into your heart by giving you His body to eat and His blood to drink. He washes you not with mere water, but with the water included in His command to forgive you, to cleanse your conscience from dead works that don’t do anything so that you can look at a life where you see not enough and laugh, and say, “I have Jesus! His hour came for me. He knows my sorrow as much as He knew my sin, but He knows my sin no more. He knows me as His dear Bride for whom He sacrificed everything and to whom He gives everything I need.
And now, dear Jesus, I see heaven opened in my baptism, as it was in Yours, and I see angels descending from heaven on Your crucified body to help me, and I see them ascending on Your risen body to bring Your bride to the wedding feast that you have prepared for all who wait for you, who love your appearing. Take all that I am, since you have taken my sin and bought me with Your pure blood. I need bring no dowry, because You have paid the bride price. I am Yours, and I come to You willingly today, because you have willingly come to me and taught me that the sorrows of this present life are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in me, which I now have by faith in Your promise. I long to see you. Whither has my Bridegroom gone? Sometimes You seem so far away, and like the bride in Song of Songs, I go looking for you,
I will rise now,” I said,
“And go about the city;
In the streets and in the squares
I will seek the one I love.”
I sought him, but I did not find him. Song of Songs 3:2
But then I hear You saying what You know is true, because You laid down Your life for me; You say,
You are all fair, my love,
And there is no spot in you. Song of Songs 4
How can this be? Because I am clothed with You.
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, My soul shall be joyful in my God; For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, As a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. Is. 61:10
If for a while I need to wait, then I know what is coming. I know that Your glory is hidden in suffering, and so no suffering or need can take Your glory away from me. I am not short of God’s glory now. I am clothed with it, and water will be turned to wine, suffering to glory, and this short life to that eternal joy which I will have when I see You face to face. Let us pray.
Lord, when Thy glory I shall see
And taste Thy kingdom's pleasure,
Thy blood my royal robe shall be,
My joy beyond all measure.
When I appear before Thy throne,
Thy righteousness shall be my crown,-
With these I need not hide me.
And there, in garments richly wrought
As Thine own bride, I shall be brought
To stand in joy beside Thee.