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Date: 2nd Sunday After the Epiphany Text: John 2:1-11
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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.
And now.
Here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to.
St. John the second chapter. On the.
Third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples and when the wine ran out the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine.
And Jesus said to her, woman what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. His mother said to the servants, do whatever he tells you. Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification each holding twenty or thirty gallons.
Jesus said to the servants, fill the jars with water and they filled them up to the brim and he said to them, now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast. So they took it. And when the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine and did not know where it came from though the servants who had drawn the water knew.
The master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, everyone serves the good wine first and when people have drunk freely then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now. This the first of his signs Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory and his disciples believed in him.
This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Alright, here are these words from our epistle text. We're going to weave together our gospel and epistle today. But it says in our epistle that we are members of Christ's body.
As Christians this is most certainly true. We refer to the church as what? The body of Christ. But listen to what it says. Paul here quotes in verse 31 from the book of Genesis. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.
Now when we think about those words we are always thinking in terms of marriage. But watch what Paul says. This mystery is profound and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. Have you ever stopped to think that every marriage and especially Christian ones are a type and shadow of the love that Christ has for his bride.
At least they should be. It is a union coming together and the two become one flesh and you're going to note here that's us. We have become the body of Christ. One flesh with him. And so with that in mind we're going to work our way through our gospel text and we'll make callbacks to our epistle text to kind of help us out here.
I don't know if you guys have noticed but the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they seem to be pretty straightforward. Kind of in your face. It's pretty easy to kind of work things out there.
If we were to talk about cooking analogies, preaching from a Synoptic Gospel is like ordering a meal from the internet. All the ingredients are already pre-measured for you. All you have to do is cook it.
It's kind of simple. But the Gospel of John is really different. You almost have to get online and look at YouTube videos from people who've actually been to cooking school and sit there and kind of go, alright, how am I going to work this out?
Let's just say the themes in John, they are many, they are deep, and there are subtle nuances here. Have you ever stopped when you've read this gospel and sit there and go, did Jesus just diss his mother?
Is that what happened here? Yes and no. And then is Mary telling Jesus what to do? Kind of, but not really. And did Jesus obey his mom? Not exactly. You see, this is one of these Gospel texts, you sit here and go, alright, we need to slow down and just kind of work our way through these things.
Now, so here's our context. First words of our Gospel text, on the third day. Third day from what? The baptism of Jesus Christ. That had occurred three days earlier. And let's just put it this way, there's a really good probability that Mary had already heard the news about what had happened.
That's just a real, real, real possibility. In fact, more than likely a probability. And if you remember, Mary, out of anybody, knows exactly who Jesus is. I mean, after all, she got pregnant without ever knowing a man.
She conceived in her womb by the power of the Holy Spirit. She was there when the shepherds showed up because the angel sent them. She was there when the magi showed up from their long journey following a star and they worshipped Christ and gave him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.
She was, well, with Joseph when Joseph woke her up and said, it's time to go. I've just seen a vision of an angel in a dream saying that Herod's going to kill Jesus. We need to flee to Egypt and we're leaving now in the middle of the night.
And she sojourned in Egypt along with Christ and then slunk back after the death of Herod. She knows full well what happened. She was there when Jesus went missing, that whole first home alone episode.
Episode, you know, zero. It's in the Gospel of Luke. You get the idea. She knows full well who Jesus is, God in human flesh, Emmanuel. And so you'll note, three days after Christ's baptism, well, one of the things that was on Jesus' calendar is that he got an invite to a wedding feast in Cana in Galilee.
Cana in Galilee is not exactly a high-rent zip code. Think of it that way. It's a super low-end blue-collar kind of town. And so there's the issue. And so as I was reading through some of the church fathers and looking at how Luther preached on this text, what I found fascinating is that there are several church fathers and Luther who believe that because of Mary's involvement that she may have been kind of one of the wedding planners.
She wasn't the head of the feast, but she was intimately involved in making sure this thing went off. But because it goes off in a low-rent district, here's where we have to pay attention to kind of some of the cultural nuances.
It's a bad thing if you invite a bunch of people to your wedding feast and you run out of wine. Think of it this way. We've all been to weddings and we've all been to receptions. Could you imagine getting an invite to a wedding and being told it's going to be an open bar and you're going to be served a meal at the reception, only to get there and find out that well, the bride and groom ran out of money because they spent too much on flowers.
And now you're going to have to pay for your drinks. And if you want a meal, sandwiches are available, but you have to pay 15 bucks for them. I mean, people would be talking about that wedding for a long time.
Worse than that, they'd actually be talking under their breath about how foolish that bride and groom were. And so you'll note what is at stake here is, well, the honor, the good name, the reputation of this couple.
And Mary involved in what's going on. She when they ran out of wine, she said to Jesus they have no wine. And Jesus' response, first word, woman man, I've got to tell you. In the Greek, the word woman here is not, it doesn't have the same import that English does but what follows is actually kind of a push back.
But think of it this way. I've said it before. Imagine I'm 16. I'd like to do that from time to time. Think back to the days when I had a 28 inch waist. I had rock solid abs and I was a swimmer and yeah.
You look at my high school graduation photos. I look like some weird guy from the 80s. I've got the whole thing going on. But I can tell you right now that if my mom said to me when I was a teenager, Chris, you need to clean your room.
And I said to her, woman, would you just get off my back and stop bothering me about my room. I can attest with absolute confidence, had I ever said that to my mother, that the next thing that would have happened is I would have gotten a slap so strong in the face that my head would have been spinning so hard it would have flown off my neck like a helicopter.
That's how bad it would have been. So note here, that's not what Jesus is doing. The Greek is actually a little more, way more polite. This is a term of endearment, not a diss. But what follows next is interesting.
He says, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. Okay. Hmm. Alright. What are we supposed to make of this? Well, I liken it to, remember when Jesus took that trip outside of Israel?
He heads up to the region of Tyre and Sidon and there's that Syrophoenician woman who has a child who is demonized. And she's crying out, Jesus, son of David, help me. Jesus, son of David, my daughter has a demon, help.
And Jesus says nothing. He says nothing to her. And the disciples are, do you want us to tell her to go away? She's just annoying us, right? And Jesus says, bring her. And she comes and she kneels and she says, Jesus, help me, my daughter has a demon.
And Jesus says, I was only sent to the lost sheep of the children of Israel. And she pushes back and he says, no, no, no, listen. It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. And you just sit there and you go, what?
What is going on here, right? And what does she do? She says, yes, Lord, but even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the table, so give me my crumb. Alright? And Jesus praises her and says, woman, great is your faith.
Same thing, I think, is going on here. Jesus pushes back a little bit. And always I find that it's so bizarre that right after Jesus pushes back, woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.
His mother said to the servants, do whatever he tells you. What happened? What makes her think that she's going to act in a way that's helpful here, right? It doesn't say that he went, okay, he didn't wink at her or anything like that.
Instead, what does this show? Mary is a woman of faith. And even when it seems like she's getting a pushback from her own God, she knows full well what the word says. And here's where it's actually super helpful.
Note, by Jesus pushing back a little bit, it completely undercuts the Roman Catholic doctrine that if you can't get an answer from Jesus, pray to his mother, she'll get the job done. Jesus doesn't obey his mother here.
He pushes back on her. And then she in faith says to the servants, you do whatever he tells you. Do whatever he tells you. Now Jesus could have said, well, that was an interesting exchange. You guys get back to work.
But here's the thing, and this is where I love reading what the church has thought about this text. Here in this text, Jesus, by his very presence, is honoring not only this couple. He's also honoring the institution of marriage, which is the very first institution that God created.
Now, I have to say this because of the world we live in. Jesus was honoring and he was blessing by his presence a wedding the way God intended it. You're going to note that there's a bride and there's a groom.
There's a male and there's a female. It wasn't Steve and Brian, okay? We have to say that. God created humanity as binary. He created us male and he created us female. And if anyone tells you otherwise, they are under a strong delusion.
Strong. And so you're going to note here, when we consider all of the implications of this, this is huge. But note then that Christ is the bride groom of the church. And here in this theme because Paul makes it clear to us that every wedding points us to the relationship that Christians, the church, the bride of Christ has with Jesus himself, one fleshing with him, that there's a little bit more going on here.
In fact, I'll talk more about Jesus' hour in a minute. So now, his mother says to the servants, you do whatever he tells you. She's absolutely confident that Jesus is going to do something here. And so, it says there were six stone water jars there.
And you cannot help but hear something like this and sit there and go, you know, I remember that number six in Genesis. And number six in Genesis, well, there were six days of creation. Notice it's seven, so we're not in the Sabbath rest.
You just have to sit there and go, you wonder if this is some kind of a call back to Old Testament thinking. And here we got six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons, washing water.
Hmm, I seem to remember something in our epistle text. Listen to this. Husbands, love your wives as Christ has loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her. Sanctify, big word.
Means he makes her holy. Sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. This is a little bit of a call here to an illusion regarding baptism and, well, the creation we find ourselves in.
But here's the thing. If you think about the Old Testament, that's where we get the law. You get types and shadows, you get glimpses, and you get, well, people preaching about the gospel that will be when the Messiah shows up and now that Jesus is on the scene here, those six stone water jars of washing water, and every time I think of washing water, all I can think about is how I'd probably be looking for the cleanest of the jars myself if I were required to wash my hands in one of them.
You know what I'm talking about? It's like, okay, jar number one, oh, that's been used a few times. Two, three, five, oh, that's clean. Because I understand how bugs work, right? You get the idea. But washing water isn't fun stuff, right?
But we're at a wedding, and so what does Jesus do? Well, this is where the next part of the theme is so helpful, because you're going to note what's at stake, again, is the reputation of the bride and groom.
Even though they're honored by Christ's presence, they are about to have all of their, well, shortcomings aired as dirty laundry in front of all of their wedding guests. And we all know how gossip works.
But listen to what it says in our epistle text. Not only does Christ love His church and gave Himself up for her, He sanctifies her and cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word. He presents the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing so that she might be holy and without blemish.
I love this picture, because here's the idea. Christ doesn't look at His bride and go, what'd you get yourself into? Well, you better clean yourself up and I'm going to go tell the neighbors that the reason why you're going to be late is because you just messed everything up.
Uh-uh. That's not how Jesus works. That's not how Jesus rolls. In His love for His bride, He finds His bride covered in muck and the filth of sin, and He washes it away. He clothes her in splendor. He presents her in splendor to Himself.
He covers all of her sins so that rather than her errors and her sin and her muck and all of her shortcomings to be aired before everybody else, instead, what she shows up as is dressed in magnificence and glory without spot or wrinkle without any blemish.
Jesus loves His bride so much He will give no occasion for anybody to speak poorly of her. That's you. So even though your sins be as scarlet, Christ will and has bled and died for all of your sins. And He is looking forward to the day when the marriage itself will be consummated.
You'll note at the end of this cursed creation and the first thing we do in the new creation, it's a blowout party. And yes, there's wine. It's not grape juice. And this is where we have to kind of step on some more toes here.
I have heard the sermons from those who are steeped in pietism or legalism that this wasn't really wine. It was new wine, which means it had very little alcohol content and it was really akin to grape juice.
I would note this. I have yet to see a sommelier smell the bouquet of welches. I have yet to have somebody who knows anything about wine sing the praises of grape juice. And you're going to note here, this text makes it very clear Jesus turned washing water into wedding wine and not just any wedding wine.
This isn't 2-Buck Chuck. This is Chateau Montalena 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon. Alright? It's the best stuff. This is 200 bucks a bottle kind of stuff. And He made 6 stone water jars, each with 30 gallons of water in them, of the best stuff ever.
And here's the thing. Based on the timing, it's already clear that people have already had a few to drink. In other words, Jesus has no problem with you enjoying the gift of alcohol and even having a merry heart with it.
What is forbidden is drunkenness. And so you're going to note here, this is going to fly in the face of some of the legalists and they're going to claim, well, you can't drink alcohol. The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking.
Scripture is very clear on this. And if this is a sin, then Christ is sin and He ain't your Savior. That's just how that rolls. So note, Christ now in His mercy and grace goes about doing a creative miracle for the purpose of covering the shortcomings of the bride and groom so that they would not face shame, gossip, and dishonor.
And it's beautiful. Fill the jars, Jesus said. They filled them to the brim. Now draw some out and take it to the Master of the Feast. And you have to think that the Master of the Feast at this point has probably heard the buzz.
Because people are already talking. Mary is already at action. And you have to just wonder. It's like the Master of the Feast knows they ran out of wine and so he doesn't know where this wine comes from.
Because you can't just run down to Happy Harry's. That doesn't exist at this point. So how are they going to get this wine? So they took it to the Master of the Feast and when the Master of the Feast tasted the water which had now become wine, he didn't know where it came from.
Though the servants who had drawn the water, they knew. So the Master of the Feast called the bridegroom and he said to him, listen, everyone serves the good wine first. And when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine.
That's when 2 Buck Chuck comes out. We don't even have that store here. Do you all know what 2 Buck Chuck is? So in California and other parts of the country, there's a store called Trader Joe's. And it's a great place to shop.
And they have, let's just say, an interesting wine selection. But years ago, they became famous for bottles of wine that they sold that only cost $2. And it tasted like $2. Wow, yeah. I never knew that you could put that many MSGs into a bottle of wine.
So that's what I mean by cultural references here. All right. All of that being said, the Master of the Wedding Feast is totally expecting by this time in the wedding that the 2 Buck Chuck is the thing that's flowing.
But he saved the best wine until last. And man, does this just absolutely sing the mercy, the grace, the love, the kindness of our Savior. It is so gracious. And listen to what the words that follow are next.
This was the first of Jesus' signs that Jesus himself did at Cana in Galilee. That's right. Jesus performed the miracle. And he manifested his glory. And one has to ask, and this is, I think, the big exegetical cue here.
Because when you sit there and you go, Jesus manifested his glory? How? Nobody even knew except for a few servants, his disciples, and his mother what Jesus had done. But that's the thing. What is the glory of God?
The glory of God is to pardon sin, to cover iniquity, to wash away, to make it so that people, rather than facing the shame and guilt and judgment of God, hear instead from him, well done good and faithful servant.
It is the glory of Christ. It is the glory of God to take your sin and to wash it away and clothe you in Jesus' own righteousness so that rather than face the shame and guilt of God's judgment, you instead can be welcomed to the wedding feast, embraced and hugged and loved by your God and see his face in a world without end.
This is the glory of God. And so Jesus did manifest his glory, his great love, his compassion, his mercy, and his grace, even to this poor couple who didn't have enough money to buy the necessary wine.
He filled in the gap, protected their honor and their good names so that the eighth commandment would be broken against them and this is his glory. This is how much he loves his bride. And it says his disciples believed in him.
How could we not? What a merciful, kind, loving bridegroom and Savior we have. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
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