Sermon: Epiphany 2 - 2019

20 January 2019

Text: John 2:1-11

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

“There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee.”

What used to be the most normal and natural and universal of all human institutions has just in the last few years descended into chaos and confusion and infighting.  What used to be the ultimate symbol of human love found in every culture, has now become the source of lawsuits and threats of jail-time for those who understanding it biblically instead of according to the world’s recent radical redefinition.

Marriage is older than any human institution, older even than the state.  St. Paul teaches us that marriage is a “mystery” through which a man and his wife, “become one flesh.”  And the mystery of this union “refers to Christ and the church.”  The language of a man and a woman becoming “one flesh” is found  four times in Scripture: in Genesis Chapter Two, when God created Adam and Eve; twice in the Gospels, where Jesus confirms that this is what marriage is; and in St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, where he speaks eloquently and beautifully about married life.  Even the book of Revelation speaks of the Bride of Christ.  From Genesis to Revelation, we have God’s understanding of Holy Matrimony as He created it to be.  

And God created it to be one man and one women who become one flesh, in a lifetime union, which normally results in children.  But saying this today might get you fined or jailed or fired, or at very least, ostracized by polite company and shunned by one’s so-called “friends.”

But in the beginning, God created a perfect universe, a perfect world, and perfect humanity.  And in this perfection, we saw Adam and Eve becoming one flesh: Eve gladly submitting to her husband; Adam gladly serving his wife before himself.  But when the serpent came into the garden, Adam and Eve both forgot the vocations into which God placed them.  Eve stopped submitting to Adam, forgetting her place in creation, seeking to “be like God.”  Likewise, Adam failed as her husband, as he did not lay down his life for her protection, but instead allowing the serpent to deceive her.  They both failed.  And this, dear friends, is the answer to the question of evil.  Why is there evil in the world?  Why is there cancer?  Why is the war and hatred?  Why do children suffer?  Why are there natural disasters?  Why do we die?  Because Adam and Eve chose their way instead of God’s more excellent way.

And yet, even in our fallen world, marriage continues to be the mirror of God and His people.  God is the faithful husband who  gives of Himself without limit to His bride.  The people of God are the Lord’s beloved, placed into a position of loving submission to Him.  Of course, the history of the people of God has not been the perfect marriage.  We are an unfaithful bride, even though our bridegroom has given everything to us.

The church is the bride of Christ.  Her life goes well when she submits to her Bridegroom, Jesus.  Jesus is the perfect Bridegroom, who lays down His life to protect His beloved.  And that is the mystery of marriage according to the apostle Paul.

Our Lord’s first public miracle and His public ministry begin, appropriately enough, at a wedding.  And since this is the fallen world (and not the Garden of Eden), we deal with what economists call “scarcity.”  For whatever specific reason, “the wine ran out.”  This was to be a bad start for a young couple as “one flesh.”  This could have been a cause of shame.  But Jesus chose this union of one man and one women into one flesh to be where He, as the ultimate Bridegroom, demonstrates His love for His bride, as well as His divine power as the very Creator who puts men and women together in the first place.

Interestingly, He used “stone water jars” that were used for “Jewish rites of purification.”  This ritual water was an Old Testament prefiguration of Baptism.  Jesus has not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.  And so He fulfills this purification by performing a miracle in order to serve His bride, to show love to His people who are being ravaged by sin.  He turns the water not only into wine, but into the “good” wine.  This word “good” may not seem like much, but it is the word that God chose to describe the perfect world that He had created before man’s fall into sin.  For marriage is not a post-fall institution, but was part of God’s original plan for mankind: for “male and female He created them,” both sexes, in His image.  

The master of the feast notes that in our world of scarcity, the custom developed to serve the best wine up front, and as the guests have “drunk freely,” then bring out the “poor wine.”  Of course, the world that our Lord made had no scarcity and no “poor wine.”  Our Lord only wants the best for His bride. 

“This, the first of His signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested His glory.  And His disciples believed in Him.” 

Dear friends, the greatest thing that a wife can do for her husband in this life is to “believe in him” even as the bride of Christ, the Church, the disciples, “believe in Him.”  We live in a day and age where wives believe that they must denigrate their husbands, badmouth them to their friends, and try to show them up.  This is part of our culture’s corruption of the beauty of male and female.  Wives are taught to be sassy and disrespectful.  Many of them, like Eve, think that they can “be like God.”  We all laugh, when, in a TV show or movie, a husband is made to look foolish by his wife, and then his children pile on with the disrespect.  

Do you think this is how the Church ought treat Jesus?  Is that how the bride of Christ ought to be?  If not, then why do so many wives behave this way toward their husbands?  If this is you, then need to repent.  You need to learn some humility and be the woman God made you to be, and stop trying to be the boss of the family.  Stop trying to “be like God.”  You’re not.

And then there are selfish husbands who live as if they are single, who badmouth their wives to their friends, who resent their wives and children because they infringe on their time with their friends or hobbies.  Is this what Jesus does for His bride?  Or is He willing to give up everything – even His life – for His beloved?  If this is you, you need to repent.  You need to man up and take responsibility.  Stop abdicating your role as the head of the family.  You’re not a little boy obsessed with toys.  You are a husband.  You are a father.  You are a warrior against Satan, the defender of your family.  You have been given a family to lead and protect.  Stop letting the world tell you how to do your job.  

Is it any wonder that half of our marriages end in divorce?  Why do we let the world tell us how to live?  We are now even to the point where we can’t even define male and female, where thirty percent of Americans cannot name their four grandparents, and where many young men and women are not interested in marrying at all – but rather just go for the hookups.  In some communities, there are more abortions than births. 

But our Lord Jesus Christ is the perfect Bridegroom who teaches us a “more excellent way”: a way of service, of love, of forgiveness, of submission, of respect, and of rejecting the world’s distortions of God’s good creation.

It is fitting that the Lord, our Bridegroom, begins His service to His bride at a wedding feast: service that will culminate in the ultimate act of a husband’s love, dying for His beloved upon the cross.  He withholds nothing from His bride, and she lives her fullest life when she respects her husband and submits to him.  Jesus has come to forgive us and offer us a fresh start.

We hear a lot about “toxic masculinity” these days, but in reality, both sexes have become septic in their relations to one another.  Men do not know how to be men.  Women do not know how to be women.  Both are locked in a cycle of selfishness and failure.  But when we see our Lord Jesus Christ, we catch a glimpse into what men and women were meant to be from the beginning, before the Fall.  We see the Lord’s glory manifest in the good wine of the marriage feast, and in the glory of His atoning death on the cross.  We see the epic and heroic husband who interposes Himself between the devil and His wife.  We see the faithful bride honoring her Bridegroom in humility and service, joyfully supporting Him and faithfully serving her family, knowing that He died for her.

Although our own marriages are not perfect, we should at least understand what we are called to do, how we are called to live, why God made us male and female in the first place – and we can look to Jesus – the one who created us in the beginning – to bring us to the fullness of what we were created to be as men and women, whether we are married or single.  For the mystery refers to Christ and the church.

Jesus gives us the good wine, dear friends: the wine of His blood, and the bread of His body. He gives His very flesh for the life of the world, and He lays down His life for His beloved bride – which includes you, dear brother, dear sister.

Let us eat His body and drink His blood unto godly obedience and repentance, seeking His superabundant mercy when we fail, and giving Him all honor and glory for all of the goodness in our lives.

“This, the first of His signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested His glory.  And His disciples believed in Him.”  Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.