The Fullness of Christ

John 2:1-11

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

St. John 2:11  This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him.

Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord…  You want to know who Jesus is?  Every word of the Old Testament Scriptures, from Genesis to Malachi, tells you who Jesus is. Every phrase, every story, every account of God’s goodness, God’s power, God’s wrath, God’s favor, God’s punishment, God’s forgiveness, every law given to Israel, every sacrifice, every prophecy about the coming Christ—it all reveals who Jesus is.

But now that He has come in the flesh, now that He has been baptized and tempted and heralded by John the Baptist as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, now that He has just met and called His first little band of disciples—five in all—how will He introduce Himself to them?  How will He set the tone for His ministry?

Well, He will attend a wedding with His disciples, and with His mother; and there He will reveal many things about who He is and what we should think of Him.

The Son of God goes to a wedding.  And a wedding reception.  He “rejoices with those who rejoice,” as Paul wrote to the Romans (12:15).  The time will come for Jesus to go to the synagogue, to preach on the mountain, to weep with those who weep, and to give His life on the cross.  But there is also time to honor God’s institution of marriage between a man and a woman, to do this act of love for the bride and groom whom He knew personally and who had invited Him to their wedding, and to participate in the celebration of God’s earthly gifts.  Jesus is no Stoic Messiah, no somber, stone-hearted saint.  He does not despise the earthly, material blessings that God has given; He celebrates them.

The celebration was about to take a sad turn, though, as they ran out of wine too early.  Now, this is not a major crisis by any means; wine was simply a part of feasting, a part of the celebration among the Israelites.  Wine was a symbol of joy and happiness and of God’s abundant providence for His people.  Wine was and still is a good gift.  And like all good gifts, it could certainly be abused, as it still is today.  But it didn’t have to be abused; it could – and still can be – used rightly for joyful celebration.

So, the wine ran out.  What would the bridegroom do if it became known that he was too poor or too cheap to provide enough wine for his guests?  Mary thought she had an answer.  She suspected that Jesus might wish to do something about it, so she informed Him of the shortage.  She had good reason to expect that He might do something about it, since He had walked away from her home in Nazareth only a couple of months earlier to officially begin His God-given service.  Here He was, with His first five disciples.  Maybe, just maybe, this was His hour to shine.

But it wasn’t.  Not really.  Jesus replied, Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.  John’s Gospel mentions Jesus’ “hour” several times.  And every time, it was, “My hour has not yet come,” not yet come, not yet come, right up until Holy Week, when, finally, Jesus announced to His disciples (Jn:12:23), “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified.”  But when Jesus said, “glorified,” He meant glorified in His sacrificial death on the cross.  That was the “hour” that our Lord’s entire life was leading up to.

But here, at the wedding at Cana, at the beginning of His ministry, Jesus’ hour had not yet come.  But a little hour had come.  Now was the time for Jesus to begin to reveal His divine majesty and glory, although very quietly, very discreetly.  And He does it to a very small group of people, including His disciples.  Mary, again, suspected that Jesus would do something, so she told the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.”
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So, what did Jesus tell them to do?  He told the servants to fill six large pots with water—roughly 120-150 gallons worth.  Then He told them to draw some and take it to the master of the feast, so that he could test it and either give it his seal of approval to be served to the guests, or to spit it out in disgust.  You know what happened.  The water had been miraculously changed into wine, and not just mediocre wine, but, “the good stuff,” as the master of the feast declared it.

What does that reveal about Jesus?  Well if you set aside your experience with SyFy, with Harry Potter and other stories of magic, and just stop and think about the miracle of taking regular H2O and turning it into a product of grapes that have grown on a vine, been harvested, squeezed, and properly fermented, without any of that having ever happened, without any hocus-pocus or incantations or magic wands, just with the power of a thought, of a word…that’s who Jesus is.  He is the Creator of water and earth and grapes and the fermentation process itself.  Truly Jesus manifested His glory with this miracle, as St. John writes.

How different this miracle was from the changing of water into a red substance back at the time of Moses.  You recall that God granted Moses the power to change water into blood as the first plague against the Egyptians.  That power was mimicked by the dark forces of the devil as he enabled the magicians in Egypt to do the same thing: water into blood.  That is where something good was turned into something harmful, something horrible, something disgusting and deadly.

Notice the contrast between that and Jesus’ first miracle!  He hasn’t come to threaten or to coerce or to punish.  He hasn’t come to bring condemnation on the world.  He has come to save it.  He has come to help, not to harm.  He takes something good and turns it into something far better, something joyful, something pleasant and good.  St. Paul exhorted the Romans (12:6-7): Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them. He who gives, let him give with liberality, with generosity.  That’s Jesus.

Just a few verses before our Gospel begins, St. John already gave us the summary statement of who Jesus is: And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (Jn 1:16)

Grace: God’s abundant generosity.  Grace: God’s undeserved love that overflows toward sinners who deserve only His wrath and punishment.  Jesus has come, not to overlook sin or to excuse sin, but to suffer for it, to make up for it, to call sinners to repentance, and to die to pay for it.  All this He has done for you, dear sinner.

And He does this not so that we can go around with a frown on our face all day long or beat our chest in sorrow all the time.  We should sorrow, we should mourn over our sins, but the goal is not to mourn and to stay in mourning.  The goal is to rejoice in God’s forgiveness, earned and handed out freely by Jesus.  That’s what He reveals by the miracle at Cana’s wedding feast as the pattern and purpose of His ministry.  Of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.

And we also know and believe that ALL of our Lord’s grace and all of the blessings and benefits of His suffering and death on the cross is poured out onto us and into us through His wonderful sacramental gifts.  In Holy Baptism Christ calls us His own dear child and forever links us to His death to sin and His resurrection to life.  In Holy Absolution Christ speaks and delivers His forgiveness to us in words spoken by the pastor, a forgiveness that is “just as valid and certain as if Christ our Lord dealt with us Himself” (Small Catechism, “What do you believe according to these words?”).

And in our Lord’s Supper, Christ’s body and blood come to us really and truly under the bread and wine; He truly delivers Himself into us, and thereby delivers His forgiveness, life, and salvation.

Christ’s fullness is ours by God-given faith.  And it is a fullness that will certainly take us all the way to heaven.

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