Water to wine - bringing baptism alive

Celebrations - if only

I’ve preached on that story of Jesus many times. This year, the first amazing thing about it is the idea of a wedding reception, people celebrating together over food and wine. When we can, eventually, get back together safely again, let’s never again take those things for granted. For now, it’s right that we stay home, keep our distance and all those things. In Wolverhampton at the moment, the virus is widespread and our hospital is under great pressure. We need to do our part, at the same time calling on the government to do theirs. But what we’re giving up for the time being is something which in the long run is part of being fully human - getting together, sharing food and drink, celebrating the great milestones of life. These things matter.

Glory in the ordinary

These things matter so much that it was to keep a wedding reception from going wrong that Jesus did what St John calls the first of his signs of glory. Nothing particularly holy, not healing someone who was close to death, not stilling the storm that put his friends in danger on the lake - overstocking the bar to protect a married couple from embarrassment and shame. To keep the party going. God cares about ordinary lives, and ordinary as well as extraordinary moments. Those things matter to God because they matter to us.

Heaven’s party

As so often in John’s gospel, as well as a straightforward story of Jesus miraculously saving a wedding reception, there’s more meaning here.

The fact that there’s so much wine, such good wine, is a nod to the fact that one of the pictures of the future we get time after time in the Bible is of a great wedding feast - as God and his people, heaven and earth, Jesus and the church, are joined together at the end of time. The prophet Isaiah talked about tables bending under the platters of rich food, of the overflowing jugs of vintage wine - and no need to exercise afterwards to burn off the calories! (He didn’t actually mention that bit, but I’m sure it’s part of the picture.)

John tells us in this story that while that great heavenly party is where we’re headed in the long term, we don’t have to wait until we get to heaven for the celebration to begin. In and through Jesus’ life, the Kingdom of God is here and now. The party can begin; life is to be celebrated, even in the middle of our current reality. Life is different because of Jesus.

Religion to faith, fear to celebration

To understand how that change affects us, how life and how we relate to God are different because of Jesus, we can look at a bit of background to that miracle; details about the water and the wine.

John tells us there were six stone water jars there. Why does it matter what they were made of? Well, John tells us that they were there for the Jewish rites of purification. Devout Jews, then as now, had very specific rules about washing hands before and during meals. We’ve got used to washing and sanitising our hands much more than we used to, but this wasn’t to stop a virus spreading. It was about a kind of spiritual hygiene, washing away anything that was considered ceremonially unclean. The world was full of things to keep you apart from God; if you ate without washing your hands according to the regulations, you would become unclean, unable to approach God in worship and prayer; cut off from the source of life. Think of how careful we’ve become to avoid catching coronavirus from people, from surfaces, from anything we touch. Think how that’s changed your life in the last year. Now imagine that your whole life was spent with the same caution about picking up something invisible that would come between you and God - perhaps through sharing a spoon to serve yourself from a bowl, or going into the house of someone of a different faith - or just handling food that wasn’t properly prepared. Imagine how that would affect your life, and how it would affect your relationship with God.

At a wedding, with lots of guests and lots of food, people would be up and down constantly to wash their hands, always careful not to risk spiritual contamination. The jars were stone because that was immune to becoming unclean. Metal surfaces, wooden implements could become unclean if touched by someone who was themselves unclean, then pass that on to others. Stone couldn’t. So these stone jars, holding about 150 gallons of water, were designed for water to keep people ritually clean, able to pray, by making sure they didn’t get infected by the world.

And it was this water that Jesus turned into wine. The water that was meant to keep people holy by washing away the unspiritual bits of life became the wine that makes holy the celebration of life. And it was good wine, better than any the guests had yet tasted. And there was plenty for everyone, about a thousand bottles!

I said Jesus makes a difference to life and to how we relate to God. And part of it, a bit part of it, is this. God does not want us to live in fear, with an idea of virtue, holiness as being about washing away all the ordinary bits of life to leave some pure ‘religious’ bit. But too many of us still have an idea of God that drives a nagging worry and fear of getting it wrong - even if we’re not sure what ‘it’ is. Our lives shrink, more concerned with anxiety about what wrong we mustn’t do than with excitement at what good we can do because of God’s love for the world. The good news is that God is not watching us and waiting for us to get it wrong so he can be angry with us. He’s inviting us to live bigger, more abundant lives. Yes, it matters that we live with love, humility, honesty, generosity, worship - all of those things. But that’s about doing the right thing, living with the right heart, not about avoiding life and its mess. Jesus has done what we couldn’t to take care of the bits we get wrong.

Jesus said later in John’s gospel that he came so we could have life to the full, overflowing life. He loves to meet us in celebrating and enjoying what’s good in life, not in fearfully avoiding all that’s not. He calls us to live lives that are getting bigger rather than smaller. Lives that spread celebration, not disapproval.

Baptism into life

For now, we’re still limited in how we can celebrate with others. We need to keep our distance for everyone’s safety. But there’s no barrier to our relationship with God except what we put there. He doesn’t want us to approach him from a place of fear or a negative religion that’s about what’s wrong in life. He invites us to live life more fully, even now - to find the places in life to rejoice, the moments in other people’s lives to celebrate, the good to enjoy. That’s part of living in God’s Kingdom, and part of letting the water turn into wine.

So this week find ways to celebrate a positive faith, and remember that when it comes to life with God there’s far more wine in the jar than you need.