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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
We just had a wedding here at Pilgrim in December, and another one is planned here in March. That our Lord Jesus Christ was present at and blessed the wedding of an anonymous couple at Cana in Galilee, as told in today’s Gospel Reading, ought to be great comfort to all who are married or who are considering marriage (even as His presence and blessing anywhere ought to be great comfort to all the rest of us, too). Yet, despite all of God’s interest in marriage, from His institution of marriage in Genesis, to His using marriage as a likeness of Jesus’s relationship with His Church in Revelation, Jesus’s presence at and blessing of marriage is not the main point of today’s Gospel Reading. Rather, the main point of today’s Gospel Reading is that what Jesus did at Cana in Galilee manifested His glory, and so His disciples believed in Him. Thus the theme for this sermon is “Manifested Glory”.
St. John the Gospelwriter does not tell us everything we might like to know about what happened at Cana in Galilee, but, by Divineinspiration, he does tell us all we need to know, even if he tells us in an understated way. When the wine at the wedding ran out, Jesus did not say, “Good, people should not be drinking anyway,” but Jesus miraculously turned between 120 and 180 gallons of water into wine (think of possibly more than 900 of standard wine bottles—more than 75 cases). Wine in the Bible symbolizes physical and spiritual joy, future hope, and abundance. And, Jesus’s abundant wine was so good that the master of the feast noted its quality. Jesus, the Messiah, kept with the prophecy about Him by providing the finest of wines (Isaiah 25:6 NIV). Jesus manifested His glory, and so His disciples believed in Him.
To be sure, marriage as God’s institution and the blessings He gives both to those who are married and to others are under attack. Sin in the world distorts God’s union of one man and one woman into unions of two men or unions of two women. Sin in the United States kills an estimated 32hundred unborn babies each day—a total of more than 50million abortions since the landmark US Supreme Court abortion case, Roe versus Wade, was handed down 40 years ago this week. If not in those ways, then in other ways, sin in our lives has us transgressing the Sixth and Fifth Commandments, not loving and honoring our spouses or not leading chaste and decent lives in word and deed, hurting or harming our neighbors in their bodies or not helping and befriending them in every bodily need. If not in those ways, then in other ways, sin in our lives has us transgressing the rest of the Ten Commandments, not loving our neighbor or God as we should. Worse than the ceremonial defilement of the Jews by the normal circumstances of life, worse than the wine shortage of the anonymous couple at Cana in Galilee—sin in our lives deserves death, both death in this life and for eternity.
However, God does not desire that we sinners die, but He wants us to live. He calls us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to believe He forgives our sin, and to want to do better. Just as God provided the purification rites to make the Jews ceremonially clean, just as Jesus’s miraculous transformation of water in those stone jars for the purification rites into wine more than met the Cana couple’s shortage, so all the more, when we repent, God, out of His great love and mercy, gives us eternal life. He gives us eternal life, instead of the death we deserve. He gives us eternal life, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
In the Gospel Reading, St. John writes that “On the third day” water became wine and that through “this, the first of His signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee,” He manifested His glory, and so His disciples believed in Him. By that belief, they had eternal life. The seventh and final “sign” of which St. John writes is Jesus’s bringing His friend Lazarus back to life, although we might say that Jesus’s own resurrection is a far greater and more important “sign”. Jesus’s death and resurrection are Jesus’s “hour”. He died and rose again for you and for me, for your sins and mine. And, even though they may not appear to be so, Jesus’s death and resurrection are arguably the greatest and most important manifestation of His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14 ESV). As the glory of His “signs” show, the man Jesus is true God. As true God, there is no limit to Jesus’s power to give to us, nor is there a limit to His will to give to us. He gives us the Holy Spirit, Who, as St. Paul made clear in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 12:1-11), enables us to “say” Jesus is Lord. When we so believe and confess, then God forgives us. When we so believe and confess, God forgives our sin related to the Sixth and Fifth Commandments (even the sins of homosexuality and abortion). When we so believe and confess, God forgives our sins related to the other Ten Commandments. When we so believe and confess, God forgives our sin whatever our sin might be.
Jesus manifested His glory, and so His disciples believed in Him. You and I, who believe and so are forgiven, may look for similar glory in our lives and yet may fail to see it. If so, we may be looking for the wrong kind of glory, or we may be looking for glory in the wrong places. We may see our own continual sin. We may see brokenness in our human relationships, and we may see our own dying physical bodies. But, as with Jesus’s death and resurrection, so in our lives: things are not always as they appear to be. Where our human eyes see sin, brokenness, and death, the eyes of faith see forgiveness, reconciliation, and life.
Our eyes of faith see forgiveness, reconciliation, and life especially where God promises they will be. The Gospel Reading reports how Jesus’s mother told the servants at the wedding to do whatever Jesus told them, and water and wine are both prominent in what followed. Jesus tells His servants, pastors today, to preach the Gospel, to baptize with water, to absolve with words, and to feed His Bride, the Church, with bread that is His body and wine that is His blood. For, Jesus rejoices over us, as the Old Testament Reading says the bridegroom rejoices over his bride (Isaiah 62:1-5). Better than the rites of purification the Gospel Reading mentioned is Holy Baptism in the Name of the Triune God. The Baptismal Font is the greatest fountain of life, mentioned in today’s Introit (Psalm 36:5-9). And, because Jesus’s divine nature is united with and operates through His human nature, as it did then at Cana in Galilee, so Jesus can be present with His body and blood in bread and wine here today! From this altar and rail, we, in the words of the Introit, “feast on the abundance of [the Lord’s] house, and [He] gives [us] drink from the river of His delights.” Preaching, baptism, absolution, and the Supper are the miraculous ways Jesus today manifests His glory in our lives, and so we believe in Him.
Jesus’s so “Manifested Glory” is truly great comfort to all of us, whether or not we are married or considering marriage. To be sure, our society needs marriage, as the North Texas Confessional Lutherans Free Conference will discuss this coming weekend, and there are important vocations in the family, as the Circuit 14 Pastor-Lay Leader Retreat will discuss the following weekend. (I commend both of those gatherings to you—on line and in person—and the National Right to Life Convention is in Dallas this June.) As we gather from the Gospel Reading, Jesus is present at and blesses weddings and the resulting families, but, again, the Gospel Reading’s main point is that Jesus’s signs manifest His glory so that we believe in Him. And, as St. John writes of such signs at the close of His Gospel account, by believing we have life in His Name.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +