Epiphany Sunday

2nd January 2005
Evening Service
Psalm 98, 100
Baruch 4.36 - 5.9
John 2.1-11

Believe it or not the Church of England has rules about how to order its services. One of those rules states that "In any year where there is a second Sunday of Christmas, the Epiphany may, for pastoral reasons, be celebrated on that Sunday." I mention this in case any of you are wondering why we have used, in all our services today, the readings and theme set for the day after the 12th Day of Christmas when it's actually still only the ninth day of Christmas. For Pastoral reasons, whatever that means, we are celebrating the Epiphany today instead of next Thursday.
The word Epiphany means a revelation. A showing forth. A Manifestation. In the ancient world a monarch would, every so often, travel around his kingdom so that his subjects could see him in all his glory. He would wear his finest robes and his richest jewels and be surrounded by his most splendid courtiers and troops so that his subjects could behold his glory and be overwhelmed by it. Such viewings of the monarch were call "Epiphanies". In the Eastern Church that term came to be used for the feast which celebrated the birth of Jesus a feast which was kept on the 6th of January. In the west the birth of Jesus was celebrated, as you know, on the 25th of December so the Epiphany came to be celebrated as a feast of the way God had revealed himself to the world in Jesus. Over time three different incidents from the life of Jesus came to be associated with today because all of them grouped around this theme of God revealing himself through Jesus, showing his power and glory. An ancient prayer from the Divine Office, the daily prayer of the Church puts it this way:
"Three wonders mark this day we celebrate:
today the star led the Magi to the manger;
today water was changed into wine at the marriage feast;
today Christ desired to be baptised by John in the river Jordan to bring us salvation, alleluia.”
This morning our readings concerned the Magi, the Wise Men. This evening our readings are about the Wedding Feast at Cana in Galilee where Jesus changed the water into wine in the first of the miracles recorded in the Gospels. The third of events associated with today, the Baptism of Jesus, we will be looking at in our services next week.
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So this evening our focus is on a miracle. It's a familiar story to most regular Church goer's, and even those who don't regularly go to church will probably have heard mention of it during the wedding service when we are told that Christ is spiritually present with us at every wedding just as he was physically present at the Wedding at Cana.
I've actually been to a wedding which must have been similar in some ways to the Wedding the Jesus attended. It wasn't a Christian or Jewish wedding, it was a Sikh wedding but it had much the same form as wedding would have had in Jesus day. It started with a party at the bridegrooms house in the evening. The party went on late into the night and then Bridegroom and his friends went to the home of the bride to collect her from her parents and take her to the temple where the marriage service would take place. Then, after the marriage service, there was even more partying, dancing, eating and (this being a Sikh wedding and the consumption of alcohol not being forbidden by the Sikh faith) a great deal of drinking going on late into the night and indeed into the next morning.
Well, Jesus is at just such a wedding and the party is going roaringly well when disaster strikes. The wine runs out. Many commentators speak about the shame this would have brought on the families of the young couple. Some suggest that one of the families involved must have been in some way related to Jesus because Mary seems to take responsibility for the problem, and she seems to expect that Jesus will feel responsible too. And Jesus acts. There are six enormous jars for the water which the guests have used to wash themselves according to the Jewish rites of purification. Jesus orders them to be refilled and the water becomes wine. Wine which is better than the wine which was served before, so that the the steward in charge of the feast tells the bridegroom "you have kept the good wine until now."
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It's a lovely story, but of course it's more than that. John records this story not just to entertain or interest us but because this story teaches us about Jesus. It is a story in which all the details are of significance.
Jesus is at a wedding. Throughout the gospels one of the pictures that is used for the kingdom of God is that of Wedding feast.Do you remember how I told you the bridegroom would come to the bride's house to fetch her. In the Gospels, and throughout the New Testament, that is a picture of Jesus coming to fetch his people. So, for example, we have the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids who are waiting with the bride for the arrival of the bridegroom. So by telling this story John is hinting to us that the in Jesus the bridegroom has arrived.
Then there are those six stone jars. Some people suggest that the number six indicates incompleteness. That the rites of purification for which they were to be used were not really able to purify. Later on in his ministry Jesus would argue with those who lived to keep things outwardly clean and pure whilst inwardly they were filled with corruption.
Then there is the New Wine which Jesus brings. Again, elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus speaks about his relationship with his disciples in terms of New Wine which cannot be put into old wine-skins. In other words you can't confine the relationship which Jesus has with his people within the strictures and rites of religion.
And the best wine is saved till last. With the coming of Jesus something better has arrived than there was before. So much so that the New Wine makes the old taste sour and unpalatable.
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I'm certain that all those things are in John's mind as he records this story for our edification. But before I finish this evening I want to try to do something which is actually impossible to do, which is to go back beyond John's telling of the story to the actual event itself and ask what was going on when Jesus actually performed this miracle. I say that it is impossible to do this because we only have John's account of this event to base our thinking on and any other approach is pure speculation on my part. One possibility is, of course, that John made up the story and that it has no historical basis; that it is a teaching story from the early church intended to make the points I've already outlined without any historical basis. But I don't believe that that's the case. I believe that behind the story is a historical event which actually happened. And so I want to ask, "Why did Jesus do it?" Why did he intervene in this obscure domestic disaster at village wedding?
And it seems to me that the answer has to that he did so, not to make some spectacular teaching point but simply because he cared. Here were people in trouble, Jesus had the ability to do something about it, so he did.
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And that gives me a problem, because we cannot worship God on this Sunday without coming to him with some big questions. On Boxing Day there was an earthquake of Indonesia which launched a tidal wave across the Indian Ocean. Early reports spoke of 11,000 dead and then, through the week, each time the news has been turned on the numbers have increased until now they stand at over 150,000 people dead with many, many thousands threatened by disease and by the destruction of their homes and livelihood. Unlike many of the evils which confront us in today's world there is no way that blame for this event can be laid at the door of human beings. It was what the insurance companies would call "an Act of God". And the question I have to ask myself is "where was the caring God that Jesus shows us in this story on Boxing Day?" And I have to say, I don't have an answer to that question except that I cannot believe that he was absent and I cannot believe that such suffering accords with his will. All week I have in my mind that question which Abraham asks of God in Genesis Chapter 18, "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?"
And, as I say, I have no answer.
What I will do is to say that in the face of such suffering there are many, and I count myself among them, who will maintain that it is better to continue to assert that here is a God who loves and cares than to give way to despair and hopelessness. To continue to maintain that the picture of God we get through looking at Jesus, who revealed him in his Epiphany on earth, represents the truth about what God is like. And that it is better to maintain this, not because it is the easy option but because it is the hard one; the demanding one. You see if God cares then he calls on us to care too. The people of the world have responded with incredible generosity to the needs of those who have suffered in recent days but so much more is needed. Each of needs to do our part, to give how ever little or much we can afford to do our part.
The story of the Wedding at Cana speaks to us of Jesus ability to transform situations. I believe that he still does but that he calls on us to work with him in doing it.