READINGS

John 2:1-11
Genesis 41:55

HOMILY

Today we find a chunk of St John's Gospel.

This is in fact what happens every year on the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time: we get the beginning of Jesus's ministry in John's Gospel.

In the year which we have with Matthew, it's Jesus being shown to be the Lamb of God.

Then in Luke, he's shown to be the king of Israel.

And now we have the first sign in which he is of the definitive bridegroom and perhaps more subtly and perhaps more importantly for our purposes - Melchizedek, the great high priest, the one who was to come.

So, on the second Sunday of ordinary time each year, we get St John's beginning and then we get on to one of the other three Gospels going from the third Sunday onwards.

So to our Gospel which is the third in this triptych of John's beginnings we get the wedding in Cana of Galilee.

Our Gospel begins with the notion that something is on the third day.

That's a very exact piece of dating because the beginning of John's Gospel is structured according to the five days which lead up to this, the sixth day.

There have been four days previously.

In the original Hebrew, the third day did not mean three days later, it meant the day after tomorrow.

So today is day one, tomorrow day two and the third day is the day after tomorrow.

So this third day is the sixth day in the first week, the week that started with John and Jesus talking, John being recognized, so Jesus being recognized by John and John pointing to him.

This was the sixth day and the point of the sixth day is that it's creation not-yet-completed.

It's not the end, it's something that has yet to be fulfilled and it's on therefore the sixth day that the first sign is done.

The first sign is the beginning of the completion.

It's the sign that of the fulfilment, the completion is going to come about.

So we have a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

It is not the only time she appears in the Gospel; this is the first time she is in the Gospel.

And it's interesting: she's described as being there as part of the wedding, and Jesus and his disciples had also come.

In other words, she wasn't tied in with them, they didn't bring her.

As it were, Jesus disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him: they have no wine.

She appears here in John's Gospel to be a representative figure for old Israel that is longing faithfully for the coming of the Lord, that's going to be her role.

Remember this is also a wedding.

And Jesus says to her: woman what concern is that to you and to me?

There's no hiding the fact that it was not at all common or proper for a Hebrew male to address his mother as in the term woman.

It was not in itself an impolite form of address, but from a son to a mother, it's definitely an impolite form of address.

It's suggesting a certain distinction.

But also he's suggesting that he and she are about something together in some way, but this isn't the right time yet.

And, of course, 'my hour has not yet come' will refer to a time when his hour does come, which is at his crucifixion where his mother is also present.

It suggests that there's some change in relationship which is being signalled here.

I'd like to suggest that maybe one of the changes in relationship, of course, is that for the royal wedding of the ancient Israelite religion - and remember that he has just been called the king of Israel - the mother was the bride, the mother was the one who was considered to be the bride of the bridegroom who was the king.

They were the royal couple, not the king and his newlywed wife.

Odd by our understanding, but it seems that Jesus is in some sense taking a distance from that model here and saying: why should this concern us?

My hour has not yet come, there is no wine.

But his mother said to the servants: Do whatever he tells you.

Now, that's very interesting, because that's more or less a direct quote from what Pharaoh says to his servants with Joseph - when they come to ask Pharaoh what to do now that the seven rich years have run out and there's going to be a food shortage, Pharaoh basically points to Joseph it says: do whatever he tells you.

So this is the same quote here.

The mother who's in the role of Pharaoh saying to the servants: Do whatever he tells you.

Standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification.

Once again: six stone because a stone couldn't be made unclean.

If you had a ceramic pot, or a clay pot, or a jar - those will become richly unclean and needed to be cleansed, whereas the stone jar didn't.

So a stone jar was very good for keeping food that you didn't want to become impure or, in this case, water that you needed for purification, because once the water had been blessed it was, therefore, ready for purification.

It wouldn't run out of purity, because it was in the stone jars.

They were standing there for the rights of purification each holding 20 or 30 gallons so that's - about 99 litres each or 560 litres between them.

But again we have this number six: the six representing that something incomplete, there's something incomplete about these rights of purification.

The real thing hasn't yet happened, they're waiting for it somehow.

Jesus said to them, the servants: fill the jars with water.

And they fill them up to the brim.

He said to them: now draw some out and take it to the chief steward.

And here we have someone who has a slightly different role in this party.

This is the person who's supposed to be running the show and making sure that things are going well, in the sense in which the mother of Jesus stands in for the faithful remnant of Israel longing for the coming of the things; the steward stands for, as it were, the religious or temple authorities trying to keep the show going with, basically, but the real thing is running out.

And they fill up the brim.

He said to them: now draw some out and take it to the chief steward.

So they took it.

When the steward tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from though the servants who had drawn the water knew.

This is interesting because it suggests that it was only in taking it out that it became wine, and that's going to be part of what the Gospel is doing: taking something that is a completely Jewish part of the purification scheme and turning it into something more out the new wineskins for the new wine.

He said so they took it.

The steward called the bridegroom and said to him - and of course, here we have a rather delicious double sense of the word bridegroom, because presumably, in one sense, he's talking to the actual bridegroom whose party it was, because it was the bridegroom who was in charge of organizing things and making sure that everything was necessary for the party.

He's saying to the bridegroom: you've kept the good wine until now when usually everybody gives the good wine first and then, once people have got drunk, they bring out the trashy stuff on the grounds that they won't notice.

But you've kept the good one till now.

Or the bridegroom might be referring to Jesus himself, in which case the person is referring to the Bridegroom - capital B - the One whose long-promised wedding with the People of Israel was announced.

Our reading from Isaiah talks about that: the one who was called abandoned will be called wedded, wanted, loved one.

And saying: everyone serves the good wine first and then inferior, but you have kept the good wine till now - so acknowledging the fulfilment of prophecy that now the real thing has come in.

And that this is the way in which the whole Jewish thing is going to go forward.

At the same time, we have the hints that something to do with Melchizedek is going on.

Why? Because Melchizedek, the priestly royal figure from the Book of Genesis appears and offers wine and bread.

And of course, here we have the offering of wine.

Later, in John 6, we'll have the offering of bread.

At this time there was a great expectation that the Melchizedek figure would appear.

We have that from other literature of the time including a fragment from Qumran, not alas the whole book about Melchizedek, but we know enough to know, and this comes from Philo of Alexandria, that he was expected to replace water with wine.

In other words, this was something that was going to be something of the exuberance and the enthusiasm of what was going to be brought into being was going to come through Melchizedek.

So, we have the Lamb of God, we have the king of Israel, we have the divinity of bridegroom, and we have the true Melchizedek coming in and that means that the sixth day is going to be fulfilled by the presence amongst humans of this royal priestly figure who is the Lamb of God for the sacrifice purposes, who is the King of Israel.

It's the two together, King and Lamb, and who is the one who offers the sacrifice of bread and wine - all of these are going to be acted out.

Jesus did the first of his signs in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory.

That's where to say he gave away who he really was.

And his disciples believed in him. They picked up what this meant:

This is the Holy One of God,
This is the Melchizedek priest figure;
This is the one who has come amongst us to fulfil and open up creation: Make possible the arrival of the seventh day, and then the new creation - the eighth day.

The whole of the rest of John's Gospel is going to be fulfilling out of this sixth day until we finally get to the first day of the week - the eighth day, which will have day zero effectively at the very end of John's Gospel.