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It is not a mistake for the apostle John to have noted for posterity that Jesus' first sign or miracle happened “on the third day” after His Baptism in the Jordan at the hand of John the Baptist. The author of our first communion distribution hymn today, “Songs of Thankfulness and Praise” got this connection:
Manifest at Jordan's stream, Prophet, Priest, and King supreme;
And at Cana wedding guest in Thy Godhead manifest;
Manifest in pow'r divine, changing water into wine;
Anthems be to Thee addressed, God in man made manifest.(Lutheran Service Book #394, stanza 2)
The Apostle John, led by the Holy Spirit, saw the significance of a great sign occurring on the “third day”. On the third day after becoming the great sin–bearer for us, by taking upon Himself in the Jordan our sins, Jesus performs the first of His signs that manifests, or reveals, to the world His glory. At Cana, Jesus reveals that He is no mere mortal man. Jesus is the beloved Son, with whom God the Father is well pleased, on whom the Holy Spirit rests, and from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds to build faith and restore souls.
At the end of John's Gospel, on the third day after finishing the work of bearing our sins on the Holy Cross, after giving from His pierced side the blood and water that cleanses us from our sin, Jesus performed the last and greatest of His signs that manifests to the world His Glory. Jesus, not merely a mortal man, is Son of God and Son of Man, perfect and sinless, and so, on the greatest third day of all third days, rose from the dead. God the Father was well pleased with His Son and with us. Now, the Holy Spirit has come to rest in us, build our faith, restore our soul, and clothe us with Jesus Christ in our baptism. Since we are the Body of Christ, and that Body has risen from the dead, so too will we rise.
Baptism and sin–bearing. Crucifixion and sin–defeating. Changing water into wine. Changing death into life. Grim death to vanquish for us, to open heaven before us, and bring us life again. Third days are important!
Is this third day event, this turning–water–into–wine, death–into–life story a comfort for you, dear Christians? Does it matter to you that Jesus turned the Jewish ritual water pots full of plain water into new wine for the feast? Does it make a difference to you when you are struggling with illness, sickness, death? When surgery looms? When you struggle to make the ends meet between the mortgage payment, the electric bill, and the last paycheck — or is it the next paycheck? When you have to make tough decisions at work, in the home, or both for the good of your family? When husbands are failing to lead their families spiritually, when wives are failing to submit to their husbands as the Church submits to Christ?
You think your troubles are difficult? Consider our friends in Christ in Kenya. If you are a member of the wrong tribe at the wrong place at the wrong time, you could be killed. Your home could be looted and burned. Your church sanctuary and medical clinic might be looted and burned. Your pastor could be left holding nothing but a single solitary banner that somehow didn't burn, as my friend Pastor Meeker was pictured. And we sit here and worry about the things we worry and fret about in our homes and in our congregation and in ones just like ours all over this country. Sometimes we should be ashamed, because often our perceived problems are trivial in the end and pail in comparison to the sufferings of our Lutheran brothers and sisters in places like Kenya, like Haiti, like Madagascar where confessional Lutherans exist and thrive in hostile, persecuted environments purely by God's grace.
So, where is Jesus manifesting Himself or showing His glory to the world in these daily problems? It would be easy to do as many Christian ministers might be tempted to do with this text: if you somehow believe strongly enough, if you have enough faith, they'll tell people, Jesus will come and turn your water into wine, too. But that is false, heterodox doctrine. That might be the televangelist's or mega–church minister's answer, but it's not the answer of Holy Scriptures.
Look again at the story. Jesus and His disciples were invited to the marriage. The groom and the master of ceremonies made a grave mistake. For the biggest party they will ever throw in their lives, they did not plan to have enough wine for the number of guests present. So they ran out. This would be a moment of great shame to the newly married couple. Mary tells her son simply, “They do not have wine.” In other words, mother was telling Son, “Please, help them.”
Jesus reacts with what seems a strange contradiction to our ears. “What is it to me or to you, woman? My hour has not yet arrived.” (John 2:4, my translation) Jesus seems to contradict what it is He eventually does — changing the water into wine.
But our mistakes, our sins, our shame, our self–inflicted trauma because of our sinful nature, our poor choices, our stubborn refusal to submit to God's Word, our prideful attempts to rule over God's Word instead of placing our reasoning and knowledge in service to it — these all are truly not Jesus' problem. They are our problems; they come solely from the wickedness of our hearts and minds.
Jesus is perfect, the Son of God. If He so willed, He could just let us wallow in our misery, the consequences and shame of our mistakes, sins, and rebellion against God. That would make for a world in which nothing ever goes right, in which we are always coming up short, in which we would be on a grim road straight to eternal death. “My hour has not yet arrived.” It was true. He could leave it at our death if He would so choose.
Note also, they are not Mary's problem either. The Roman Church's theologians who are so anxious to elevate Mary into some sort of co–Savior, which she is not, ought to look at this text! “What is it to me or to you, woman?” We, like the bridegroom and the master of the feast, are responsible for our actions and sins and mistakes. God has the perfect right to hold us each accountable, and He has, and He will. No other person, not Mary, not anyone, can help us before God's righteous judgment.
No one, that is, except the only Son from heaven, foretold by ancient seers, by God the Father promised and given, who in human form appears at Cana and all over this world — no sphere His light confining, no star so brightly shining, as He, our Morning Star. The Son of God is love. He desires mercy, not sacrifice. He created us not to destroy us, even though we have rejected His love and mercy. He created us to be one with us and express His love to us perfectly. So He came to restore creation, to bring the light of His glory into our darkness and lead us back to Himself.
Jesus made the mistake of the bridegroom and the master of the feast His problem. Jesus took it upon Himself. Jesus makes our mistakes, our sins, our traumas, our disappointments, our sufferings His problem. Jesus changes the water into the new wine. Jesus makes right our wrongs, restores us as complete people in His Body, clothes us with His innocence, His love, His mercy, His light, and so, has reconciled us to the Father. In changing us from sinners to saints, He changes water into wine. He changes death into life.
Now, in His Church, He applies those changes to us. They are not abstract theories or possibilities. They are concrete realities. Jesus changes ordinary baptismal water into a lavish washing away of all sins — water that has come from His pierced side to bless us and place His name upon us, claiming us as His Father's own dear children, members of His Body, who share in His resurrection. Jesus did this yet again for his little lamb Andrew Michael Koch yesterday at 2 a.m., bearing that child's sins away even as He protected him in his affliction.
Jesus, just as His presence at Cana turned a disappointment into a heavenly miracle, so His presence makes an ordinary meal of bread and wine, here at this banquet, into a lavish meal for the forgiveness of sins. Here — in, with, and under the simple bread and wine on this altar — is His own dear body and blood, given and shed for you for the remission of all of your sins. Here, you are fed with the medicine of immortality. Here, you are changed — time after time — from struggling, desperate, sorry sinners, battered by this world and its demons, into strengthened, renewed, refreshed, forgiven saints who are guaranteed eternal victory.
Is this water–into–wine, death–into–life story a comfort for you, dear Christians? Does it matter to you that Jesus turned the water into new wine for the feast? Does it make a difference to you that Jesus made this problem His own? Does it make a difference to you that Jesus makes your problems His own, that He has defeated them even as He defeated empty wine glasses at the Cana feast, and even as He defeated death itself at the Calvary cross? Has Jesus been manifesting Himself and His Glory in your daily lives?
You know our Lord Jesus Christ has made all the difference for us, that He has changed things for the better, for our eternal good: in His Baptism and sin–bearing; in His Crucifixion and sin–defeating; in His changing water into wine; in His changing death into life. Grim death to vanquish for us, to open heaven before us, and bring us life again. In God the Father's eyes, Jesus changes you from sinners to saints, from the walking dead to the eternally living, just as surely as He changed the water into wine at Cana.
When the Apostle John wrote the initial ending of his Gospel, at John 20:29, he ended with the quote to Thomas: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” He then wrote that “these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.” Well and good. While the Holy Spirit inspired this memorable ending, I submit John may have for some reason been led to forget the ending he really had written for all the signs in his Gospel, which he used to end this Cana story.
After the resurrection and the ordination of the apostles and institution of the Holy Ministry and after telling us about Thomas' confession of the faith, John perhaps could simply have said this:
All this Jesus did, the last and ultimate of His signs, in Jerusalem of Judea. And He manifested His Glory, and His disciples believed in Him.
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