A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on January 16, 2022 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on John 2:1-11. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to St. John, the 2nd chapter:
On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Jesus is the bridegroom of the Church. Men, I think, get a little uncomfortable thinking about this, especially today when this would seem to imply that we're married to another man, but let's put your minds at ease. The Church is seen as a collective as the bride of Christ. You are not individually married to him, but you are married to him through the Church. And it gets a little confusing, of course, because you talk about the one body and then, of course, you think of consummation in the marriage, where the man and the woman know each other intimately and become one flesh.
And here's the deal. Jesus is the bridegroom; we are the bride. And he does consummate his relationship with the Church, not through that sexual act that we are aware of in terms of marriage, but in the intimate act, the heavenly act of making us part of himself. And he does that first through the Word. That Word then is attached to His means of grace, and so, for most of us, it came to us first through the waters of Baptism. Then it comes to us, not just the reading, preaching, and studying of the Word, but also through the Sacrament of the Altar. First the Word gives us faith, then it gives us strength. It brings to the day of everlasting life, when we find our life in the body of Jesus Christ. This is much more intimate than what a husband and wife share with one another.
This is the way that Christ brings his Church from all times and all places into himself to be one with her forever. Theologians call this the mystical union. And there's a whole lot that we could talk there. I mean, you could probably have an entire series of sermons on each aspect of what the mystical union actually composes, but it is enough to say that mystically, which is not magically, but mystically, mysteriously, Christ uses his Word and his sacraments to join together with you forever.
So, understanding that Christ is the bridegroom, let’s ask here, from the text, who is the master of the feast speaking to when he tastes the good wine? Now, if you follow along in the story, you want to go, well, he's speaking to the bridegroom of this wedding. But I've got to tell you, John is one smart cookie, and he loves what we call double entendres, where he says one thing and means two things by it. For instance, when Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night and asks all these questions as a secret believer in Jesus, Jesus says,You must be born again to enter the kingdom of God. And Nicodemus says, What, am I supposed to crawl back up into my mother that I might come out of her again? But the word Jesus says, the word John uses in Greek is anothen, which means two things: to born again and to be born from above. These two things are both tied into that one single word. And John is using that word to portray this reality in such a way that Nicodemus would get it and still have to seek it by faith, but that you, having now been enlightened by the Spirit, would understand all of it. So when John is telling you about this first miracle that Jesus performs, he's not intending you just to look at the idea that, well, Jesus did this nice thing with water and wine and that's great, but instead that you see Jesus, as we just sang, is the guest and the host, he is both. We sometimes say the host and the meal; Jesus is both of these things for you.
So, when the master of the feast tastes this wine and he goes to the bridegroom and he says, You know, everybody gets everyone drunk on the good stuff first and then when they run out of that, then they don't notice the bad stuff. But you you've saved the good stuff for last. You know, I don't drink very much anymore, just with all my diet stuff, but I enjoyed beer. I liked a good beer, but the honest truth is it doesn't matter how bad the beer is. If you can get down two swigs of it, you generally can drink the rest of it. The master of this feast has been brought the good wine. And now, having tasted it, he realized the stuff that usually was good was mere swill compared to what he had now in his cup. There has never been a wine like this before. Never had any palate tasted anything like this. But there is a wine like this now.
And that's what we have here today in front of us. Granted, Jesus hasn't turned water for purification into wine in front of us, but he has taken the wine that we humbly bring to this place and he has made it greater than what it is by attaching his Word to it. And by his very Word, which you'll conspicuously see is absent in the text, in front of us, all of a sudden it is greater than anything that you've ever had. Now, granted, we don't have money coming out the wazoo; we can't afford the very best wine. We bring that which is humble, that which is very much like the water that's in these purification jars. And yet Jesus makes it magnificent by bringing us his blood in this place.
Notice though, in the reading for today, Jesus, doesn't speak a word over it. He doesn't say poof and there it is. He doesn't wave his hands. He doesn't do anything, but by the very power of his being God, the water knows what to do. The water becomes wine in such a way, and we'll never understand how this can be, but it's like Jesus is commanding all of the universe and the universe bends to his will, whether the universe hears it or not.
But here, in the Supper, the will of Christ is not just inside of him. His will is in your ears. You hear the Word because he's attached a promise to this Supper, that every time we have it, there is something amazing going on here, every time. I mean, I would challenge you all go home, go out to Menards or Home Depot, buy one of those big buckets that catches the rainwater, start filling that thing up and wait and see how long it takes for that water to become wine. It won't happen, right? I mean, could it happen? Sure. Are we expecting it to happen? Of course not. And as long as you wait, it probably never would become wine. You have no promise attached to that, but you have a promise here. You have a promise by the guest, by the host, by the meal himself that, here, this is something greater than what you can see, here is the sweet wine in which comes to you the blood of Christ, here is the sweet bread, if we can call it bread, that brings with it the body of Christ. His Word of promise is here, not in some miracle that he performs.
John uses a word here that it doesn't really mean miracle. John uses the word semeron, which means sign. Miracles are those breaking of the natural wall to let the supernatural in. But this thing that Jesus does is more than a miracle, it’s a sign. What's a sign do? It tells you something, right? You see a stop sign, you stop. You see the green light, you go. You see a yellow sign with kids running on it with a little ball in front of it, you know that children are going to be around, possibly at play, and you should watch out for them. A sign tells you what to do. The sign that Jesus performs in this first miracle, this first thing is to point to him as the coming, as the promised, Messiah. All the people there should have seen that sign and believed and it's likely that didn't happen because they weren’t reading the sign. It was private. But you see the sign performed here in the Supper, it’s public, it’s in front of everyone, and so you believe that this Jesus has come for you.
In our lives, as we struggle with our sin, as we struggle with faith, with doubt, with not understanding everything, not believing things, we might cry with the hurting father of the young boy afflicted with a demon, Lord, I believe; help my unbelief. It might be a ton of different things that have brought us to this very moment, whatever it may be. But you can be comforted for this sign here is for you because Jesus speaks. And he speaks his Word of promise to you with this Supper, that your sins are forgiven and that you will be strengthened to see the day of resurrection.
He uses these humble gifts that we've brought to the church. It used to be that the Church would actually bring bread and wine into the church. That was what the offertory was for. You know, that song that we sing before or after the offering? That was when all the gifts would be brought up, not just for the church in terms of our offering, our money, but also it's when the bread and the wine would be brought up to be used for communion. That was the place that that would happen. Nowadays, what we do is we give our offering and the church goes out and buys the bread and the wine, but there are still churches that do this. These are just humble gifts though, that you've given to this place and Christ attaches his Word to your gift to promise you that there is something greater here for you.
It's very easy to forget what the Supper is. It is. It's easy to take this for granted, but this is here that every time we gather together in this kind of way, around his Word, we also gather around his Sacrament so that we know that Jesus is for you, that he has come to you, that he has saved you, that he forgives you, and that he has promised you something greater than all of these things that we're going through: everlasting life.
We don’t just have an ephemeral faith, one that you can’t pin down, something that’s little more than a feeling. You can have faith in your ears and in your eyes and on your tongues. You have faith that everything that your Jesus has come to you and has given you what he’s promised. And this Supper is a down payment on the idea that everything even will have a greater fulfillment. The Supper is a mere taste of the feast to come. It’s like the good wine served before the water-made-wine wine. You can have faith because you’ve been given a substantive thing to hold on to.We can see his promises are true here, where he said, this is my body and this is my blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.
That's what this is all about. That's a mystical way in which Christ comes to you and speaks to you. Jesus doesn't speak to the bride groom in the story. He speaks to you instead through his Word and Sacrament. Christ is the bridegroom, and this is a wedding feast. This is greater than anything else we can eat or drink this day or any day, because this is greater than food alone. But this is food that leads to everlasting life. You only get that if you are a part of the bride, the Church, and you only get that if the bride has been taken by the bridegroom. This is how we are joined with Christ.
So, turn your eyes to Christ, my friends, and be like the disciples, believe in him, who has given you this gift so you may know that Christ is for you, that Christ is with you, and, in a very real way, even today, Christ is in you. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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