Co-Creators of Abundance
Wedding feasts in ancient Israel were often week-long events. I have never come close to hosting an event of that scale – but many of you know that I work at the Pres House campus ministry and apartment community at UW, and a couple times during our monthly apartment dinners, as 100 students rush down to consume our home-cooked meals, we’ve had moments of frantic lemonade shortage, and our pitchers of Arnold Palmer ran dry. It’s nothing close to running out of a week’s worth of wine at a wedding celebration, but I’m sure we’ve all had moments of embarrassment and wanting to save face when something we plan or host does not go our way.
Luckily for me, my students were fine with tap water, but in this story in the gospel of John, it’s a bigger deal. This is a well-known story for many of us in the gospels, and quite engaging for those of us who like to visualize stories like this. We can imagine the festivities, the inebriation, the realization kicking in, the whispers and panic behind the scenes, the clear water turning a rich purple, and the wonder and confusion in the aftermath of this miracle. But there are some peculiar moments in the dialogue between Jesus and his mother that caught my attention this time as I read the story, in addition to the characters often overlooked in the history of Christian teaching. So I invite us to dive into wonder as we ponder these moments in what is recorded in the gospel of John as the very first of Jesus’s miraculous interventions in his ministry.
Jesus’s interactions with his mother feel cold in moments of the dialogue. She implies a need for help when she points out to her son the lack of wine. In an effort to preserve honor and avoid shame on the hosts, she mentions this to her son. Yet Jesus appears to distance himself from her, saying, “Woman, what concern is that to you and me?” He informs her that his “hour” has not yet come. Yet despite his distance, or perceived snubbing reply, the mother of Jesus proceeds as if her son has agreed to her implied request. With complete confidence in her son, she tells the servants at the wedding, “Do whatever he tells you,” demonstrating her own faith in the words and nature and power of Jesus.
What a strange dialogue. This is not the only place in our scriptures where we tilt our heads at the odd responses of Christ. When Jesus’s family finds him in the temple after being missing for days, his reply does not acknowledge their worry and frantic frustration… When Jesus dismisses the Canaanite woman’s pleas by comparing her requests to a dog… These are a couple moments where on the surface, we are not sure what to make of the interactions, and of the human embodiment of Divine Love, the Son of God, speaking in ways that feel like he has turned away.
And yet, despite hearing Jesus’s initial response to his mother, there must have been some sort of back-and-forth between Jesus, his mother, and the servants that the Gospel of John simply leaves out. For Jesus’s mother prompts the miracle, the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, with the words, “Do whatever he tells you.”
By the way, this story of the wedding in Cana is our very first introduction to Jesus’s mother in the gospel of John. We meet the mother of Jesus at the center of the start of Jesus’s ministry. In his reflections on this passage, Rev. Cody J. Sanders urges us to notice this woman at the center of the story. The miracle of the water to wine is not the point of this story. We are not told how the water is changed, we don’t know what words Jesus spoke over the water. The miracle is not the point. In many traditions, theological reflections on stories like this one have centered the unbelievable nature of the miracle and beholding the power of God, while sidelining to the margins the inaugurators and agents of the miracle.
But isn’t it worth noticing that the inauguration of Jesus’s ministry comes not at his own will and words, nor as a proclamation from above… but at the insistence of his mother? We can imagine that Jesus’s mother believed in him, and insisted in faith that, it is time, so let it be. And Christ is moved into action by this woman.
How does this feel for us? When it is hard to see abundance, or hope, or rescue, or divine response, as we encounter empty jars in our world needing filling? What can this story mean for us in our cries for hope and abundance, where a human, a woman, insists and calls out to God for the working of a miracle? And in this story, by her hope in action it is done. Christ is moved.
It is not just the foregrounding of this woman, Jesus’s mother, that we should notice in this story of the wedding in Cana. While she is the inaugurator of Jesus’s public life of ministry, it is the servants working the festivities, who were agents and participants in this miracle. And not only were these servants the hands that brought forth this miracle of abundance to the rest of humanity gathered there, but they were the only ones who knew where it came from.
Jesus’s first moment in ministry was initiated by the words of his mother, and witnessed and facilitated by the servants of the party. And Jesus’s first public act in ministry was an act of abundance for all. Friends, what would that look like for us, as we imagine and responsibly bring forth a beloved community where those historically on the margins are not simply included, but are fellow creators of the miracle of God in the world we sustain? Following Mary’s example, how may we press divinity to birth miracles of abundance through all, for all?
Lastly, for the guests at the celebration – those who weren’t the servants or disciples or mother of Jesus – may we notice that this supernatural gift of abundance was given to them discreetly. It was explained away by the steward, credited to the bridegroom, without fanfare. All at this celebration received in this gift of wine, and celebrated for days, in community.
The beauty of this story from the gospel of John is that it gives us several teachers in this story. As we witness this miracle made possible through the communal hands of servants, mothers, and the Divine, may we be encouraged to do the same. In our communities, when reserves of all kinds run dry, the first miracle of Jesus teaches us that we are, in fact, Co-Creators of miracles of abundance. Let us join in this call, and when we are not co-creating for others, may we also not forget to drink deeply.