River Road Church Baptist

January 18, 2004

Dr. Cecil E. Sherman

“The First of His Signs”

John 2:1-11

Of humankind—everything in John’s gospel is chosen with this purpose in view. There are two great sections in John. The first chapter is an introduction. Two through twelve tells seven signs pointing to Jesus and identifying Him. This text I took the title straight out of the scripture; the first of His signs. The section thirteen through twenty is about the last week in the life of Jesus and the resurrection; chapter 21 is a conclusion, so two through twelve, seven signs, this is the first one.

Our text is one of those times that impressed the disciples. What happened at a wedding feast changed the way the disciples looked at Jesus. After Jesus had gone from them, had been resurrected and had ascended, they remembered, reflected, and they took these ideas, these incidents, and built a foundation for what the church says about Jesus. It starts in the incidents. The theology is rooted in something that happened, so, in a sense. John is autobiographical. He did not begin discipleship saying, “Look, there’s Jesus. He’s the Son of God, I’ll follow Him.” Rather, he was attracted to Jesus for reasons we can only guess. Later events persuaded him to elevate his opinion of Jesus. He came to, and I use, John’s phrase here, “believe in Him,” with all that belief carries in John’s understanding.

The events in the story are straightforward. I accept miracles in the ministry of Jesus. I didn’t say I understood them. I said I accept them. If there is a God, God made natural laws. If God made natural laws, God can set natural laws aside on rare occasions when it serves His purpose. So, you don’t find me denying or explaining away miracles. I believe Jesus turned water into wine. Further, when you get into this story through that door, now how do we understand miracles? Can miracles be? That’s contrary to all that we know about science. If you go in that door, you rarely ever get to the point that John’s trying to make. You get stuck in another set of issues. John is prescience—all the Bible is. In John, Jesus did miracles to reveal himself. The deed revealed the doer. You’ll hear me say that again toward the end. So, in the other gospels Jesus does miracles out of compassion. In John, Jesus does miracles to reveal himself.

Interesting…so what does the text say, assuming with I have dealt with some housekeeping? I want to start off at a place I would not have been a week ago. I want to start off…the first point is a mother’s insight. “When the wine gave out the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and me?” Now, translators have wrestled with Jesus’ answer, because sometimes it looks as if Jesus had no care of his mother. That is not what the language says. What he’s saying is, is this really our concern?

Most Protestant interpreters avoid or see no special significance in these verses. Raymond Brown, a Catholic interpreter, caused me to think in a little bit different way. I’m not ready to embrace a full package of Mariology, but I am ready to say that this text suggests something I had not previously thought. Mary went to Jesus when the wine ran out. She went because she had some sense Jesus could make this thing better. Now, there’s no record that previous to this Jesus has ever done a miracle. But Mary is not starting with Jesus where John is. Mary has 30 years experience with Jesus. She birthed him, she reared him, she watched him, and she anticipated that he could do something to make this better. He can fix this if he wants to. If I had been at a party, and the hors d’oeuvres ran out, my mother would not have come to me and say, “Cecil, do something.” She might have come and said, “You’re hitting that a little heavy, we’re running short, back off, but she wouldn’t have expected me to run down to Ukrop’s and buy another tray. And she certainly wouldn’t have expected me to take a loaf of bread and turn it into a fancy cake. There must have been something about that fellow, something - somebody who had loved him and watched him carefully over an extended period of time, some of the wonder of Jesus leaked through. Mary has to be the source of certain parts of the gospel. She’s the only one who could be. She saw something in him.

Sometimes I suspect the reason people come to church is in a reach, a hope, sometimes a stretch, there might be something there. I’ve got a problem. Life presents us with all kinds of problems. You don’t all lay the same thing at the Lord’s feet when you pray. You speak your story and you speak your story and I speak my story and the reason we take the prayer there is because in some prior experience we’ve been conditioned to believe we might get help there.

Second idea…I want to talk to you about the miracle’s message. This can be heard in the wrong way, but John was not greatly concerned with facts. John used facts to carry a message. Read John, read First John and if you really are strong, read Revelation. We’re not talking about facts; we’re talking about a message he’s trying to deliver, a cryptic message, a hidden message. In John’s stories he’s trying to say something. Now, I’m going to give you my best understanding of what he’s trying to say, but understand that you get John and Cecil’s read on him, rather than just what does the text say, because John himself worked beyond the text, beyond the fact. If you want facts, read Mark, he would tell the story altogether differently, but John is interested in the meaning, the theology of it. What does this story say? I’ve got two ideas on the message. We have no wine – it suggests the emptiness of a tired, old religion. Everybody has religion. People may or may not go to church, they may or may not admit they’re religious, but we all think religious thoughts. Where did I come from? Is there a God? Who is my neighbor? Why is there meanness in the world? Why do innocent people suffer? What will happen to me when I die? These are questions that everybody asks; they’re theological questions. There is a reason that religion keeps on surfacing after it’s predicted that it will die it surfaces again. Why does it come back up? Because it wrestles with questions that won’t go away; they’re just built into life. I didn’t make these questions come up; they were here when I got here. I asked them and after I’m gone, others will ask them. They are of the stuff of life. The Christian religion offers one set of answers to these questions. We don’t have the only answers, we have one set of answers; when packaged right, these answers are bright, life ordering and hopeful.

Jesus came to a tired world ridden with Judaism. Judaism was out of line and the line that was there had no sparkle and along came somebody who didn’t get out of religion, he got out of bad religion. It’s something new. Here’s another part—you’ve kept the good wine until now. John goes out of his way to make a point. When you think about it, it’s kind of funny. There were six pots, or clay jars. They held about 20 gallons apiece. They filled them up with water and in a way that isn’t explained at all—when they dipped it out, the water had become wine. Now, it must have been a whale of a party with 120 gallons of wine. Maybe John is trying to tell us something—what’s been in short supply is abundant. In fact, later on in John he’ll say, “He came that you might have abundant life.” It’s not been much, now there’s plenty. The idea has another thought—usually you give us the good wine and when we get a little fuzzy headed you give us the bad stuff. You save the best until the last. He’s saying, it’s better than, it’s not just more, it’s better. That’s what I think is in the text. John is saying, “I found something that was there in abundance and it was better than anything ever I had heard, known, much less tasted.”

You know, after 2,000 years, the fresh message could deteriorate and we wind up as Jesus found those people – out of wine, not very good, short supply. The idea in religion is to keep it like it was at the beginning and that’s not easy. That’s like the idea in marriage – there is a sparkle about the beginning of a good marriage and we work to maintain it. It’s like the thrill of a new job and you don’t want it to run down hill, you want it to get better and that’s the way it’s supposed to be with Jesus. It’s better than, it’s abundant, but sometimes you need to come to church to get back in touch with some wonderful promises you made a long time ago that have grown dull. You need to get back in touch. Oft times, the most meaningful religious decisions are of a rededication sort – getting back in touch with the abundance and the sparkle and the plenty and getting rid of the barrenness and the tired.

The sermon ends and the whole idea ends in the 11 th verse. It says that after they saw the water turned into wine, after that, two things happened. One, that event they interpreted to anticipate his revealing his glory. Now, all the interpreters agree that Jesus says my hour has not yet come, that’s going to be later. But, this is anticipatory. Now, this is not a commentator, this is kind of a homespun analogy – this did not reveal his glory as the cross would, and as the resurrection would, but this is a little bit like the light before the sun comes up. There’s light, not as much as there’s going to be, but this is a clue, the first of his signs. The important thing is not the water to wine; the important thing is what it tells you about Jesus. John’s got that—he’s reflected several decades before he writes, this tells us something. It’s the beginning of the unveiling of a Messiah, and the affect? The disciples believed in Him. They got Him. They started getting it, they fine-tuned it, more things happened, they added those in, and then they came to believe in Him and then they came to bet their lives on Him. That’s where it ended. John saw this as a key, a turn in the road, an “ah-ha” moment. There are several of them and John picks them up and that’s what makes his gospel different, among other things.

Now the point of John is the point of this sermon. I doubt you came to church on a rainy January morning because you don’t believe in Jesus. That’s unlikely. But the object of this sermon is to enlarge belief, strengthen belief, refine belief, cause it to be the ordering principle of your life, and lock you into the highest promise you made when you were a kid but now you factor it as an adult – it’s the same promise, you’ve built on it, something bigger and above ground. Belief – you’ve become a person who believes, believes in Jesus and then you begin to take on the ways of Jesus because belief issues in a kind of a person, then the church has done her task. We’re turning out people who give Jesus responses to life situations, and then we have converted people. So, the point of the sermon is an extrapolation of John – to bring you to and to enlarge belief.

CES; lmk, mt