Orthodox Icon: The Wedding at Cana

Dear Friends

On this third Sunday of Epiphany, the Gospel reading (John 2:1-11) recounts the episode in which Jesus turns the water into wine during the wedding feast held at Cana in Galilee.  It is a passage which is often used during marriage services held in church and, as with all narratives within the fourth Gospel, it is theologically rich and can be read on several levels.

There is, of course, the immediate context of a first-century Jewish wedding feast.  Wedding parties lasted several nights (with guests often going to work during the day) and expectations in terms of the food and drink provided were high.  In this case, it appears that the host family was reasonably wealthy, since they had servants and the kind of stone water-jars which only the more prosperous could provide.  To run out of wine at a wedding would have entailed at the very least social embarrassment and, at worst, could even lead to lawsuits if disgruntled guests considered that they were not receiving the kind of hospitality appropriate to the value of their wedding gifts!  So this might perhaps explain why Jesus, after initial demurrals, performs what could otherwise seem a ‘non-essential’ miracle in this instance.

But there are other layers to this story.  The miracle is the first of the seven ‘signs’ portrayed in this Gospel, in which Jesus’ glory as Son of the Father is revealed.  Within the Jewish mind-set the words ‘marriage feast’ had immediate connotations of the longed-for messianic banquet in which God’s loving purposes for Israel – and, ultimately, for all humankind – would be made manifest.  So this sign, performed in the village of Cana, points us to the lavish extravagance of God’s banquet in which the best is saved until last – the Gospel writer is letting us know that this sign demonstrates that the dawn of the messianic age has come in Jesus Christ.

How are we meant to respond to this story?  We are told that, as a result of this miracle, his followers ‘believed in him’ – that is, they became committed disciples rather than just a group of friends who were accompanying Jesus out of curiosity, to see what would happen next.  The words of Jesus’ mother, Mary, ‘Do whatever he tells you’, are surely significant here.  Again, on one level, this is a delightfully ‘human’ response to Jesus’ insistence that his ‘hour had not yet come’ – the Jewish mother who is sure that her son can do something to rectify an awkward situation.  On a deeper level, though, her words are directed to us, his latter-day disciples, to ‘do whatever he tells’, a process which involves a lifetime’s listening to his word, and responding in obedience.

Fr Stephen