THE WEDDING AT CANA
For some wonderful and inexpressible cause, the God who upholds the universe cares about our private worries.

A long time ago, God made us in his image; ever since it seems we have been trying to re-fashion hime in our image.Jesus, especially, is shaped to suit people's tastes. In the twentieth century alone, he was cast variously as a revolutionary socialist; the prototype of the Aryan master race; and a long-haired hippy high on magic mushrooms and world peace, to name just three. One Romen Catholic theologian said that when we look at the Gospels to discover who Jesus is, It's like looking down a dark well of history - only to see your own face in the water staring back at you. This doesn't mean we cannot make a judgement of the kind of person Jesus was, but that our personal preferences sometimes get in the way of an accurate picture.

 

As well as defing Jesus in ways which suit us, our perception of him has also been shaped by countless generations. We do not arrive at our image of Jesus first hand - many other people have had their fingerprints all over the picture before we looked at it. One of the most persistant images we sustain is of Jesus as a fierce, uncompromising puritan who disapproves of people who enjoy themselves too much. If you were throwing a party and you heard that Jesus was going to gatecrash it, wouldn't you be hiding a particular selection of CDs and DVDs and crates of wine you brought over from Calais instaed of borrowing an extra amplifier for the music and buying streamers in bulk?

 

This reluctance to be sen to be enjoying life, however, is not be supported by scripture. The Pharisees accused John the Baptist of being a killjoy, but Jesus and his disciples of being drunkards and gluttons. There was something unseemly about Jesus for the religious hierarchy of his time - a hint of impropriety and a lack of depth. And then there is the story from Cana in John 2, Clearly Jesus was not in the habit of turning down wedding invitations for fear that his inegrity would be compromised by a drunken conga round the tressle-tables.

 

Wedding are wierd social events, acting as a metaphor for traditional British life: all pretty happy, with families smiling, bells peeling and vicars grinning vacantly behind their glasses. Yet sometimes beneath the surface there is a different story to tell. The bride's father is uptight about the catering firm. The bride's mother thinks she is marrying the wrong man. The groom thinks he should have married the sister. The best man is on edge over his speech. The ushers are clueless and already swaying from drink. The chief bridesmaid hates pink, while fringe guests have fixed grins on their faces but inwardly are screaming for photographers to get on with it because their children are whining and hunger at half past three in the afternoon.

 

I expext Jewish weddings in Jesus' time weren't that different. There may have been tears, tension and sleepless nights the week before. The parents would have rehearsed the arrangements in their minds countless times, closing off anything that might go wrong. Some of you know the feelings of relief and exhilaration that follow the successful planning of a wedding day. Others may know what it is like for something to go horribly wrong: the sudden sensation of blind panic, usually out of all propartion, but a nasty feeling all the same.

 

Imagine then how this family felt in the village of Cana when the wine ran out. The drink, of all things!. They were about to be shamed in front of the guests - a failure as hosts in their culture which would have wounded them deeply. And then Jesus steps in. Now,if the wedding reception had run out of wine then they must have drunk a lot already. Just one extra crate of dodgy sweet German white would have been sufficient. But he chose instead to turn the water inti the equivalent of 480 bottles of wine. Vintage to tingle taste buds, if the palates hadn't already been dulled by inebriation. It was an unbelievable geature: embarrassing to the family, in the way extravagrant gifts often are. Almost reckless, given how much the guests had already drunk.

 

This story is a lifeline to every worrier. Many people think they alone could claim a place in the Guiness Book of Records for worrying, bur this only because anxiety grips us in places which others cannot see. Thw world is full of secret worriers, people who spend hours every day gnawing away at themselves with fear that something is about to go wrong, that they will be exposed horribly and everyone will think the worse of them. And when you take on a public role with many witnesses, like managing a wedding, this danger can assume the shape of a monster.

 

At several points in the New Testament we are told not to worry about life. this simple instruction usually falls on deaf ears because we can always find a reason why our particular anxiety is justified in ways that God, strangely enough, can't possibly deal with. Yet the solution remains simple: turn those worries into prayer. How often have we clung to our fears for days - weeks - on end before we finally remember that God might be able to help?. Only our scepticism and lack of imagination stopa God from showing us just how generous he can be.

 

This story is also a particular help to those facing major life events, transitions in life that, no matter how exciting they might be, leave us feeling curiously vunerable because we have lost control. A new home; a close friend getting married; a new job; a new baby; starting a new school; children leaving home; redundancy; retirement; bereavement. In this mirracle at Cana, Jesus demonstrates how closely he walks by our side to help out when we can't make sense of our emotions; when silent fears stalk our sub-conscious; when we seem to cry at the drop of a hat. For some wonderful and inexpressible reason, the God who upholds the universe cares about the details of our private lives. This is the message of Cana.

 

The story is also here to help us re-evaluate what we think about God. We are called to be self-denying, but also invited to be life-affirming. Whatever our picture of Jesus is today, we should throw some light on a much ignored characteristic: he celebrated the simple joys of human life, and went out of his way to ensure that others could too. We should be sure to follow his example.