John 2:1-11

We know, by looking at all four of the gospels, that most of the characters who appear in the drama of Jesus’s life are male. That is certainly the case with the first chapter of the Gospel of John, for once we get past the moving and much loved prologue, the only characters in the first chapter are John the Baptist, Jesus, Andrew, Simon Peter, Philip, and Nathanael-all males. But in spite of this impression, Jesus’s world was not an all male one. He lived, as do we live, in a world of men and women, a world in which the power of women must never be overlooked or denied. As Gail O’Day points out: “The opening miracle in Jesus’ ministry occurs at a woman’s initiative….Men do not have a monopoly on witness and discipleship in John; rather, the Gospel of John narrates a faith world that would not exist without women’s participation in it.” (“John,” in The Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. by Carol Newsom and Sharon Ringe, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992, 295) In this sense, then, the prominence of Jesus’s mother in chapter two provides critical balance to the all-male world of chapter one.

Chapter two opens with a wedding scene, almost like one of the great Italian operas. Mary had apparently arrived before Jesus, or at least the text mentions her first. One ancient Christian tradition claims this was the wedding of James the son of Zebedee, whose mother was Salome, the sister of Mary. As the aunt of the bridegroom, Mary would have assumed some of the responsibilities of hostessing, and of making sure the celebrations went according to plan. Jesus certainly is not the host of the wedding feast but a guest like everyone else. Jesus’ ministry thus opens with Jesus as the recipient of a gesture of hospitality. “The beginning of his ministry is played out in an intimate, personal, familial setting.” (O’Day, 295) Ultimately, most of Jesus’ ministry would be marked by contention with the religious leaders of his day. He was a very strong, determined man whose life was to be one confrontation after another. But for these few days, as chapter two opens, there was no contention, no confrontation, no debating-only an honest sharing in the joy of a couple and their friends.

At some point during the celebrations, the supply of wine ran out. Mary, as one of the several relatives and hostesses present, would have noticed. It could have happened to any of us while entertaining, but with the whole village of rural Galilee present, as was the custom, this was a major social faux-pas. We don’t know if Mary went looking for Jesus to tell him, or if she merely mentioned it in passing as she was on her way back to the kitchen for more hors d’oeuvres. But we do know his response (2:4): “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?”

This verse is one of the most written about in the whole passage. To our untrained ears, it sounds like a rude rebuke from son to mother. In an interesting article, J. M. D. Derrett investigates all the customs around Jewish weddings of the time, and concludes that the wine supply was dependent to some extent on the gifts of the guests. He thinks that Jesus and his disciples, because of their poverty, had failed in this duty and had thus themselves caused the shortage. (J. D. M. Derrett, “Water into Wine,” Biblische Zeitschrift 7 [1963], 80-97) If Derrett is correct, we might conclude that Mary is rebuking her son for having botched his social responsibilities, and he then rebukes her in return.

However shameful the situation might appear, we must not be too quick to conclude that Jesus and Mary were in any way rebuking each other. Biblical scholar Ray Brown points out (The Gospel of John, Garden City: Doubleday, 1966, 99) that Jesus’s words in 2:4 are actually a common Semitic expression, probably translatable as “mah li u-mah lakh?” The phrase also appears in the First Testament, where it seems to have two shades of meaning: (a) when one party is unjustly bothering another, i.e., What have I done to you that you should do this to me?; (b) when someone is asked to get involved in a matter which he feels is no business of his, i.e., That is your business; how am I involved? Thus there is always some refusal of an inopportune involvement, and a divergence between the views of the two persons concerned; yet (a) implies hostility while (b) implies simple disengagement. Both shades of meaning appear in NT usage: (a) appears when the demons reply to Jesus in Mark 1:24; seemingly (b) appears here.

Certainly, some of the Greek Fathers interpret John 2:4 in sense (a) and think of Jesus’s words as a rebuke to Mary. However, contemporary scholarly opinion interprets the phrase not as a rebuke, but simply as an expression of un-concern. Jesus’s mind seems to be elsewhere, perhaps sensing already at the beginning of his ministry how tragically it will end. But here we see the first example of a paradigmatic woman who will appear over and over again in John, i.e., a woman who simply doesn’t take No for an answer. Mary seems to assume, in spite of Jesus’s apparent lack of concern, that it will be taken care of, and turns to instruct the servants present, “Do whatever he tells you.” Gail O’Day interprets: “His mother is thus a model disciple: she trusts that Jesus will act and allows him to act in freedom.”

Some have deduced the sense of rebuke from Jesus’s calling his mother “Woman,” instead of Mother or Mary. Again, to our ears it has a harsh ring, unless we understand the Semitism behind the saying. Two other equally “stroppy” women in the Gospel are addressed in the same way: the Samaritan woman (4:21) and Mary Magdalene (20:15). Both of these are, like Mary the mother, women who don’t take No for an answer. Adele Reinhartz analyzes the grammar of the saying, pointing out that in this case, “Woman” is a vocative. “Aside from the three female characters already mentioned, only God is addressed by a vocative, in Jesus’ prayers (11:11, 12:28, etc). Hence the fact that Jesus addresses his mother as ‘woman’ does not belittle his relationship to her but rather recognizes its intimacy.” (“The Gospel of John,” in Searching the Scriptures: Volume Two: A Feminist Commentary, ed. by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, New York: Crossroad, 1994, 569) Jesus uses the same form of address at Matt. 15:28 and Luke 13:12.

That “Woman” is not a derogatory address is further confirmed by the fact that John never names Mary in his Gospel: she is always simply “the mother of Jesus,” a Semitic honorific. Even in Arab cultures today, once a woman has given birth to a son, she is known thereafter Um-Bill or Um-Trevor, the Mother of Bill or the mother of Trevor. When I first began to spend time at St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem, in the mid-70s, there was a Palestinian matron who served high tea every day. She was called Um-George. No one knew what her real name was; in fact, no one was even quite sure who George was! But Um-George she was, an honorific offered to a grand and indispensable woman.

The actual miracle itself, while structurally so important in the Gospel of John as the first of the seven Messianic signs, hardly rates a mention. In some unspecified way, the water becomes wine. We should probably be uneasy about taking the miracle literally. After all, the sudden and unexplained appearance of 120 gallons (454 litres, or 605 bottles of a fine Australian red) does stretch credibility. Ray Brown (105) wants to explain away the quantity as a Messianic symbol: “One of the consistent OT figures for the joy of the final days is an abundance of wine (Amos 9:13-14, Hos 14:7, Jer 31:12). In 2 Baruch 29:5 (a Jewish apocryphon almost contemporary with the Fourth Gospel) we find an exuberantly fantastic description…that a single grape will yield about 120 gallons of wine.”

Perhaps, at the end of the day, O’Day (259) understands well the point behind the apparently-sensational overkill: “The miracle that Jesus performs is appropriate to the personal setting of the wedding. Turning water into wine is an act of turning scarcity into abundance, of repaying the initial hospitality offered him.

Jesus’ first miracle in John takes place in the presence of friends and family, not in the presence of powers and authorities. This opening to Jesus’ ministry shows that the miraculous life giving power of God is at work even (and perhaps, especially) in the intimate daily places of human lives.”

This first miracle had its setting in a home. Even dressed up as it must have been for a wedding, a home in Cana of Galilee was a simple place. Today our “holy places” normally are sites where individuals or groups have encountered God in some special way…The good news for us is that every home is such a holy place. I have a prayer magnet on my frig, which is from an unknown source in Hawaii: “Nourisher of Humankind, make the roof of my house wide enough for all opinions, oil the door of my house so it opens easily to friend and stranger, and set such a table in my house that all who enter may speak kindly and freely around it. Amen.” Others may have a prayer thumbtacked over their kitchen sink. These offer a constant reminder that God is there to be encountered in the ordinary tasks that mark the day, as well as at the altar of the local parish. Perhaps we will be reminded of the words of Theresa of Avila, “The Lord walks among the pots and pans just as much as he did in the Garden of Eden.”

By bringing wine out of water at a wedding feast, Jesus expressed his desire to share in our joys as well as our sorrows. His “being there” was a proclamation to every generation that he can be found in every corner of our life. His ready response to the emergency reassures us that he wants no one to suffer, or even to be unexpectedly shamed by a glitch in our own hospitality, and reaches out to meet us in our need before we clearly understand it.

So much has been written in this first Johannine “sign.” Some commentaries ask the wrong questions of this story, such as turning it into a sermon against the evils of demon rum, ignoring altogether a saying which was very common to Jewish thought at the time of Jesus: “Where there is no wine, there is no joy.” Others have seen a foreshadowing of the Eucharist, and certain early Christian mosaics portray the eucharist by combining the wedding miracle with the feeding of the 5000-unlimited wine, unlimited bread, the holy sacrament. But I think that’s stretching a point too far, and I’m sure it’s not John’s intention, for in v. 11 he tells us his simple reason for including this story: Jesus works miracles that we might believe in him even more.

One Sunday a few years ago I came home from church quite angry with my young daughter about something. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she was simply reflecting quite accurately a lesson in bad behavior which had originated with some unconscious signals I was giving her. Then I thought about that, and it wasn’t at all long before I was facing something that I suspect practically every parent faces: that there were some important ways in which I had blown my responsibilities to parent. To paraphrase St. Paul, those things which I ought to have taught I had not taught, and the things which I ought not to have taught I had taught. Some of you know those feelings, and know that they are pretty miserable. They have to do with failing someone who trusted you completely, even if only by failing to set a good example. I worked myself up into a state of feeling really rotten and guilty, altogether miserable and ashamed of my failure. The obvious solution was to pray about it, which I began to do. In the middle of my quiet but earnest prayer for understanding of the situation and for forgiveness, came an interruption. Around in my head began to go the words: “Jesus changes water into wine. Jesus has the power to change water into wine.” And with that interruption (which was not an interruption at all of course, but an answer of comfort to the tears of my prayer), I suddenly understood that Jesus can take not only plain things like water, but can even take what appear to be horrible messes, and change them into wine, change them into something that is good and healthy and life-giving and grace-ful. And I was so overcome with thanksgiving, with the most powerful sense of the goodness of God who offers us hope after hope, that my tears of failure quickly turned to tears of joy. Thanks be to God for his Son Jesus Christ who performs miracles that we might believe in him even more, and for this ever-present hope of fine wine miracles, which are repeatedly available to us, for where there is not this kind of wine, there is no joy.