“ON THE THIRD DAY”

(Text: John 2:1-11)

Have you heard the one about the clergyman pulled over during the R.I.D.E. program of the holiday season? “Good evening, officer,” he said, as he rolled down the window, “is there a problem?” “Have you consumed any alcohol this evening, Rev?” the policeman asked him. “I drank a little wine at a wedding reception a few hours ago,” he confessed. The policeman pointed his flashlight into the car and noticed a cork protruding from a brown paper bag on the passenger seat. “What’s in the bag?” he inquired. “Oh, just water,” the clergyman replied. The officer asked him to hand it over. After removing the cork and holding the bottle up to his nose he announced: “That’s not water; that’s wine!” And without missing a beat he clergyman exclaimed, “Lord be praised! He’s done it again!”

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Well, in the opening sentence of his story about the first time Jesus changed water into wine John raises two important theological images in the minds of his Gospel’s readers: the image of the third day, and the image of the wedding.

“On the third day,” John begins. Those words are most familiar to us from the ancient creeds of our Holy Communion liturgy: “On the third day he rose again.” In today’s Gospel, John is referring to the third day after Jesus’ baptism. His submersion into the water of the Jordan, and his emersion out of the water are a symbolic preview of the fulfillment of Jesus’ public ministry in his Good Friday death on the cross and his Easter Sunday resurrection from the tomb. But John also connects the third day of Jesus’ ministry with the third day of God’s original creation, described in the first chapter of Genesis [1:9-13]:

“God said, ‘Let the waters and the dry land appear.’ And it was so. Then God said, ‘Let the earth put forth plants and fruit trees of every kind.’ And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.”

On the third day of creation God produced the basic ingredients necessary for making wine! On the third day of Jesus’ ministry he does the same. In Jesus Christ God promises to produce a whole new creation – which begins to unfold in his resurrection “on the third day” after his crucifixion! And the completion of God’s new creation is symbolized by the image of the wedding.

All through the bible, the wedding banquet is the sign of God’s promised salvation in the coming of the Messiah. Today’s first lesson from the prophet Isaiah is just one of many examples: “As a young man marries a young woman, so shall Israel’s creator marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”

According to Jewish custom, once marriage arrangements had been agreed upon, by the fathers of the bride and groom, both families would meet together. The groom’s father would pour a cup of wine and give it to his son. The son would the offer the cup to his intended bride and propose marriage with the traditional toast: “This cup is a new covenant in my blood…”

At the wedding in Cana Jesus, God’s only-begotten Son, offers the best wine of his own precious blood as he proposes marriage into the promised new covenant between God and all of humanity. In Jesus Christ, the divine family of God – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – to which he belongs by his divine nature, and the human family of mortals into which he was born through his mother Mary, will be united into one family. Today’s Gospel looks forward to the consummation of the marriage between God and humanity in Jesus’ death on the cross, where the divine immortality of God’s eternal life is united with the death of human mortality.

And in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God calls to life a whole new covenant community of which the Christian church is the first sign! On the first day of every week – on the Day of Resurrection; on the third day after his crucifixion – our risen Lord and Saviour gathers his disciples together in worship to proclaim his death on the cross through the preaching of his word and the celebration of his sacraments. Then he sends us forth, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to reflect God’s sacrificial love in words of hope and deeds of compassion, and to invite all people to the eternal wedding banquet of God’s holy communion!