'Come to the Feast of Love and Transformation'

 First preached as sermon at Croydon Minster on the Third Sunday of Epiphany (Gospel: John 2.1-11)

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The wedding feast at Cana is the setting for a most wonderful miracle of transformation and new possibilities. In a celebration of love, a wedding, Love himself, Jesus Christ the source of love and life, is present as the true Bridegroom coming to be united to us his church.

 

St John calls what happens at Cana a ‘sign’: a sign points to something beyond itself.

 

So where does this sign of the miraculous transformation of water into wine point us today?

 

Water transformed into wine is startling and amazing to us now as much as to the guests at the wedding; it is a sign revealing God’s glory, prompting belief in the disciples.

 

The sign of water and wine points to our life in Christ as his disciples. In the water of baptism we are cleansed and born anew. The wine signifies the wine of the Eucharist, the blood shed for us on the cross for our salvation and transformation, in which we drink – in normal times – the life of Christ.

 

The sign of water and wine points us to the Cross, where we will see Jesus glorified, and water and blood flowing from his loving heart. His Mother, Mary, stood faithfully by that cross, seeing the water and blood – a sword piercing her own heart too.

 

And Mary herself is a sign pointing to her Divine Son. At Cana she spoke four simple words to prompt Jesus’ action: ‘they have no wine’. On one level Mary is simply observing the practical reality that the wine at the feast has run out. She is also speaking more deeply, recognising lives not lived to the full – they have no wine - and pointing to the heavenly feast, the Eucharist, where Christ is present and transforming lives.

 

In Christ lives are transformed. The lives of the saints bear witness to that. And closer to home, as a priest I have been privileged to witness moments of transformation in people’s lives and to walk with them as their lives turn around. Those moments are as miraculous in some ways as water turned to wine, as a person puts the darkness behind them and walks into the light as a servant of Christ.

 

The sign points us to be faithful servants of Jesus Christ. Mary says ‘do whatever he tells you’. That is a call to service. It is the servants, not the principle guests, who first knew what had taken place at the wedding feast. That calls us to remember it is those who serve the purposes of God in their lives in simple ordinary ways of everyday holiness, who first glimpse his glory.

 

So, the sign of water and wine points us beyond the incredible or unlikely into the possibility of transformation. The sign points us to see God’s glory revealed in Jesus Christ whose hour is now coming when he comes as the Bridegroom to woo, us his people, back to his loving, transforming heart. The sign tells us that we are invited to the wedding feast of love and transformation.