All Cleaned Up

If you are going to a big festive party, you will probably get clean, and dress before you go. So you shower or bathe, comb your hair, and all the rest. You want to feel good and look presentable. Your ablutions and dressing up constitute your preparation, and the event itself is the destination. So, for example, in the late afternoon, you might be scrubbing, and by mid-evening, you are sipping wine with others at the festivities.

I have these steps in mind when reading the story from chapter two of John’s Gospel, which we will hear in church on this Second Sunday after The Epiphany. It is the story of the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee, less than five miles northeast of Jesus’s hometown of Nazareth. Such a wedding would have involved most of the village and some from the surrounding region. The disciples went with Jesus to the wedding, and we learn that Jesus’s mother was in the mix too. They probably all got cleaned up before going and were undoubtedly enjoying the blessed event.

There are a couple of other “clean-ups” implied in the story. First, the host family of the wedding faced the mess of embarrassment when the wine ran out. Having the refreshment run dry would be humiliating to the family, and possibly be thought of as a bad omen for the marriage.

The other allusion to cleaning up comes in the choice of Jesus to eliminate the problem. The family humiliation never comes about, because Jesus tells workers to fill up six huge stone water jars. These vessels are at the ready for Jewish purification-rites. One of the concerns of spiritual practice is to clean up to come into the presence of God. Connecting to the Holy involves spiritual cleansings. In Jewish rituals, water was used, and physical washing was a symbol of the spiritual cleansing taking place.

These big stone jars hold twenty or thirty gallons of water. They were all full to the brim. What a lot of clean-up could be accomplished with that amount. But purification rites did not take place. This was a party. When Jesus ordered servants to take some of the water to the chief steward to taste, what happened signaled the arrival of new possibilities of people God. The steward knew nothing of the jars or the water. He knew only that he was tasting the best wine imaginable. If we thought 120 to 180 gallons was a lot of bathwater, just imagine realizing there was that amount of wine!

The bath is the preparation, fulfillment comes with our presence at the party. So much of our spiritual concern is our impurity, and our need to clean up to be with God. That will always be, but in Christ, we learn as well that Jesus brings fulfillment and communion with God: Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore, let us keep the feast.” Jesus is on the scene, and his signs are now begun. Nothing whatsoever is the same now. Recall now, again, some of the opening lines of John’s Gospel:

We have seen his glory, the glory as of the father’s only son, full of grace and truth…From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace…grace and truth came through Jesus Christ…It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known.

You are all dressed up with someplace to go; Let’s get this party started!