Jesus told them, “Fill the jars with water.” So they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.” So they took it. And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from–although the servers who had drawn the water knew–the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.” (John 2.8-10)
On that day in Cana, grace made a stop, filled up what was empty, and left through a side door, few people the wiser, although a handful suspected something out of the ordinary had come to town, paid a visit, and went on down the road. How else does a person explain serendipity, except to say an exception was made?
The headwaiter, nobody’s fool, was dumbfounded by the stroke of good fortune, and demanded to know why the best stuff was left to the last, when most everybody in the party was three sheets to the wind already and wouldn’t know the topnotch liquor from the watered-down booze by that point. We’re told he didn’t know where it came from or why it appeared when it did.
Generally, that’s the definition of grace–good fortune that comes out of the blue, turning a bad situation into a good one, or an okay day into a great one. When grace comes, we–like the headwaiter–aren’t sure exactly where it came from, but nobody, in those instances, wants to look a gift horse in the mouth. We’re just happy as a pig in mud that life has some saving grace moments.
As the Contessa says in The Bridge of San Luis Rey, “Now learn, learn at last that anywhere you may expect grace,” a valuable insight for life’s wanderers and journeymen, that a stroke of luck can occasionally fall from the sky, like manna in the wilderness. And that’s the beauty of grace when it knocks on the door–an unexpected guest, but always welcomed, because things take a turn for the better as soon as grace walks through the door.
As we may already know, the evangelist John works with signs, preferring to call the grace-filled moments in his gospel by this name rather than the more familiar label miracles, although both express the same truth–that once in a while God freezes the frame, stops the forward movement, and alters enough in the scene so that, when he steps away, things go in a different direction, go in a better way. For John, the signs are always about the word made flesh, or God dwelling among us.
Those familiar with John’s gospel know that he provides seven of these signs, the wedding at Cana the first of the seven, the others following in quick succession from chapters 2 through 11, forming the “Book of Signs.” These events bear repeating or bringing back to mind, since they are the focus of John’s good news. After the wedding at Cana, there is the healing of an official’s son, found in chapter 4. Then the healing of a sick man in chapter 5.
Chapter 6 has two signs, the feeding of the five thousand hungry mouths as well as the walking on the sea. Skip to chapter 9 and there we find the healing of the man born blind and in chapter 11 the resurrection of Lazarus, which moves us and the Galilean rabbi to Jerusalem, where things turn south soon enough, and not only in terms of directions, but also in terms of the story, until the Most High God steps in and makes right what was very, very wrong.
That John should begin his “Book of Signs” with the wedding of Cana is surprising, at least to some, because it doesn’t have the scope of the spectacular or the specialness of the spectators that the other signs will have. For example, contrast five thousand being fed with a small wedding party getting sloshed, or a dead man being raised up against a bridegroom being saved from embarrassment.
But it is never wise to second-guess an evangelist, particularly this one, who seems to know exactly what he is doing. And, as we will see, each gospel writer begins the public ministry of the Galilean rabbi with an event that sets the theme and tone for the rest of his book. So Mark begins with an exorcism, Matthew begins with the Sermon on the Mount, and Luke begins in the synagogue in Nazareth.
Perhaps the significance of John beginning with Cana is because of its insignificance. The big show will come down the road or after a few chapters. Here, at the start, it is important to show that grace, more often than not, appears in the ordinary moments of life, not in the extraordinary times, making its appearance where onlookers, like the headwaiter, don’t know where it came from.
Except in the minds of brides and, perhaps, their mothers, weddings are ordinary, at least in the sense that they happen all the time. That a wedding should be the setting for the first sign of the power of God at work in the Gospel of John is remarkable because it is so unremarkable, reminding us that the Contessa was correct to say that “anywhere you may expect grace.”
If it happened at a wedding in Cana, it can happen anywhere, a truth that we may want to hold on to, especially when we’re running on empty and very much in need of our jar of hope being filled to the brim. Grace can be found in a jar of water, in a call from a friend, in a kind word from a stranger. These are the ordinary disguises of grace, when an emptiness is filled, a longing satisfied, a need answered. On the outside, mere crock jars. On the inside, libations for the soul.
Some, those especially gifted with good sight, can find grace at work all the way, inconspicuous, but interwoven with the fabric of life. Frederick Buechner, who sees the unseen better than many of us, once explained how grace had been his traveling companion for a long, long time. Looking back, he saw those footprints in the sand, or fingerprints on the map of his life, signs as John says, that God has pitched his tent among us.
He wrote, “I was a long way from thinking in terms of my own salvation or anybody else’s, but through the people I met like the drunken boy at the Nass and the black man at the head of the line, through the courses I happened to take and the books I happened to read, through such events as eating that muddy turnip in Alabama, through my revulsion at my own weaknesses as well as through such satisfaction as I had in my own strengths, it seems to me now that a power from beyond time was working to achieve its own aim through my aimless life in time as it works through the lives of all of us and all our times.”
Unspoken, undercover, Buechner’s words point also to a timeliness that is always part and parcel of grace, what we need arriving when we need it, at the right moment and at the right time, at our doorstep when we open the door, the Amazon package arriving in the nick of time. “You have kept the good wine until now,” the headwaiter says to the groom, unaware that this was exactly the right time to bring it out, since the wine had run short half an hour ago.
If the resupply of wine had come earlier, it would not have been needed or appreciated. If it had come later, it would not have remedied or rescued the situation. But it came at just the right time, when the last of the wine had been served and when the crowd was starting to ask why the waiters weren’t refilling their glasses. Grace is called graceful because it has perfect timing.
What we know and what the headwaiter doesn’t know, at least in this story, is who it was who saved the day, who it was who brought out the good wine at just the right moment, so nobody had to go home grumbling about the groom because he was too cheap to stock up on the chardonnay. And although the Galilean teacher argued his “hour had not yet come,” he came through, perhaps learning himself that God’s timing is correct to the minute, if not to the second.
For us, it is important and imperative that we are not blind like the headwaiter, not knowing where the wine came from, but are clear-sighted about the source of our good fortune, recognizing the many ways that the word becomes flesh in our world, these sacramental moments when spirit coalesces with matter and water suddenly tastes like mighty fine wine.
One wonders if the headwaiter, much less the groom, made any effort to figure out what happened, or better said, who happened. I’d like to think they were curious enough, if not grateful enough, to look for some answers, realizing that the celebration didn’t have to be cut short because somebody–and it wasn’t them–came up with an answer, unexpectedly, unceremoniously.
That, of course, is always the challenge for us, to respond to grace with gratitude, to give thanks when the universe smiles upon us, to acknowledge that what was given to us did not have to be given. Grace, those beautiful flashes of light in the darkness, are given freely by the Most High God and we, for our part, can show we know where they come from by a response of gratitude. Or, like the headwaiter, we can remain oblivious to the source of the blessing that is now ours, ungrateful recipients of God’s good graces.
Robert Louis Stevenson, among others, came to see at some point in his life that it was grace always at work in his life, entering into the empty and sterile space and filling it with spirit and life, resulting in an insight that he spells out for us in this way, “There is nothing but God’s grace. We walk upon it. We breathe it. We live and die it. It makes the nails and axles of the universe.”
That was a man, we could say, who understood the gift of grace, that the jar never runs dry, not really, not ever. It was a lesson first learned by a widow in Zarephath in the time of Elijah the prophet who saw that there was only a handful of flour in her jar and a little oil in her jug, but who did as the prophet told her, and found that “she had enough to eat for a long time–he and she and her household because the jar of flour did not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry.”
It was a lesson learned again by servants at a wedding feast who did whatever the man of Galilee told them, filling the jars with water, as directed, and finding, much to their surprise, that water was changed into wine and the jars did not run dry. And, with grateful hearts, it is a lesson learned time and again by each of us, who, fearing we are close to empty, find that the jug does not run dry. Not so long as God has breath to give.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 