A version of this sermon was preached for St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lynchburg, VA, as well as St. Mark’s Episcopal in Clifford, VA and Grace Episcopal in Massies Mill, VA on the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C 2025.
Photo by Nacho Domínguez Argenta on Unsplash

Readings: Isaiah 62:1-5 | Psalm 36:5-10 | John 2:1-11

Jesus is not asked to celebrate the marriage. He’s not asked to give a toast. He’s not mistaken for the gardener this time, but he certainly does not seem to be high on the invitation list. Perhaps all the way down at table 26, two or three days into an ancient Jewish wedding celebration, he might’ve seen the steward looking frazzled before his mother came to get his attention. Perhaps he was there as a friend, or as a distant family member. We really don’t know. The couple does not come into focus until the end, when the steward, perhaps a bit awkwardly, lifts up the bridegroom’s lavishness in the wedding. And so the party went on. Only a few— Mary, the steward, his early disciples… they were the ones who found this wedding miraculous.

Weddings invite us to think about lots of things— life’s joyous celebrations, the loving relationship between two people, family, stability, home, peace— but they also bring up much more for us. They bring up family— loss, betrayal, sadness, grief, imperfection, all the human condition focused through the narrowed lens of a close relationship. For as anyone would say, the wedding celebration is one thing, but the marriage is another.

We take Jesus’ miracle at the wedding of Cana as part of our broader understanding that Jesus blesses marriage— meaning, he approves of it, celebrates it, calls people into it, etc., but by itself its hard to see the case. He’s talked into the miracle by his mother, who wants to save the poor newlyweds from an embarrassment they don’t even know is looming on the horizon. He’s not about to solve the problem on his own. After this, he goes home with his mother, bringing his new disciples. It’s a miracle, yes— its the first one in the Gospel of John, and it holds a dear place in our Christian story— but it’s about more than celebrating a narrow definition of love within marriage, or glorifying a particular way of celebration and extending hospitality. No, it is much bigger than that.

Marriage is a preeminent image, in both Old and New Testament, of the relationship God has to us. In our reading from Isaiah today, the Prophet presents the future vindication of the people of Israel as a wedding ceremony— the moment when God crowns her, celebrates her, redeems her. In the New Testament, the image is continued, expanded, to include all the Church, to include all of us. God delights in us, and intends to lift us up, celebrate us, feast with us, as Jesus does in the wedding at Cana.

Jesus own words to his mother imply that this comes at a cost. “My hour has not yet come,” or put differently, “this will set in motion all the things that are to happen: my ministry, my death, my resurrection.” On the third day, Jesus will be raised from the dead; on this Third day, he ensures that a feast is not cut short— that the bridegroom may celebrate over his bride, that the bride might delight in her bridegroom. On any wedding day, we aim to be present— not to dwell in the past or future, but to celebrate a moment that reflects much more than a moment. Weddings call us out of the day-to-day to celebrate the extraordinary, even when marriages bring all of the difficulty of life and human frailty with them. Getting married comes at a cost; bringing our lives in alignment with another means we forsake all others; it means we forgo opportunities that might benefit ourselves alone. It entails sacrifice for one another, suffering with one another. It opens us up to risk, pain, loss. It will end in death— death of relationship or death of a partner. As C.S. Lewis says much better than me: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one.”¹

It’s no accident that God chooses marriage as an image for our relationship to him, for the relationship of Christ and his Church. The ideal of marriage can be obscured very quickly when we look around us. Our own experiences, our own losses, our own mistakes can make this image difficult, even painful. Yet there is one thing that make this different from a human marriage. There is one thing that makes our best relationships mere metaphors for God’s relationship to us— and that is that God is the partner. God is the source of steadfast love. God is the one who chooses us to be his; God is the one who is made vulnerable by Love. God will never forsake us. God will never hurt us. God will go to the cross for us. God will provide for us. God is the fountain of life, and God’s ultimate desire is to sweep us all off our feet- to return us to a condition of blessedness, to a shared table of abundance, to a world that is whole, and at peace.

and God invites us to live as such. Live as if we are loved inside and out by a love that cannot, will not fail. Live as though everyone around us is given the same gift of divine grace and favor— they are. Live as though the feast has already begun, and live as though the most splendid food, your favorite beverages only get better with time. We are loved eternally, brought into relationship with God through Baptism and given a place at his banquet table. To extend that to others will make us vulnerable— yet we follow the example of our Lord in extending ourselves, loving others, and making ourselves vulnerable anyways. For it is the only thing we can do. Amen.

1. C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves ↩︎