The psalmist bids us to proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations, and they are marvelous indeed!  The first chapter of John’s Gospel begins by waxing eloquent about the eternal Word of God who became flesh.  Became one of us, so that we might become one with God.  That same chapter closes with the heady promise that Jesus’ disciples will see in Him the fullness of God’s glory.  Likewise, Paul’s epistle also speaks of mighty wonders and heroic deeds made possible for us by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Even the reading from Isaiah promises a glorious vindication for God’s people that will shine like the dawn.

Taken together, these texts whet our spiritual appetite for an extraordinary sign of glorious and cosmic proportions by Jesus.  A Burning Bush moment maybe, or perhaps a division of the waters of the Red Sea.  Surely at least a miraculous healing like the prophets of old, or better yet a new warrior King like David to establish the promised eternal kingdom!  At times, we all yearn for miracles.

But Jesus’ ministry in John’s Gospel begins quite differently: with a seemingly reluctant Messiah faced with what seems like a very mundane and minor matter: a wedding ran out of wine.  But of course, with Jesus, things are usually more than they seem.  So let’s dive beneath the surface of appearances to try to find some of those cosmic-level overtones that we so desperately want to taste.

First, we observe the raw material of this first of Jesus’ Signs:  water.  The Jews of the First Century knew well their Bible, so they knew that “water” was in fact the “stuff” of all creation.  Genesis 1:2.  That there were six big stone jars of the stuff also hints at the six days of creation.

Another clue comes in the first verse of John 2: this happened on “the third day.”  Chronologically, there is no way to connect “on the third day” with the sequence of events described in chapter 1.  But if we understand the Prologue of John as presenting a new account of creation, then “on the third day” might correspond with the third day of creation.  I think it does: in Gen. 1:9-13 the third day is when God separated the earth from the sea (think water separated in stone jars) AND the day when God created seed-bearing plants (think grapes).

Now, it’s getting interesting.  It gets better.  In Genesis 9, right after emerging from the waters of the Great Flood, Noah (a type of New Adam) was the first man to plant a vineyard and to drink some of the wine.  And in Exodus 7, the first Plague in Egypt which Moses performed at God’s command was to turn all of the water into blood.  As a Eucharistic people, I think we Catholics can appreciate the transformational similarity of turning water into wine, water into blood, and wine into blood.  It seems to be a biblical signature of God’s grace.

But what are we to make of Jesus’ seeming reluctance to intervene with the wine shortage in Cana?  His objection is telling: “My hour has not yet come.”  Jesus referring to his “hour” in the Gospel can mean only one thing:  the hour of his ordeal, of His Paschal sacrifice, suffering and death.  That hour was to come at the end of his earthy ministry, not at the beginning.  But why would He say that in this context?  Because the wedding that day in Cana was not His wedding.  At Cana, Jesus was not the bridegroom whose obligation it was to provide ample wine.  The marriage of Christ as bridegroom to His Church, the bride, was yet to come.  And the excellence of the wine that He will provide on that day — that is, the never-ending Chalice of His own lifeblood — is hinted at in the excellence of the wine that those six stone jars of water became at Cana.

Seen in this light, the miracle at Cana in effect encapsulates the whole of God’s plan of creation and redemption.  It incorporates the primordial stuff of Genesis, it embraces and completes the meaning of the historical Exodus, it illuminates the salvific work of Christ in the Gospels in the light of Sacred Scripture, and it foreshadows the purpose and the end of all of the works of God, through the final chapter of Revelation, which is to be the heavenly wedding banquet where Christ takes His Bride unto Himself forever.  It is an understatement, then, to say that with this Sign Jesus revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.  Rather, Jesus gave away the whole enchilada of God’s eternal plan, from beginning to end!  But what the disciples took away that day was only a taste of the best wine they ever had and a sense of bewildered astonishment.

Two thousand years later, we can perhaps see some things more clearly.  However, we also can be so fascinated with the extraordinary nature of what Jesus did, that we fail to appreciate the value of the ordinary and beautiful reason why He did it.  It was not His hour.  It was not His wedding.  But it was His friend — a friend in need — and it was His Mother, whose heart was filled with concern for this bridegroom in distress.  So even though the cosmic significance of what He would do might go wholly unnoticed in that moment, the even deeper significance of His love demanded expression.  THAT they would notice.  THAT love, the love of God — at all times and in all things — really is the whole point anyway.  And if we think about it, our own love for God and for each other also is the whole point of our lives.  Not only in whatever few extraordinary acts of faith, prophecy, healing or mighty deeds we might do, but also the love that we can share in the ordinary stuff and the ordinary people of our daily lives.