This sermon was preached at St Peter’s Evangelical-Lutheran Church, Public Schools Club, Adelaide, 5pm.
Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Today we just read in this
reading that Jesus attended a wedding, and turned water into wine, and that
this was the first sign or the first miracle that he performed. And this is
something very significant for us to consider.
At the beginning of the world, marriage was the first thing that was established between Adam and Eve. They were brought together in marriage, even at a time when there was no sin in the world.
When Adam and Eve sinned, then sin came into the world, and into marriage came a certain amount of hardship as a result, the kinds of hardships that weren’t there before. Sin has infected and corrupted us all completely and totally, as members of the human race, and we all stand condemned by the perfect law of God, and need a Saviour, who is Jesus Christ, who has paid for and cancelled the debt that we owed to God with his sacrifice and his blood, so that when we trust in him, our sin is completely and totally washed away and forgiven. It’s a wonderful thing to celebrate a wedding, and the coming together of a man and a woman in marriage. But at this wedding in the town of Cana, in the reading, their wine ran out, and it would have been a great embarrassment to them all, and would have really put a dampener on the celebrations. I think this little detail and event where the wine ran out, shows us the terrible deficiency and lack that we have, and even that we have in our marriages too, without the presence of Jesus and without the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And so, Jesus, it turns out, performed his first miracle at this wedding—his first miracle at the celebration of the first arrangement that God set up between human beings right from the very beginning. Even in the Scriptures, we read that Jesus and the church have a relationship as a groom and a bride. The kingdom of God is a continual wedding banquet, a continual wedding celebration. Jesus himself lays down his life for the sinful people of the world, pouring out his blood and his life as the one perfect, sufficient sacrifice for sin. And just as at the beginning, a woman was formed and shaped out of Adam’s side and brought to him, so also when Jesus was on the cross, a soldier pierced the side of Jesus, and blood and water flowed out. From the side of Jesus is formed the church, through the water of baptism, and through the holy and precious blood of Christ. And in Ephesians, we read: Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Here, we see that there is a wonderful picture in marriage of the way in which Christ loves his church, died for her, washes her, and becomes united with her in one flesh and spirit.
So, it’s no wonder that Jesus performs his first miracle, then, at a wedding. Because the marriage between a man and a woman shows us the wonderful relationship which he himself will enter into with his holy people, his holy church, his holy bride. Jesus promises to bless marriage, and to sanctify it, and make it holy, and also in such a way that when we go through the hardships of marriage, he is always willing and at hand to change water into wine.
And so, we come together today with great joy and reverence to bless this couple with the blessing of God, and to pray for their life together as husband and wife, as a picture and a witness of that wonderful heavenly marriage of Christ and his church. Amen.
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