Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. John 2:11

In the old days weddings were about communities and families, at least as much as they were about the couple getting married. We can be glad, of course, that arranged marriages for purposes of dynasties and clan alliances are largely a thing of the past.

But I sometimes wonder if we haven’t tipped a little too far in the other direction in which couples try to express their unique individuality in their celebration, and in which there is social pressure to create an over-the-top romantic and “memorable” experience. At least that’s what so many of the wedding websites and magazines encourage. And so there’s an allure to do more, stress more, spend more than a couple’s financial and spiritual resources can really stretch.

I understand that saying this may make me sound like a bit of a stick-in-the-mud! But the modern New Jersey wedding industry is not what John the Gospel writer had in mind when he wrote about the wedding in Cana of Galilee – the first of Jesus’ signs.

In most of human history – and certainly in New Testament Judaism – weddings were a time for the whole community to come together to celebrate with a bride and groom and their families a new union; a continuation of life and its goodness.Weddings were an affirmation of God’s abundance and provision, a time for joy and feasting that was in contrast to every-day existence that was taken up mostly in hard physical work of one kind or another. A wedding was not only a break from work, but a reminder that God is the giver of life, a sabbath of sorts where the community could remember that it is sustained ultimately by God’s hand and not by their own efforts.

And even more, weddings in ancient Israel were a symbol of God’s purpose for the world coming to fruition – that all creation and all people would flourish and be filled with abundance and life as a reflection of God’s abundant generosity. The image of a wedding banquet as a symbol of God’s love and goodness appears throughout the Old Testament. The reading from Isaiah nods towards that: “For the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”

So when Jesus shows up at the wedding in Cana, all of these themes and echoes and unspoken assumptions would have been in the air, flowing along with the wine that was being served.
As usual in John’s Gospel, the story being told is always about more than just the events being narrated. There are spiritual and symbolic meanings that John is careful to highlight in his crafting of the Gospel, even while he is relating actual events.

Running out of wine at the wedding of course would have been a social faux pas and embarrassment for the bridegroom hosting the banquet. Jesus directing the banquet staff to draw on the six large stone jars of water than had become wine – and very good wine at that – has often been commented upon as Jesus emphasizing joy and celebration and even helping a neighbor save face, at his mother’s urging.

All of that is true, but I think there’s something more going on here, as well. And John gives us a clue about how to understand it when he says: “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory.” 

Glory, in the Bible has to do with God’s authority, the heft and substantial nature of God’s rule. It also has to do with the radiance of divine presence in human life – something that we may be overwhelmed by or something of which we catch just a glimpse of in the ordinary workings of our daily round. And John has intentionally, I think, pointed out that when Jesus used his divine authority to provide the remaining wine for the wedding, it was a sign of the divine glory that resides in Jesus.

John signals this, in part, as it comes so near to the beginning of his Gospel in which he describes the Incarnation in terms of the start of Creation. “In the beginning was the Word” – an echo of the opening lines of Genesis “In the beginning when God was creating…” John is looking back to God as the fountain of all life and blessing.

And then, John points out that this wedding takes place “on the third day” - the third day after Jesus calls Philip and Nathanael to be disciples. But “the third day” is also a reference forward to the Resurrection, which took place on the third day after his Crucifixion. The Resurrection is all about God raising Jesus to new life; it’s about New Creation.

Tying Jesus to both Creation and New Creation through the act of creating wine which is a symbol of God’s generous provision and sustaining Sabbath-care is a revelation and sign of his glory.  It’s a glimpse of the divine presence in the joyful, yet ordinary and human celebration of a wedding.

How does Jesus’ glory show up in your life? Where do you catch a vision of God’s provision, radiance, and authority as you go about your daily round of work, family, school, neighborhood. friendships?
Sometimes we are quite open to seeing that glory – at a significant and joyful event, when we are in a place of great natural beauty, when we are listening to music that transports us. Other times we are really caught off-guard because we are just going about our routine, minding our own business, until something catches our attention, or maybe even blows our socks off, and we know we’ve been in the glorious presence of God.

But sometimes we can actively resist recognizing God’s glory. Sometimes we fall into that place where we tell ourselves that God will never show up in our lives, that God has nothing to offer us, and so what’s the point in even thinking about it. Like Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” we dismiss the divine presence and glory as “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.” In other words, a figment of our imagination brought on by indigestion. We don’t allow ourselves to see what is right in front of us.

But whether we recognize it or not, God’s provision and sustenance are always there for us. The power, energy, and authority that was present at the dawn of time, that set creation in motion, and then raised Jesus from the dead to New Life has never withdrawn from us, has never gone away. The purpose and the end-goal remain the same: to be filled with the joyful abundance of God’s life and salvation – for us and for all people. As the second-century theologian St. Irenaeus wrote: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” Alive with God’s purpose, alive with God’s joy, alive with God’s vitality – a sign to the rest of the world.

Let us pray.
We beseech thee, O Lord, pour thy grace into our hearts; that as we have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought unto the glory of his resurrection. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen. ~ The Angelus

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Millington, NJ
Second Sunday after Epiphany
January 19, 2025

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ Luke 3:21-22

The crowd was assembled by the riverside, out in the dry, hilly area about a two-hour walk from the town. They had come because they had heard that a strange holy man had been sending out the message that God was soon to do something important and wonderful for the people. God’s reign was immanent and the people needed to be renewed and prepared to participate in it. This holy man, this prophet, was calling the people to prepare for this fresh act of God by being baptized in the Jordan River – a whole body, whole-hearted experience.

The river was not wide, nor even particularly deep. It was often full of silt as it made its way south from the Sea of Galilee. There were trees and bushes growing on the riverbanks, but away from the water the land was arid and scrubby.

The was the place where tradition held that the ancestors who had spent forty years in the wilderness after their enslavement in Egypt had crossed the river on their journey to the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; they were going home. It was a place full of meaning, a reminder of God’s presence and action at a critical point in the life of the people. This was the place to which John the Baptist called them to come, to be baptized, to prepare for God’s fresh movement. In such a place, the people were filled with expectation and eager longing.

And Jesus was with them, as one of them, as one of God’s people looking for the coming of God’s kingdom. After he, too, was baptized, he was praying, and the Holy Spirit came down upon him in the form of a dove, and a voice from heaven: "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." God was affirming Jesus’ identity, his purpose, and his role with and on behalf of his people.
This First Sunday after Epiphany, subtitled Baptism of our Lord, is part of the on-going manifestation of Christ to the world that we celebrate in the themes of this season. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, this day is called “Theophany” – revelation of God – and they focus not only on Jesus’ own identity and sense of purpose, but on the full revelation of God as Holy Trinity. As one description puts it: “God the Father spoke from Heaven about the Son, the Son was baptized by Saint John the Forerunner, and the Holy Spirit descended upon the Son in the form of a dove” (Orthodox Church in America website).

All three Persons of the Trinity are revealed as present and active in this episode; a full revelation of God’s being. Once God is revealed the response on the part of faithful people is to be baptized, or to renew one’s baptism; to be drawn into a renewal of faith and life, to ask God to sanctify our journey for the year ahead.

In a few minutes we’ll renew our baptismal vows and be sprinkled with water from the baptismal font, a reminder of God’s unending fountain of love and grace. And so it’s valuable to take some time and reflect on the importance of our baptism, especially here at the beginning of the new calendar year.

Baptism begins with God. We may think that it begins with us when we decide we are going to follow Christ or join the Church or have our children baptized, a follow-on from our faith or the hope we have for our children to have faith. But in reality, it begins with the love and grace of God ready and waiting for us, moving in our hearts and minds perhaps only as a feeling or a whisper at first, then growing into a desire and intention to be connected to God in a whole-hearted way. Baptism begins with God because God’s grace is a gift that we do nothing to earn or deserve; it always precedes us.

In baptism we die to self and live to Christ. We let go of our very human inclinations to put self first and foremost, to think that we can arrange and manage life and the world on our own and the way we want it to be. We recognize that we are fallible, broken people, full of sinful predelictions, and we humbly receive God’s forgiveness and cleansing and new birth. As we die with Christ in the waters of baptism, so also we rise with him in his resurrection to the new life of grace.

But even more, in baptism we are joined to Christ and given the gift of the Holy Spirit to strengthen us to do God’s work in the world, to make us more and more Christ-like. At every baptism the sign of Cross is made on the forehead of the newly baptized. The chrism oil that is used for that signing has been blessed by the bishop and it is itself a symbol of the Holy Spirit, and a reminder of the connection to the Church throughout the world. It’s an invisible tattoo that each one of us wears on our foreheads every day and for the rest of our lives.

Our purpose in life as Christians is to live as faithful, baptized people. It’s our identity. We do not belong to ourselves; we belong to Christ, part of his Body – and so we belong to one another as well. No baptized person can be a lone ranger, a rogue individualist; it cuts against the grain of the Body of Christ.

That doesn’t mean we are all the same – far from it. God has created and called and blessed each one of us in our unique and varied ways. And all of our gifts and talents and abilities and personalities are also baptized and called into service on God’s behalf.

Just like those people who had heard John the Baptist’s preaching and had gone out to the Jordan River to be baptized in readiness and anticipation for the coming kingdom of God, so we also are gathered, prepared, and equipped. But now the Kingdom of God is here, in our midst, in and through Jesus. It’s not finished; we will not see it full and complete in this life. But each day we are asked to shine the light of God’s love and grace in the world around us.

At our baptism we were presented with a candle lighted from the Paschal Candle and told that Jesus calls us, with him, to be the Light of the world. Our purpose as baptized, believing people is to shine the Light of Christ into the dark places, to illuminate the path to God, to be bearers of hope and goodness, especially to those who are short on hope, to those who need to know that goodness exists.

Baptism is a gift from God to us, and through us to the world God has made.

Let us pray.
We give you thanks, Lord Jesus, that though you had no need of baptism, you entered the waters to lead us to the fountain of forgiveness and new life; pour out on us, we pray, the Spirit’s power, that we may live as your beloved children. Amen. ~ St. Augustine’s Prayer Book, p. 220

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Millington, NJ
First Sunday after the Epiphany: Baptism of our Lord
January 12, 2025