Day: 31 January 2025

Dear friends in Christ Jesus,

We continue working our way through the season of Epiphany and the Epiphany theme continues in today’s Gospel. Jesus is still showing Himself to people. He is still beginning His ministry. Nevertheless, there is something very different in the Gospel chosen for today.

So far in Epiphany, everything has been very positive. The Wise Men have come to worship the newborn king. The people who gathered at the Jordan saw the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus in the form of a dove and heard the voice of the Father from heaven. The disciples went to a wedding in Cana and drank wine that had been water just a little bit earlier in the day. So far, people see Jesus as the authentic Messiah. They do not understand the full implications of Jesus’ authenticity, but they trust Jesus. They believe in Him.

That changes in today’s Gospel. Jesus has established Himself as a rabbi and has been teaching in the synagogues of Galilee. He came to His own home town, Nazareth. He revealed Himself in the synagogue on the Sabbath as He had been doing throughout Galilee. You would think that the city fathers in Nazareth would want to present the key to the city to Jesus, but they didn’t. Instead of welcoming Jesus, His own people rejected Him. Jesus presented His Epiphany in the synagogue in Nazareth and the people tried to kill Him.

The account begins as Jesus read the scripture of the day. The reading for the day was a prophecy from Isaiah concerning the signs and activities of someone who had been anointed for God’s special work. This is part of a longer reading that describes all the blessings that God’s people will receive through this Anointed One. In Hebrew, the word for Anointed One is Messiah, in Greek it is Christ. Thus, this passage in Isaiah tells of the coming Messiah, the future Christ. The person who fulfilled this prophecy would be the promised one of Israel.

The topic of the sermon that Jesus preached after He read from Isaiah was the fulfillment of the prophecy. Anyone who had been at the Jordan would have seen the Holy Spirit rest on Jesus. They would have heard the voice from heaven, [Luke 3:22] “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” At His baptism, Jesus took up our sins in order to carry them to the cross. It would make sense that He was the Lord’s Anointed One, the Christ, the Messiah. Jesus is now bringing this good news to the people in the synagogue in Nazareth. Jesus simply told them that He was the fulfillment of this prophecy.

The people reacted strongly to His words. After all, they remembered seeing Jesus grow up. They remembered that, when Jesus was old enough, He labored along with Joseph in the building trade. He hadn’t seemed like anything special then. He was exceptionally bright and precocious, but to say He was the Anointed One couldn’t possibly be right. Besides, if He was the Messiah, wouldn’t He at least perform the same signs in His hometown that He had performed elsewhere? In fact, shouldn’t the signs in His hometown be even better? Ultimately these people decided that Jesus preached beautifully and graciously, but His actual message was too bizarre. They just couldn’t take Him seriously.

Jesus perceived their thoughts. He diagnosed their problem:
“and he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself.’ What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.” And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.

It wasn’t just that they wanted Jesus to do some miracles. They were guilty of wanting Jesus on their own terms. They wanted Jesus to proclaim that there was something special about them because they were from His hometown. They wanted Jesus to declare them especially worthy of His gifts because of who they were.

Then Jesus explained the truth of the situation. God’s acceptance does not depend on merit or worthiness, but on grace alone. Jesus demonstrated this using the example of a pagan widow and a pagan general. God miraculously supplied the Widow of Zarephath with oil and flour so that she could feed Elijah and her family during a famine. Naaman the Syrian was the commanding general of the Syrian army, an enemy of Israel. Never the less, God worked through His prophet Elisha to cure Naaman’s leprosy. Both of these events demonstrate the sheer grace of God’s care.

For some people, though, God’s grace is a very divisive topic. When God says that we already have all His gifts by grace that means that there is nothing we can do to earn those gifts. Some people don’t like it when someone tells them there is nothing they can do to earn God’s favor. Instead of rejoicing in the grace God freely gives to us, they complain. They feel insulted. Their own pride prohibits them from receiving the grace that God wants to give to them. They turn God’s grace inside out and see it as condemnation.
The crowds in the synagogue in Nazareth were such people. Instead of receiving the grace that Jesus offered to them, they became angry. They were so angry that they wanted to throw Jesus over a cliff and then rain stones down on Him until He was dead. Jesus finally gave them a sign. When they tried to throw Him from the cliff, He simply walked away and no one was able to stop Him. How sad that the only sign they received was the sign of God leaving their presence.

We still come to God with our agendas. We still come to God with our preconceived notions of how He should deal with us. Everyone does this. After all, we are all conceived in sin. We are all enemies of God until He rescues us from sin. So we all think we know the “who, what, when, where, and why” of our relationship with God. We have it all figured out until Jesus comes to us and explains how things really are.

Jesus wants to give us the gifts that He purchased for us with His holy life, His suffering, and His death. He wants to give the gifts that He secured with His resurrection from the dead. He wants to tell us how His death on the cross has freed us from our captivity, opened our eyes to His salvation, and liberated us from sin’s oppression.

He comes to us as He came to the people of Nazareth in their synagogue. He has given us His teachings in the words of the Bible. He has promised that when we hear His words, the Holy Spirit will work in us to establish and strengthen our belief in Him. The gifts that Jesus offered to the people in Nazareth will be ours.

Sadly, Jesus’ offer is still divisive. There are some who reject His gifts and label them oppressive. There are some whose pride will not allow them to admit that they are sinners who need God’s grace. There are some who reject the Anointed One’s agenda rather than change the sinful agenda with which they were born. Such people would rather go to hell than surrender the plans they have for themselves. They follow the example of the people of Nazareth.

Those who have the Holy Spirit’s gift of faith are like the people in today’s Old Testament reading. They had returned from exile in Babylon. They had re-built Jerusalem. Now, they heard the Word of the Lord from the Law of Moses, the Torah. It was a special day when scribes once again proclaimed and explained the Torah in the city of Jerusalem.

But as the people heard the Word of the Lord, they began to realize the magnitude of the sins they had committed against God. They understood how wrong their plans had been. Their sin brought them to tears. As the people repented in tears, those who were doing the reading and explaining were able to proclaim the Gospel, “This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep. Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” It was not too long after this day that the priests once again began the sacrifices that pointed forward to the Messiah who would save His people from their sins. It was not long after this day, that Jerusalem was once again the living object lesson that pointed forward to the Messiah, the Anointed One.

These people had not only been captive in Babylon, but they had also been captives of sin. The Persians had given them the freedom to return home, but, more importantly, these people experienced the tears of repentance followed by the joy of the forgiveness of sins. Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah for them just as much as He did for the people of Nazareth. He has also fulfilled that prophecy for you and for me. The people in Nazareth rejected the fulfillment and the only sign they received was Jesus walking away. The people who heard the words of the Torah from the mouth of Ezra wept over their sin and received the joy of forgiveness for that sin.

What is it that Jesus continues to do through His pastors that He has given and continues to give to His Church? The answer is this: nothing more and nothing less than what He began to do Himself and has continued to do ever since that day in Nazareth. The pastor is called to preach the Good News to the poor by telling them of this Gospel of God – called to proclaim release to the captives by absolving the penitent of their sins – called to give sight to the blind by showing them Christ crucified for the sins of the world – called to set at liberty those who are oppressed by taking them to the empty Easter tomb – and called to read the Word to the people of God. What Word? Well, today, on this day, it is this Word of God …

“The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me,
because He has anointed Me to preach Good News to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.”

The eyes of all in the sanctuary were fixed on Him, and because the Word made flesh was present with His people by His Word that day, He continued to forgive, to release, to give sight, to set at liberty, and to proclaim Jubilee to them, right there. And thus faithful pastors in Christendom joyfully state what has continued since the Word began: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus truly is the fulfillment of God’s promises. He is the Anointed One, the Christ, the Messiah. He has preached the Good News of the Kingdom of God. He has shown us the light of His salvation. With His life, suffering, and death on the cross, He has freed those oppressed by sin. With His resurrection, He offers the Lord’s favor to us. He gives these things to us through the Holy Spirit’s gift of faith. God has promised all these things to us and today they are fulfilled in our hearing. Let us not respond not like the people of Nazareth, but rather, like the people of Jerusalem, who wept over their sins and then received with joy God’s gift of forgiveness, life and salvation. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Dear Friends in Christ,

The season of Epiphany is all about Jesus becoming manifest, becoming known as the Messiah. At Christmas, He arrives; during Epiphany, He makes it known that He has come to save. In last week’s Gospel, we heard about Jesus’ baptism, and a lot happened there. Jesus was baptized to demonstrate that He came to take the place of sinners. Then, God the Father declared Jesus to be His beloved Son, even as the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove. A lot was made known about Jesus there: namely, that the Son of God—the second person of the Holy Trinity—had become flesh to redeem the world from sin.

This week, Jesus goes to a wedding and turns water into wine. But there’s a lot more going on in this text, too.

Here’s what we know from the text: Jesus and His disciples attend a wedding at Cana, where His mother Mary is also present. In fact, some pretty reliable theologians have suggested that Mary isn’t just a guest; this might well be a wedding involving some blood relatives, so she might have a personal stake in making sure that the wedding party isn’t embarrassed. Wedding feasts can go on for days, involving a lot of food and a lot of wine. In this case, the wine runs out while the feast is far from over. Mary tells Jesus to do something about it; and although He has some curt words for her, He also tells the servants to fill six large barrels full of water, then to take some water to the master of the feast. When the master of the feast tastes the water, he finds that it has become wine. In fact, it’s become good wine—far better than the stuff they’ve been serving up to now. Our text concludes that this is the first of Jesus’ signs in order to manifest His glory, and His disciples believe in Him.

So Jesus turns water into wine. That’s a miracle, a supernatural feat. But there’s a lot more going on. There’s a lot that Jesus is making manifest about Himself.

I. Five Aspects of Jesus’ First Sign
First, take that exchange between the Lord and His mother. She tells Him, “They have no wine,” a nudge that He should do something about it. Jesus’ response seems a little strange: “Woman, what does this have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.” For all the honor Mary rightly deserves, we remember that she’s also a human being in need of redemption. Here, it seems, she’s decided to use her position as Jesus’ mother to get Him to use His divine authority for her will. Jesus puts a quick stop to that. Although He is the Author of the commandment to “Honor your father and your mother,” He is also the Son of God with godly wisdom and a divine will that Mary can’t comprehend. He’s not here to do Mary’s will, even when her selfish requests are with the best of intentions. He’s come to do the will of His Father in heaven: that means going to the cross to die for the sins of the world, not backing up unprepared caterers at wedding feasts. He is going to do the miracle here, but for a different purpose: He’s going to do so to make His glory known. In the meantime, though, there’s a valuable lesson of Law in this: one of the biggest temptations you face, when faced with crisis, is to try to influence the Lord to do what you want. If the Lord didn’t let His own mother influence Him, He’s not going to let you alter His holy will, either. Instead, faith prays, “Thy will be done.” But there’s more to this miracle than mother-son relationships.

The Second Aspect: way back in Deuteronomy 18:18, it was prophesied that the Messiah would be a second Moses—God would put His words in His mouth, and all who listened to Him would be saved. As the Messiah, Jesus was the second Moses. At the start of his public ministry, Moses turned water into blood before Pharaoh: it was an announcement of judgment for the king’s unbelief, a warning that he should let God’s people go. That first plague brought death to the food supply as the fish of the Nile were killed: Moses’ miracle made the water worse. At the start of His public ministry, Jesus turns water into wine. It is not an announcement of judgment, but a proclamation of joy. Abundant wine is a symbol of redemption and restoration. In Amos 9:13-14 the Lord declares:

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord,    “when the plowman shall overtake the reaper    and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed;the mountains shall drip sweet wine,    and all the hills shall flow with it.14 I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,    and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,    and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.

By His death and resurrection, Jesus will restore man to the Paradise of heaven. Eternity will be called the wedding feast of the Lamb. Thus, in this way, Jesus—the “second Moses”—is not like the first. The first warned Pharaoh of judgment, while the second came to declare redemption. Jesus is not at the wedding for blood and death: He brings wine and life, by shedding His own blood. He didn’t come to pile on the guilt and shame. He came to die in your place so that you could be delivered from sin to everlasting life, to the wedding feast of the Lamb.

There’s still more going on here: The Third Aspect is that Jesus uses the big stone water jars—the ones that are normally set aside for the Jewish rites of purification. You might recall the practice of the Pharisees from elsewhere in the Gospels (cf. Mark 7:3-4), how they insist on washing hands, utensils, cups and even couches before they eat a meal; it’s a law they’ve made up, one that they said you had to follow in order to be clean. They’re big on laws—in fact, they believe that you earn God’s favor and work your way into heaven by keeping lots of laws. But washing hands and silverware doesn’t get rid of sin, so Jesus has a better use for these pots: He has them filled with water, and it’s this water that He turns into wine by His Word. It’s another facet to the miracle: Jesus replaces man’s water with His wine, a visual statement that He is the One who cleanses, who purifies. He replaces man’s rules, which could never save, with Himself, who will die for the sins of the world.

Fourth, on a much less grand or consequential note: it’s wine, wine with all of the properties that wine has. There are some Christians who declare that the consumption of all alcohol is sinful; and I’ve heard it said that when Jesus turned water into wine at Cana, it was non-alcoholic wine or was really just water that people called “wine” in a good-natured way. It had to be, they say, because consumption of alcohol is sinful. But that isn’t what God’s Word says. It’s wine. Thus, the teaching that all consumption of alcohol is sinful is a false doctrine. The lesson I wish to draw here is certainly not that everyone should drink and get blasted. Certainly not! Alcohol is not for all, and should be consumed only in moderation by those who partake. The far greater lesson is this: let us not make up laws which God does not make up, and bind people’s consciences to them. Doing so creates false guilt and false pride; it turns the Gospel back into Law, and turns people back into slaves rather than those set free by grace.

Finally there’s one last facet to this first of Jesus’ signs that I’d like to point out: except for Mary, His disciples and a few servants, we have no proof that anyone knows that a miracle has taken place. To those who know, and to you, the glory of Jesus is manifested. But to the casual wedding guest, how would he know that anything has happened? The master of the feast himself thinks that the bridegroom has opened up a new supply that he’s had on hand the whole time, because all he knows is that the servants brought him some wine to taste. There’s been no lightning flash, thunderclap, rushing wind or blinding light. Nothing supernatural appears to have happened. In fact, if you were there to watch the whole miracle take place, here is what you’d see: Jesus tells the servants to fill some jars with water. He tells them to take some of the water to the master of the feast. When the master of the feast tastes it, it’s wine.

It’s a miracle, one by which Jesus manifests His glory. But it doesn’t look glorious at all. Kind of like the manger. Kind of like the cross. Kind of like how Jesus normally works to save, manifesting His glory behind the scenes.

2. Behind the Scenes
That’s why I think this text would be a great one for an ordination sermon, and also why this miracle is a comforting one for you.

I think it would be a great text for an ordination sermon for this reason: Jesus is present there at the wedding, and He’s performing the miracle. But while He speaks His Word to get it done, He’s using the servants as His instruments. The servants don’t do anything miraculous; and the Lord Jesus may not even move from His chair the entire time this miracle was taking place. And yet, it was by this miracle that Jesus manifests His glory. It is by this miracle that His disciples believe in Him.

So if I were to preach an ordination sermon, this is what I would tell the new pastor: you’re the servant at the feast. You’re the instrument of God. You’re not a miracle worker, but the hands and the mouth. As you preach the Word and administer the Sacraments, the Lord is present to give forgiveness, life and salvation. You won’t see Him, you won’t feel Him; and there will be times when you’re ministering to people in dire situations when you’ll feel completely helpless and ineffective. But it’s not up to you: you’re the servant who’s doing what the Lord has told you to do. Be faithful to that calling, and leave the miracles up to Him. He will work the wonders and manifest His glory as He sees fit.

This is comfort. You don’t see your glorious Savior with your eyes, either; and there will be times that you’ll really be wishing for a miracle—to heal, to set things right, to make things the way they used to be, to get you out of a tough situation you’re in. You and I don’t like fear, pain, or uncertainty; and when confronted by affliction, we’re tempted to impatience as we pray that the Lord would deliver us now—right now. We know He can if He so chooses: there are plenty of miracles in Scripture where the Lord worked some spectacular wonder for all to see. But when it’s your turn to suffer and that time drags on, the devil will tempt you to be impatient with God, to grow weary of waiting for Him to work miracles.

Do not forget that faith trusts in what it does not see. Do not forget that faith means trusting in what you do not see, often in spite of what you do. Do not forget, in the words of Romans 8:24-25, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” The Lord is faithful, even when you do not see miracles. Your proof is the cross: for if God has already sacrificed His Son for you, He will not forsake you now.

But the message of the wedding of Cana is not patience, of waiting for a miracle at a later date. When told that the wine was running out, Jesus didn’t say, “Be patient! And don’t worry: in heaven there will be enough wine!” He worked a miracle then and there, even though many didn’t notice the miracle.

That’s the lesson of the wedding at Cana: the Lord is present here, with you. And where the Lord is present, He is working miracles. And the miracles He works here are far greater than turning water into wine: He’s turning dead sinners into living children of God.

After the service today, you depart from this place—and the Lord goes with you. You’ll go back to family life, school, work, whatever your callings entail. Some of the things you have to do will be frustrating and seem to border on futility as you beat your head against the wall. But you are a child of God, living a sanctified life; and as you deal with those around you, you are God’s voice and God’s hands to care for them. The Lord used servants to fill the water jars at the wedding. He will use you in service to others, too.

That’s the lesson from the wedding at Cana, where Jesus performed His first sign and manifested His glory, and no one seemed to notice, except his disciples. The same Lord is with you, present to save, working to give you the miracle of eternal life: and He manifests His glory in the miraculous truth that for His sake, you are forgiven for all of your sins. In the Name…

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