John 2:1-12 2.6.22
Everyone loves a wedding! We all enjoy the beaming smiles of the wedding party, the beautiful clothes, the extra special food and drink, the music and dancing. Guests connect with friends they know and meet people for the first time at a joy-filled celebration that just brims with love, life, and abundance. Sometimes I wonder how much the bride and groom really get to enjoy the day, as there are often many guests to engage with, details to manage and possible hiccups. Like when the bride’s make-up artist was running late, and the groom, the pastor, and all the guests had to wait at least 30 extra minutes for the bride to be ready. Or when the wind was so strong at an outdoor wedding that it looked like lighting the unity candle would end up being a negative symbol of the couple’s unity being snuffed out. Even the most experienced wedding planner could not keep that from happening! Weddings can also be stressful when some brides and grooms (or their parents) end up deeply in debt due to lavish wedding arrangements that are out of their price range.
No matter the size or the setting, a wedding celebration is indeed a special event for anyone who attends. In first-century Palestine, and in many parts of the world today, a wedding was much more of a community-wide event than is practiced by families I have worked with in the US. Invitations were not only extended to a carefully selected specific number of guests, but to the entire community. You were invited to the wedding just by being a neighbor of the bride or groom. In the gospel reading for this morning, Jesus’ mother has come to a wedding in Cana, about 10 miles as the crow flies from her hometown of Nazareth. She must have known either the bride or the groom’s family. Jesus was also a guest at the wedding, and he brought his disciples along with him. It did not matter that they were not from Cana—the four fishermen turned disciples were from Capernaum, which was about 16 miles from Cana as the crow flies. Since a wedding is a community wide celebration– if Jesus is going to a wedding, his companions are going too. There would have been nothing surprising about that.
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Hunting Ridge Presbyterian Church 