Because of God’s graciousness and mercy, we have all that we need, and even more than we could ever ask for or imagine. In Isaiah, water is a sign of God’s overflowing generosity to all of creation. Jesus, turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana, provides more for the guests than anyone would have thought possible or even reasonable. To celebrate and to share this abundance with that same sort of profligate generosity shapes our calling as followers of Jesus.
Water is part of transformation of life (Isaiah), the promise of salvation and everlasting life. It can be associated with cleansing or generosity (as in the Gospel).
Isaiah 35:4-7A
This comes from Pentecost. Today’s readings celebrate God’s power to heal and restore. Isaiah looks ahead to when God will bring healing to God’s people and to the land.
The first 39 chapters of Isaiah emerged during the beginning of Israel and Judah’s spiritual decline. The overriding theme is God’s call to come out of sin—with its inevitable punishment—and into right relationships.
In chapter 35 Isaiah imagines a future day when talk of anger and suffering is over and God’s people are restored. Then God will bring salvation and wholeness for all who are physically and spiritually disabled. The people will be restored like a watered desert. The passage mentions the blind that will see, deaf who will hear, lame walk. But of all the elements it is water that will flow to fill the springs and make a pool in the desert.
Isaiah 35:4-7a are words of hope from the prophet for those who have been in exile. We read these words today remembering God’s faithfulness in times of hardship, knowing that in our own times of struggle it is difficult to keep the faith, to take heart and lift up our heads. It always seems that the world is becoming worse and it is hard to see God’s goodness and the goodness of God’s creation in the midst of the violence, the vitriol rhetoric and the political division we are experiencing now. We must remember that God is faithful, God was faithful to the Israelites in exile and God is faithful to us, in that something new, something good, will come, and we must take heart and be ready for it.
Long after these verses were first written, they then became a well-known sign of the messianic age. Jewish political leaders who made messianic claims—including Jesus—may have been measured against these standards of physical healing.
The church’s healing ministry must take on global proportions, excluding nothing in our quest to be faithful to God’s vision of Shalom. Healing cuts across boundaries and takes many forms.
We need to expand rather than contract our vision of healing to embrace the healing of the planet’s atmosphere, endangered species, economic injustice, ethnic exclusion, as well as the healing of bodies, emotions, and spirits. Healing is truly global and indivisible.
Healing in one place contributes to healing in other places. Any healing act contributes to the well-being of the part as well as the whole and reflects our commitment to be God’s global healing partners. We cannot separate injustice from physical distress or racism from infant mortality rates and accessibility to health care and healthy diet.
Psalm 108:1-6;
Charles Spurgeon called the psalm "The Warrior’s Morning Song, with which he adores his God and strengthens his heart before entering upon the conflicts of the day. Matthew Henry calls it "An assurance of Gods answer and salvation".
This is attributed to David and is praise [1-5] gradually transformed to prayer [6+]. He says his heart is steadfast toward God. With his confidence in God, he could sing and give praise. He thanks God for mercies to himself. David’s praise is in music with a psaltery lute and lyre which he did in the choicest time of day – the morning. God’s mercy and truth are worthy of praise and recognition of glory . This portion comes from Psalm 57
David’s praise transformed into a prayer, asking that he would be rescued from his present distress. Note he only mentioned his distress after setting his heart and mind right with praise from his entire being. He prays to God for mercies for the land, pleading the promises of God and putting them in suit (v. 6-13) which is partially taken from Psalm 60.
James 2:1-10, 14-17,
James here focuses on favoritism shown to the rich and on the relationship of faith and works. God regards all people as equal (Job 34:19) and so should we. This is consistent with God’s special concern for the poor, a major theme in the Old and New Testaments.
The early Church was composed mostly of the poor. James 2:1-17 is a reminder that we are called to help the poor and the widow and the orphan—those in need—and that this basic call is the fulfillment of what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus. Faith without works is dead. It does not matter what we say in the long run if we do not live out what we have been taught. As Jesus said, all of the commandments can be summed up in loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves. If we do not care for those in need, we do not love God. Plain and simple. Yet it is much harder to live out. We often put ourselves first. We want to look good in front of others. Sometimes we even do charitable acts to look good, but we are not consistent with them. If we are truly faithful, then we are moved out of compassion and faith, not out of an attempt to do good works to earn social points—or even a foothold in heaven. We do good works because this is who we are, what we were called to be in Christ Jesus: a people who love other people.
James and Paul use the word faith in different ways: James means intellectual assent to theological statements; Paul means a total loving relationship with God. Thus James’s “works” are the practical counterpart of Paul’s “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-23), the result of “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). James points out that living faith is demonstrated by works.
John 2:1-11
The Gospel is the story of the wedding feast at Cana, relates the first “sign” of Jesus’ identity and ministry that “revealed his glory
The passage from John’s gospel speaks of huge stone jars holding 20–30 gallons of water. Jesus makes use of them for his first miracle, teaching that our journey to the sacred comes through the ordinary.
The setting of a wedding feast also echoes both the marriage bond between God and Israel and the messianic banquet at the end of time. Here John introduces us to Jesus mother, whom he calls by name – Mary. When Jesus calls her “Woman” we have a clue as to John’s purpose. If this is the new creation, then Mary is symbolically the new Eve.
Mary shares the news that the couple has run out of wine. Jesus responds, “What concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” Jesus’ “hour,” set by divine plan, is the final revelation of his glory in the passion and crucifixion. Jesus reminds Mary that his mission is not to fulfill human desires but God’s will. Though he responds to Mary’s plea, he does so in cooperation with the purposes of his ministry.
But yet, Jesus’ mother then tells the servants, “Do whatever he tells you,” and the servants listen to Jesus, fill the jars with water and serve them and it turns out to be wine, better wine than what was served at the beginning. To run out of wine would have been an embarrassing problem to have, and it is possible the family hosting the wedding was not able to afford enough wine. Whatever the reason, Jesus was not concerned about this at first, and it also appears that Jesus perhaps just wanted to enjoy a wedding! But Jesus’ mother was concerned and he acted to meet her concerns.
Whether he did so to obey his mother, whether he planned to all along—we have no idea. But this was the first of the wonders that Jesus performed that caused others to believe in him, in this case turning water in to wine.
What will come, the “new” wine, the wonderful nature and taste of this new wine, and the feast itself serve as symbols of the messianic banquet, and indeed to the relationship of God and God’s people made manifest in the wedding itself. This will be the first of many signs.
The essential features of this “sign” are: the failure of the old (2:3); its replacement by a vast supply (2:6) of new (abundance was to be a feature of the last days); and the superiority of the new (2:10). The replacement symbolizes Jesus’ transformation of the old order of ritual purification and of the Torah, which water symbolized, into the new order of purification through the cross, through the blood (1 John 1:7) and through new teaching.
None of the other Gospels contain this story. None of the other Gospels focus on miraculous signs the way John’s Gospel does. This story, however, shows the fullness of Jesus’ humanity and divinity. Jesus was present at this wedding to have a good time, to enjoy this moment, to be fully human—and at the same time, Jesus changes water into wine, altering the perception of him as an observer to an active participant of God’s reign on earth.
This is the story of when Jesus, in John’s Gospel, moves to the forefront of proclaiming the coming of God’s kingdom. In the other three Gospels, John the Baptist is arrested and beheaded, and Jesus comes proclaiming the Good News. In John’s Gospel, it is the choice of performing this miracle, of deciding that the hour has come, in which Jesus participates in the kingdom of God, both fully human and fully divine.