Cana: The Wedding Feast

By the modern system of chapter-divisions, which has in some instances been arbitrarily or unskilfully carried out, it is to be regretted that the story of Cana is cut in sunder. In other words, it is to be regretted that the beginning of the second chapter of St John’s Gospel is so seldom read in immediate connexion with the close of the chapter preceding.

Nathanael, the u Israelite indeed,” was a native or inhabitant of Cana. He was convinced of the Messiahship of Jesus by the tokens of omniscience which the words of Jesus conveyed, and, pleased with the frankness of his faith, Jesus said, “Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig-tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” Because I have read your thoughts, and revealed your secret resting-place beneath the fig-tree, you believe that I am the Son of God, the King of Israel, for whom you and your compatriots are now looking. But soon shall you witness incidents more surprising. Heaven is about to open, and its angels will attend My bidding. A career of wonders is about to begin, which will shew you that the powers of a higher world surround My person, and that not only all knowledge but all might belongs to the Son of man.

Accordingly, three days after, at Cana of Galilee, Jesus made a commencement of His miracles, letting out His latent power; and in that first flush of opening heaven — in that manifestation of their Master’s glory — the faith of His disciples was confirmed (John ii. 11). Of these disciples, Nathanael was one; and even if he had not gone to the marriage as one of the four or five disciples already attached to Jesus — and even if we do not suppose that it was Nathanael’s own wedding, for the sake of which Jesus and his disciples had consented to tarry these three days in Cana — there can be little doubt that the good Israelite was present on an occasion sure to assemble all the notabilities of his native village, and that in the prodigy which astonished all the guests he saw the first instalment of the “greater things” which Christ had promised.*

* As there can be little doubt that Nathanael was present at this commencement of miracles, so we are expressly told that be was present at the miracle in which the mighty works of the Saviour were concluded (John xxi. 2). So amply was the promise fulfilled, “Thou shalt see greater things.”

Amongst the Jews a wedding was a joyous celebration, of which the festivities extended over many days, and, besides friends and acquaintances, the whole neighbourhood often came together. Whether on this occasion there was a greater concourse than their hosts had expected, at all events, as the feast proceeded, the mother of Jesus came to Him, and said, “They have no wine.’’ The very fact of her resorting to Him shews that Mary had not forgotten the sayings which long ago she pondered in her heart, and that she felt no emergency could be so great but that means of extrication were in the power of her wonderful Son. Still His answer appeared rather a repulse than a compliance — “Woman, what is that to thee and Me?” 4 We are not responsible for the supply of the banquet. Besides “mine hour is not yet come.” You know that I have not yet commenced that course of miracles, one of which you now wish Me to perform.’ There would, however, seem to have been something more encouraging in His aspect than in His words; for, as if thoroughly confident that He was about to interpose, Mary said to the attendants, “Whatever he desires be sure you do it.” And He did interpose. At that period the Jews had carried to a finical extreme the ablutions of the Levities] Law; and before they would sit n to a meal, for fear they might have contracted m casual impurity, they had water poured over their hands. To provide a supply for such purposes

5fO MIRACLES.

there were on this occasion, placed either in the banquet-room, or somewhere near hand, six great amphorae or water-jars, and these Jesus bade the servants fill with water up to the brim. And as soon as they told Him that the vessels were rilled, He bade them pour out a specimen, and cany it to the master of the ceremonies. As soon as he tasted this fresh supply, and perceived its exquisite aroma, he said to the bridegroom in whose house the banquet was given, “The usual way is to begin with good wine, and then come to the inferior quality; but thou hast kept the good wine until now.” But the miracle thus graciously wrought to relieve the embarrassment of their hospitable entertainers, not only filled the wedding guests with amazement, but, in conjunction with the Baptist’s testimony, and the impressions of their own brief intercourse, was a mighty confirmation to the faith of Christ’s disciples. In the power which willed water into wine they recognised a creative energy, and they saw that to the intuitions of the omniscient Heart-Searcher, their Master added the resistless volition which speaks and it is done.

It was a simple commencement — the simple commencement of a stupendous history. It was not such a commencement as human ostentation would have chosen: a rural hamlet, a village wedding, a house where the owners were too poor to provide for the guests* A few weeks previously there had been offered to Him a nobler theatre — a theatre the grandest which the god of this world could select. He had stood on a pinnacle of the temple, in the very focus of the faithful, in the midst of Jerusalem, in the heart of the Holy Land; and as the worshippers poured into the populous courts, and as far beneath His feet He eyed spectators, who were themselves a spectacle — the men of mark, the priests and scribes, the scholars and the sages of the day, and that multitude who were daily expecting the advent of Messiah; it was suggested to Him, Cast thyself down hence, for His angels will up-bear thee. Surely that would have been a worthy commencement, a fit beginning of miracles, — from yonder dizzy turret to glide down on no other pinions than His own sustaining will, and astonish the assembled throng as if by a descent from the firmament. But dazzling as the demonstration would have been, the Saviour declined it; and the career which was to end in rending the rocks and raising the dead, in eclipsing the sun and in bc-darkening a guilty land — that career commenced in the supernatural supply of a little wine to a few peasants at a village festival.

So truly Divine is simplicity. And like the King of heaven, all that is truly kingly, all that is heavenly, “comes not with observation.” That prodigy awoke no plaudits throughout Palestine; but it attracted august spectators. “Heaven “was” open,” and in doing it, Immanuel was u seen of angels.” It astonished no philosopher, no emperor; it only confirmed the faith of a few fishermen who had become disciples already: and yet it was the first in that series of which the Redeemer’s resurrection and ascension were the last, and on whcse firm foundation Christianity stands — the vast and ever-during fabric. It is enough for the disciple to be as his Master. Up to that hour His time was not yet come; our time is always ready. There is not a career of wonders before us; but there is a career of well-doing. Jesus calls us to glory and virtue. He bids us receive and employ the grace of the Comforter. In His own name, and in the strength of His spirit, as sinners forgiven, and as affectionate followers of the forgiving Saviour, He summons us to His own high calling of God-glorifying, world-bettering beneficence. And, reader, for your outset seek no far-off nor arduous starting-point. You need ascend no pinnacle. You. need go up to no Jerusalem. Let your Sabbath - class or your servants be your Cana; let your fireside or your tea-table, this evening, be like that banquet-room in Galilee, the beginning of your self-conquests, the commencement of a franker and truer Christianity, a mightier and more assiduous manifestation of youi Master’s glory. Thus, too, will the water turn to wine. Thus will common life, brightening beneath the Saviour’s eye, begin to glow with a sacramenta)

richness and a heavenly radiance, and ordinary incidents and engagements will acquire a sacred relish, reminding you of the great Transformer. And better still: this beginning of discipleship will be the first step in a progressive piety — a Cana which will be followed by its own Gadara, and Bethany, and Olivet; and as you yourself see greater things than these — as your own faith confirms, and your own devotion deepens — and as you find in the growing consolations of the Holy Spirit, that the Bridegroom keeps His best to the last — the disciples whom your early fervour impressed, and whom your later faith confirmed, will feel that where the glory is ImmanueFs, there are no bounds to the manifestation, and that where the water of ordinary life pours out the new wine of the kingdom, there is no risk that either goodness or comfort will ever run dry.

The miracles of Jesus have all a spiritual or ethical import. They were not isolated portents, unmeaning though surprising prodigies. They were u signs” — miracles wrought with a purpose, and revealing the mind of their Author. For example, in the case before us, which primarily illustrates the power of Jesus, and which is a striking attestation of His divine commission — when we look at the circumstances in which it is imbedded — when we inquire, Whatglimpses of Christ’s heart, what intimations of Christ’s plans ;n 1 ratal ‘loes it yield? we think that we perceive a certain light which it throws on the nature of Christ’s kingdom, as a kingdom neither austere nor ascetic, and a farther light which it throws on Christ’s disposition, as full of delicate considerateness and Divine munificence.

John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking. Most likely, the forerunner was never at such a feast; and with his matted locks and sun-burnt visage; with his leather belt and his hairy hyke; with his dish of locusts and his cup of cold water — to say nothing of stern, sequestered looks and unsocial habits — the second Elias, by his very presence, would have petrified the banquet into a stiff and silent ceremony. But Jesus of Nazareth was a man of another make and mien. Whilst in himself independent of all created joy, and whilst to the Lord of angels and to the Entertainer of worlds it was a deep condescension to become the guest of man; yet as the founder of the Christian system He fulfilled all righteousness, and He has left us an example that we should follow His steps. And as there was a danger lest in subsequent times men should misunderstand — as even then there were Essenes who held that perfection consists in abstaining from all the enjoyments of sense, “Touch not, taste not, handle not those things which perish in the using;” and as the Saviour foresaw that within His own Church men would arise forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats which God has created to be received with thanksgiving — the Son of man came eating and drinking. He made His entry on public life at a friendly festival, and pronounced a marriage honourable in all,” by working His first miracle to promote the enjoyment of a wedding company. And all through His public ministry He went on the same principle. Himself so holy and separate from sin, he cheerfully accepted the hospitalities to which he was invited; and not only as the guest of the pious Lazarus and the rigid Simeon, but by taking His disciples to dine with Levi and Zaccheus, to the great scandal of the Pharisees — He taught us, that separateness from sin is one thing, and separation from society another; that the pure religion which keeps us unspotted from the world is not the sanctimoniousness which, with a view to self-preservation, secludes itself, but the sanctity which still more effectually preserves itself in seeking its own diffusion.

The Saviour sought to make His disciples not nonhuman, but holy. He came not to alter human nature, but to restore it. He came to repair the devil’s destruction of man’s primitive constitution. By becoming il sh of our flesh, the Son of God became the Adam, and now the Head of every redeemed man in Christ. And, whilst the object of corrupted :ity is to make us imperfect angels, the object of the Redeemer was to make us perfect men. There was nothing ascetic, nothing monastic, in all His precepts or practice; and of all His natural goodness, of all the cures He wrought, and all the miraculous supplies He provided, as well as of all the innocent festivities which, by His presence, He sanctified, the great lesson wTas, that He had come not to destroy the flesh, but “to destroy sin in the flesh;” not to make His disciples fasters and flagellants, hermits and recluses, monks and nuns, hut — what is far more difficult, and needs an exertion more Divine — to make them holy men and holy women, pious householders and God-fearing guests, good servants and good citizens — such sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty as were our first parents before they fell.

Far more difficult than the anchoret’s separation from the world is the Christian’s sojourn in it; and, though rare, it is beautiful to see those believers in whose behalf their Lord’s intercession has evidently been heard, and who, before they are taken finally out of the world, are “kept from the evil in it;” those men of single purpose who, “whether they eat, or drink, or whatsoever they do, do all to the glory of God.” And as social intercourse is so great a portion of most men’s existence, as the time which is not absorbed in business is more of it spent in seeing one another than in reading books or in meditation and prayer, surely the act of profitable intercourse is worth some study. And, without too much straitening that simplicity, and unreserve, and excursiveness, which arc the great charm of the social circle — without converting every meeting of friends into a theological congress or a scientific re-union — might not a great deal be done to render our incidental gatherings feasts of reason, and feasts of religion too? Might not recreation be secured without altogether losing sight of intellectual and spiritual improvement? Must wit prove fatal to wisdom; an& is it necessary that sense should cease where recreation begins? And should we not often return with a much happier sensation from the evening’s intercourse, if conscious that we ourselves had contributed, or induced others to contribute, what was fitted to expand the intellect, or purify the taste, or hallow the affections of those with whom we came in contact?

More particularly by the occasion on which He wrought this miracle, Christ gave His sanction to the primeval ordinance of marriage. We must remember that we are now at the gate of Paradise re-opened. The Saviour is undoing the works of the devil, and is recovering for His people the forfeited Eden. The serpent has been bruised, the tempter has been foiled, and the path to the tree of life is again to be thrown open. And if there is to be any change, now is the time for announcing it. In the early Paradise it was not good for man to be alone,; but if in the Christian Church it is good, now is the time for the

Church’s Founder to declare it. But by that beginning of miracles the Son of God declared that He had not come to destroy domestic life, but to undo the devil’s desecration of it, by restoring its sanctity and its happiness.

Lightly as it is often gone about, and joyless as it sometimes proves, like the Sabbath itself, this primitive institution still survives, a small but precious salvage from the world’s great shipwreck, and, like the Sabbath, shewing how much the Creator’s institutions can do to promote the creature’s blessedness. Even where the knowledge of the true God was lost, this boon of His has in many cases lingered, and the wives of Psetus and Pliny, and the mother of the Gracchi, are witnesses how the sublimest and loveliest ingredients of our nature have been elicited, even among the heathen, by the right observance of a single relation. As coming nearer our own time, as neither withdrawn into the remoteness of antiquity, nor elevated into the rare and heroic grandeur of those who, like the wife of Grotius and Madame De Lavalette, were the means of rescuing their husbands from captivity; or that more heroic instance still of a Livonian maid, whose betrothed was sentenced to banishment, but who married him in his prison that she might share his exile in Siberia: — as modern instances, and as good every-day illustrations of the last chapter of Proverbs, and all the better as coming from a range of illustration external to Christian biography, we may quote the words of two distinguished lawyers and statesmen, who ascribed their eminence to helps meet for them. The first is Sir James Mackintosh, who thus writes of his: — “By the tender management of my weaknesses, she cured the worst of them. She became prudent from affection; and though of the most generous nature, she was taught economy and frugality by her love for me. She gently reclaimed me from dissipation; she propped my weak and irresolute nature; she urged my indolence to all the exertions that have been useful or creditable to me; and she was perpetually at hand to admonish my heedlessness and improvidence. To her I owe whatever I am; to her, whatever I shall be.” And in a beautiful passage of one of his journals, Sir Samuel Romilly, taking a retrospect of twenty years which had been inspired by the society of a a most intelligent mind, a cheerful disposition, a noble and generous way of thinking, an elevation and heroism of character, and a warm and tender affection, such as are very rare,” ascribes to that source mainly, not only the many and exquisite enjoyments of his life, but his extraordinary success in his profession.

To a relation so sacred, and which has developed some of the finest features of humanity, the Head of the Church has given His immediate approval and sanction; and happy are the contracting parties who invite to the marriage that Divine Guest who graced the wedding in Galilee. Happy the wives whose lovely piety — not lecturing, not reprimanding or reproving — but whose meek and quiet spirit — whose silent persuasion — wins those husbands whom “the word” has failed to win. Happy the husbands who — loving their wives as Jesus loved the Church, with a benevolent and self-sacrificing affection, in order to sanctify it, in order to present it to Himself a glorious and spotless Church — convey along with their affection ennobling sentiments and lofty aspirations, and who impart the robustness of principle to that goodness which has softened their sternness, and around their sturdier virtues shed the charm of its own endearing gentleness. Happy those partners who, like Aquila and Priscilla, are united in the Lord, and who think and consult and labour together in the service of the same Saviour. Happy those who, like Zacharias and Elizabeth, walk in all the statutes and ordinances blameless, and who walk all the longer and all the better because they walk arm-in-arm.