If Agatha Christie were to write a novel based on this week’s Gospel, she might well call it, “the strange affair of the wedding at Cana.” Why? Because whenever we see a reading from John’s Gospel, we should immediately presume that all will not be as it seems. Like all good writers – and John was a very good writer – he leads us on a journey to an ending only he knows. Along the way he leaves clues and indications as to where he is going and it is up to us – or Hercule Poirot – to follow the leads, decipher the clues until, with all the cast of characters gathered in the drawing-room, he announces “Violà, mon ami, this is what it all means.”

So, like good detectives let us follow Poirot with our imaginations, as he searches for clues to help decipher “the strange affair of the wedding at Cana.”

Firstly, Poirot would, in his own inimitable way, attempt to situate the wedding in it’s context and timeline.

He would deduce the following: The central character, Jesus, had just been baptised and was still an unknown carpenter from Nazareth. He was at the wedding with his mother and his disciples. With almost all of Jesus’ friends and relations at the wedding we might deduce that the couple getting married were either close friends or even relatives. Talking to others who were at the wedding Poirot discovers that Jesus and his mother exchanged what appeared to be tense words before the ‘strange event’ happened. Shortly after this exchange of words Jesus ordered six large stone jars to be filled with water. What happened next is what makes this “a strange affair”, for when that water was tasted by the MC of the wedding, it had become wine – excellent, high quality, expensive wine!

Looking into the background of the person who wrote about this ‘strange affair’, Poirot discovers some other important details, particularly that it was written down almost eighty years after the event, and lots of amazing things had happened to the central character, Jesus, in the meantime. Indeed, it seems that this ‘strange affair’ was only the first of many, even stranger events.

With this as background Poirot looked closely at the evidence left behind in John’s written account of the event and he noticed several important anomalies and irregularities which led to the real significance of “the strange affair of the wedding at Cana.”

These are the clues he found:

One:  Unusually, John is the only one who wrote of this event. Why would Mark, Matthew and Luke, all writing earlier than John, either not know about it or choose to leave it out of their Gospels?

Two:  Why would John refuse to call this event a ‘miracle’, which it plainly is? Instead, he insisted on referring to it as a ‘sign’.

Three: Why would a writer of John’s obvious ability begin with the words, “…on the third day…” and then give no context whatsoever for the words? The ‘third day’ after what? To what is John drawing our attention?

Four: Mary, the mother of Jesus, is central to this ‘sign’ or miracle, yet John never calls her by name, referring to her only in a colder, impersonal way (“…and the mother of Jesus was there…”).

Also, after this event Mary disappears completely from the Gospel until she suddenly appears again under the cross of Jesus.

Five: When Mary tells her son that there is no wine, his words to her are very strange – “…my hour has not yet come…” What could he be talking about here?

What can the great Hercule Poirot make of these clues and are they enough to reach some conclusions?

Clue one – why is John the only one to mention this event? – we must leave this clue aside for now. There could be many reasons. As John himself admits, “If everything Jesus did was written down, the world could not contain the books that would be written…”. All of the authors had to pick and choose the stories, miracles, parables and encounters they wished to include in their account of Jesus life. The other possibility, of course, is that it is a parable of sorts, a story that helps John make an important point.

Clue two – why does John use the word ‘sign’ rather than ‘miracle’ when he talks about events which clearly were miracles?  The answer to the strange choice of word can only be that John finds the word ‘miracle’ too emotionally charged and therefore misleading. A ‘miracle’ is, in itself, an amazing and mysterious happening, calling for an explanation. It seems that for John, the actual event itself is not what is important. Rather, for John, every ‘miracle’ is a sign (signpost) to something else, and it is this ‘something else’ that is of central importance.

In other words, turning water into wine is amazing, but much more amazing is the mystery to which it is pointing. 

Clue three – why begin with the words ‘on the third day…’ and give no context? You do not need to be Hercule Poirot to realise that this exact phrase is used again at the Resurrection of Jesus. It can be concluded, then, that somehow John wanted the wedding at Cana to be a ‘sign of’, or ‘point to’, Jesus’ Resurrection. Why? “Mon ami, be patient, the great Hercule Poirot will explain all.”

Clue four – why does Mary, central to this miracle, completely disappear after this event until the day of Jesus crucifixion when she appears again at the cross?

I think the question, ‘where did Mary go after the wedding until the crucifixion…’ is not important here. What John seems to be doing is using the presence of Mary to link the wedding feast with the death of Jesus.

Clue five – “why would Jesus use the strange phrase, “my hour has not yet come…” in response to his mother’s request to help save the bride and groom embarrassment at their wedding.? This is yet another phrase we come across later in John’s Gospel – this time at the Last Supper, just before Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, when he says, “…Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to be glorified…”  There are no accidents in John’s Gospel, so we can conclude that the repetition of the phrase links the events at the wedding with what happened at the Last Supper.

Now the time has come for Poirot to gather the characters in the drawing-room and amaze them with his explanation of events and amazing conclusion to the story. Let’s listen to him in our imagination.

“The first clue is John’s use of the word ‘sign’ rather than ‘miracle’ right through his Gospel. It is clear that John wants to take our focus away from the miracle itself (turning water into wine, healing a blind man, etc) and point us in the direction of something far more amazing than the healing or cure itself.

Two of the other clues use specifically repeated phrases to link the wedding at Cana with the events of the last two days of Jesus’ life, and yet another clue links Mary to the same events.

Since all three clues point us towards the Last Supper, Cross and Resurrection of Jesus we can, without any doubt conclude that John is using the wedding at Cana to point us to the climactic events of Jesus’ last days.

Why do this? John sees the wedding feast as the ‘first sign that Jesus did’, and he sees the events of his last three days as the ‘last sign he did.

First and last……start and finish….. John is saying to us that from the very start of Jesus ministry, when he performed his first sign, he was on a journey towards death and resurrection. From the very beginning everything Jesus did between his ‘first and last sign’ pointed inevitably to his cross and resurrection.

But a sign of what? The death and Resurrection of Jesus pointed clearly to Jesus being the promised Messiah but more than that, it pointed to Jesus himself being God.

This is a huge assertion – that God lived among us; walked with us; talked with us; died for us; rose from the dead to forever make us children of God and heirs to God’s Kingdom.

Think of it! The miracles of Jesus from his first one – turning water into wine – through his healing of sickness and disease, to raising Lazarus from the dead, are all amazing and wonderful … BUT…they pale into insignificance when we consider that all they did was act as signposts to the incredible mystery that “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son.…”

Today’s ‘wedding at Cana’ tells us of Jesus first miracle, or as John calls it, his first ‘sign’. We can read it just as that; an account of the event which began the public ministry of Jesus, or we can see it, as John clearly intends us to see it, as the story of our eternal God, who loved us from the beginning of time, came among us to show us the depth of that love; who was prepared to die for us, before rising again in triumph, to restore us as God’s children, God’s ‘sons and daughters in whom he is well pleased.’

Who would have thought that this Gospel of Jesus turning water into wine could be an invitation to ponder the wonder and magnificence of everything God has done for us since the beginning of times.

Many thanks,

Brian.

If you have any thoughts or comments that you would like to share with me on this reflection, please send me an email: b.maher@oblates.co.uk 

‘My hour has not come yet’ – ‘Do whatever he tells you’

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