Water Into Wine
Sunday, January 16, 2022 at The First Congregational
Church of Marshalltown, Iowa
Second Sunday after Epiphany
John 2:6 Now there were set there six waterpots of stone,
according to the manner of purification of the Jews,
containing twenty or thirty gallons apiece.
• Introduction: wash your hands
“Cleanliness is next to godliness” is an old saying that I
would hear from time to time during my childhood. All the
adults would impress upon us kids the importance of
washing our hands regularly, especially before a meal. It’s
a good idea as it is good hygiene. Restaurant employees
are under orders to wash their hands regularly and
especially now in the historic pandemic of Covid 19,
washing out hands often is still very valuable in keeping
the disease at bay. This was also true in the days of our
Lord Jesus, and washing hands was taught and commonly
practiced in the days of Jesus, both before and after a meal.
This is a significant detail in this, the story of our Lord’s
first miracle.
• Set the stage
Now to set the stage, so to speak, we find Jesus and His
disciples, along with Mary His mother, present at a
wedding in the village of Cana as invited guests; perhaps a
relative of some sort. When Mary learns that the party has
run out of wine-a great social embarrassment in those daysshe brings the situation to her Son. At first, Jesus tries to
back away with a harsh sounding statement: “Woman,
what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has
not yet come.” I’ve been assured that the statement is much
more respectful in the original language than it is in the
English translation. Mary completely ignores the protests
of her son, the eternal Son of God and tells the servants to
do as Jesus instructed. I find it somewhat amusing that
Jesus is so patient. He is God, having joined humanity, and
yet He goes along with His mother’s insistence that He
help. Nearby are six waterpots of stone, not for holding
wine but for water when the people ceremonially wash
their hands after the feast. Jesus tells the servants to fill the
jars full of water and then take a sample to the master of
the feast-the man responsible for seeing that the party goes
well. If he had known that the sample came from the water
jugs reserved for handwashing, he would have never drank,
but he didn’t know that, though the servants did. By this
time the water had turned to wine. Ever the practical man,
the master of the feast noted that usually the finest wine is
served first, but this wine, served toward the end of the
feast, is of superior quality. The wedding feast is saved,
and the servants and the disciples, no doubt, remembered
this event for the rest of their lives. Now, I’d like you to
note that Jesus chose to use not containers reserved for
wine, but the stone pots used for the hand-washing
ceremony. There is a reason for this.
• Washing your hands was akin to washing your soul
There is a symbolism to washing one’s hands. Before and
after eating, a servant would take some water and pour it
over the hands of people at the feast so that it runs from the
fingers down to the wrists because they believed that
physical cleanliness and ethical and spiritual cleanliness
were neighbors. To have one was to encourage the other.
So, in addition to good hygiene, hand washing was an act
of worship, asking God for a clean conscience, or
acknowledging that God is the source of a clean
conscience. For Jesus to use the water jugs for ceremonial
cleansing was to inform the people that He, as Messiah,
could forgive sins. He was the person who could give
someone a clean conscience and so we trust Him for
forgiveness to this very day. Often, during the pastoral
prayer, we invoke the promise that He is faithful and just
to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). The servants, the disciples
and Mary would have recognized this.
Oswald Chambers wrote: “Conscience is that ability within
me that attaches itself to the highest standard I know, and
then continually reminds me of what that standard demands
that I do. It is the eye of the soul which looks out either
toward God or toward what we regard as the highest
standard.”* The conscience is like a lens through which can
see what God sees. When Christ forgives our sin, it is like
that lens has been cleaned of all dirt and we can now see
clearly again.
• Conclusion
Some sermons are about Scriptures that tell us what to do,
but most tells us rather what human nature is like, or what
God is like. Today’s sermon is in that latter category. It is
not so much about what we need to do but to note that Jesus
is the One who can heal and forgive sin. The stains and
ruin wrought upon the soul He removes, and in a way that
no one else can do. He is the giver of the clean conscience.
That is just one of many things that Christ can do, and that
was the point when He turned the water into wine.
* https://utmost.org/the-habit-of-keeping-a-clearconscience/
Note: remember the old story told by Spurgeon, of the
person perpetually sweeping a dirty floor to his cabin that
was never clean because it was a dirt floor.