On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding [John 2:1-2, a portion of the Gospel reading assigned for this Sunday, the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL, Year C].
In John’s Gospel, the first glimpse we have of Jesus’ public ministry doesn’t arrive with heavenly fanfare. No angels sing. No star guides magi from the East. After the Gospel writer’s soaring prologue about the Word becoming flesh, after John the Baptizer’s testimony and those first curious disciples beginning to follow, after Jesus’ enigmatic promise to Nathanael about “seeing greater things” [John 1:50], we find ourselves at … a wedding.
There is no dramatic confrontation with religious authorities—no cosmic revelation—just a family celebration in Cana of Galilee that’s run into an embarrassing hiccup. They’ve run out of wine. It’s the kind of minor crisis that makes hosts cringe but hardly seems the stuff of divine revelation.
When Jesus’ mother brings the wine shortage to his attention [John 2:3], his response is almost dismissive: “Woman, what concern is this to you and to me? My hour has not yet come” [2:4]. It’s the first of several moments in John’s Gospel where Jesus appears to refuse a request, only to fulfill it in his own way, in his own time.
We’ll see this pattern again when he tells his brothers he won’t go to Jerusalem (but then goes “in secret”) [John 7:8-10], and when he delays his response to Mary and Martha’s plea about their dying brother Lazarus [John 11:1-6]. It’s as if John is teaching us something about divine timing, about how God’s work generally unfolds differently than our expectations suggest.
And yet John also tells us this is the first “sign” —though he relates it in such an understated way that we can miss its significance. Notice how the Gospel writer tells it. The actual miracle—water becoming wine—is tucked away in a subordinate clause, almost as background information:
… and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine [2:9].
It’s as if John’s very grammar is teaching us something about how divine activity often works—not drawing attention to itself in the moment but revealed in its effects and recognized in reflection.
The steward tastes the wine, unaware of its source, and marvels only at its quality and curious timing. The servants who filled the stone jars know more than he does about where this wine came from, yet we hear nothing of their reaction. And the guests—they continue celebrating, apparently oblivious to what has occurred. Only the disciples, we’re told, saw this as a sign of Jesus’ glory—and even then—only in retrospect.
Those six stone water jars, John tells us carefully, were meant “for the Jewish rites of purification” [2:6]. It’s a detail that sits there in the text, like the jars themselves, waiting to be noticed. In the midst of a celebration, these vessels of ritual cleansing become the containers of transformation.
The servants, going about their ordinary tasks, simply do what they’re told: fill the jars with water, draw some out, take it to the steward. There’s no dramatic gesture from Jesus, no prayer of invocation that John records. We’re not even told the precise moment of transformation. Instead, we learn of the miracle only when its effects are tasted: this water-become-wine that causes the steward to call out to the bridegroom in surprised pleasure.
We’re told that the disciples “believed in him” after this sign [2:11]. But what exactly did they see that led to this belief? Not the transformation itself—John doesn’t show us that. Instead, they witnessed something more subtle: the quiet way divine abundance emerged from apparent shortage, how grace appeared not in the suspension of natural law but in its mysterious deepening. They saw what the others at the wedding didn’t—that something more significant than excellent wine had appeared among them.
I think it’s telling that John, who begins his Gospel with the resounding declaration “In the beginning was the Word” [1:1], chooses here to tuck the actual miracle into a quiet subordinate clause. The transformation itself is almost whispered in the background of the story, while in the foreground, a puzzled steward remarks about saving the best wine for last. Might this strange Jew from Nazareth later paradoxically propound to listeners that “the first shall be last and the last first?”
What are we to make of this curious pattern of revelation and recognition? The servants know something has happened but might not grasp its significance. The steward recognizes the quality of the wine but misreads its meaning. The wedding guests celebrate without ever knowing the source of their joy. And the disciples …, ah, the disciples see something deeper, but only after reflecting on what has occurred.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the only time in John’s Gospel where recognition comes slowly, where understanding unfolds in stages. Later, Jesus will tell his followers, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” [John 16:12]. Even at the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene will at first mistake the risen Lord for a gardener. It’s as if John is teaching us that divine revelation often requires a certain patience, a willingness to let understanding emerge gradually.
But there’s something more here, in this first sign at Cana. Those stone jars, meant for purification, become vessels of celebration. The ordinary becomes extraordinary not through dramatic intervention but through subtle transformation. Water doesn’t cease being water to become wine—rather, it fulfills its nature in an unexpected way. Like those first disciples, we might need to learn to see differently, to recognize how grace often works not by interrupting the ordinary but by transfiguring it from within.
I think that this first sign in John’s Gospel teaches us something not just about Jesus’ power, but about how to recognize divine activity in our own lives. While we often look for the spectacular, for moments that announce themselves as miraculous, God’s transformative work might be happening in the background of our ordinary days, in vessels we thought we knew the purpose of, in transformations we only recognize in retrospect.
Like the servants at Cana, we go about our daily tasks. Like the steward, we may encounter unexpected grace without recognizing its source. Like the wedding guests, we might be surrounded by divine activity without realizing it. And like the disciples, we might only recognize the signs of God’s presence when we look back, when we notice how ordinary moments and mundane vessels have become carriers of something more.
John tells us this was the first of Jesus’ signs, and that it revealed his glory. Yet he tells it in such a way that the revelation itself is almost hidden, tucked away in a subordinate clause, witnessed fully only by those who had eyes to see. I think that too is part of the sign—teaching us not just about what Jesus did at a wedding in Cana, but about how to recognize divine activity in our own lives: not always in the spectacular, but in the quiet transformations that we might only understand when we pause, taste, and reflect.
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