Revealed His Glory

John 2:1-11

† In Jesus Name†

May the grace of God help you realize the glory of God that is revealed to you as experience His glory, may you grow to do what He asks, and depend up on Him more!

Who saw the glory revealed?

As I studied the gospel reading this week, one phrase kept grabbing my attention.

This miraculous sign at Cana in Galilee was the first time Jesus revealed his glory

This thought, that Jesus revealed His glory for the first time, just needed to be looked into, it needed to be meditated upon, and I think it is a key for us today.

There is a question that accompanies it though, something else we need to think through.

Here it is, “who was this glory revealed to?”

We are going to look at three different groups, those who experienced it, the servants who had done what He said, and the disciples who would grow in their faith and dependence upon Jesus, as they saw His glory revealed.

As we see and experience His glory, I pray we are changed even more dramatically that the wine was changed!

Experiencing it without seeing it

The first group is the “master of ceremonies” and the bridegroom, and probably most of the guests.  They certainly experienced the miracle, yet they didn’t know where the wine had come from, they simply enjoyed the wine, and the fellowship it caused.

The master of ceremonies didn’t understand it either,  as he asks the logic of serving the best, when people are drunk . 

Yet that is part of the glory of God,

Even when we have been consuming the cheap stuff of the world, when we are tired and worn out, and even broken by world, God comes to us and gives us the best,

The world will do that, as it tempts us to believe we enjoy the cheap things it offers.  Fame, pleasure, the things money can buy, or the security of having a solid financial portfolio, or our political party ascend in government.

These things are illusions, and like cheap wine, they will seem to satisfy for a moment.  Compared to the glorious mercy and love of Jesus, they simply begin to fade away.

People encounter God’s glory all the time.  But will they recognize it?

Will they see it in the hand of someone who comes to their aid, or their neighbor who tries to tell them about Jesus? Will they see God’s hand guiding them?

Will we recognize His presence, when we hear His word, will we realize His presence when we kneel here, when we share in Christ’s body and blood? 

Or will we not discern His presence, and as Paul warns, and eat and drink judgment upon ourselves?

The servants knew, they had done what He said!

The second group to experience the glory of God, revealed in Christ, was the servants.  They knew where the wine had come from, they played a role in the miracle’s occurrence.

Told by Mary to do what Jesus said, they did.  I can’t imagine why they did, but they did!

Grabbing some huge stone pitchers, filling them with water, and then taking a ladle of it over to the master of ceremonies. 

Seriously?  Taking a ladle of water over, and ….   A miracle happened…

I mean if that could happen, if water could be turned to wine, what else could happen?

Could wine also be the blood of Christ?  Could a little round piece of bread also be His body?

Could we be transformed into the image of Christ?

The disciples depended on him

The glory of Jesus revealed in that miracle had the greatest effect on the last group.  

They had only recently started hanging out with the odd rabbi, scripture tells us just a day or so, just after Jesus baptism.  I am not sure they knew all that much about him, but they were invited to the party with Jesus.

So they went.

They would have seen the interaction of Jesus with his mother, and with the servants.

They surely would have sampled the wine and been amazed.

And scripture says they believed in Him. 

Not believed in him like a mathematical fact, because the miracle defied all form of logic.

Miracles always do.

Believed in him, had faith in Him in a way that changed everything else in their lives. 

That’s what truly seeing the glory of God revealed to us does,

It helps us see that we can and should depend on God.

We can toss aside every other thing that we would depend upon for joy, or the illusion of it, for we have found real joy!  We have found real peace, knowing that God will provide what we need in life!

The disciples would do that, these men that would watch Jesus die, and then see Him, risen from the dead.  They would experience the Holy Spirit, they would baptize thousands, and share every day in the body and blood Christ, as they prayed and fellowshipped with all that would be united to Jesus.

They believed in Jesus, for they had seen His glory revealed!

His glory revealed?

I need to make one thing clear.  We need to define what it was that Jesus did that revealed His glory.

Some may think it is transformation of water to wine, and that is, I have to admit, a pretty cool miracle.

I think it is more than that though, it is the response of Jesus to those in need, the response to a plea from His mother to come to their aid.  To make sure the celebration of two becoming one was not diminished.

Remember, a way for us to understand the love of Jesus for the church is the true love between a husband and wife.  Ephesians 5 describes that so well, especially the mercy of Christ, which sees us as holy and perfect and glorious.

We understand this miracle in view of that, and we realize that He loves us in the same exact way.  That Jesus will transform us, just as He transformed the water.

Even as His glory is revealed through scripture now, and when someone was baptized, and as we take and eat His body and drink His blood, in an under the bread and wine.

Jesus loves you, and the glory you see I that love, and know in that mercy is eternal.

And each day, the Spirit readies us for the final wedding feast, described in  Revelation

⁶  Then I heard again what sounded like the shout of a vast crowd or the roar of mighty ocean waves or the crash of loud thunder: “Praise the LORD! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. ⁷  Let us be glad and rejoice, and let us give honor to him. For the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb, and his bride has prepared herself. ⁸  She has been given the finest of pure white linen to wear.” For the fine linen represents the good deeds of God’s holy people. ⁹  And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” And he added, “These are true words that come from God.”
Revelation 19:6-9 (NLT2)

And as those disciples were invited to the wedding feast in Cana, so you are invited to this wedding feast. For you, church, are His beloved.

And until that day, you dwell, your hearts and minds guarded by Jesus, in that inexpressible peace of God.  AMEN!