Of all the possible first miracles Jesus could have chosen, changing water into wine at a family wedding does not seem the logical first choice.

Unlike so many of his miracles, it did not save someone’s life, free them from a horrible disease, cast out any demons, or restore sight or mobility to someone blind or crippled.  Neither was the wedding particularly significant, from what we know – we don’t know who the bride or groom were, whether they even knew Jesus or had any faith in him.  And the way that he carried out the miracle was reluctantly and without drawing attention to himself, not in a temple or holy place, but in a home whose location remains unknown.

It's as if Mary managed to sneak a miracle in before Jesus was ready to begin his public ministry – that this one is kind of an “off the books” miracle. 

Except that isn’t off the books, is it.  No, here we find it at the beginning of John’s Gospel in Chapter 2, after he had recruited his first disciples and been baptized by John in the Jordan river.  And so the significance of this miracle and that our Lord chose it cannot be dismissed as tentative or premature or incidental.  He chose this as his first miracle on purpose.  Why?

The choice of a wedding has important significance.  Why wasn’t the couple or the location important?  Because the wedding at Cana symbolizes a different wedding between different spouses.  As we hear in the first reading from the prophet Isaiah, the Lord God often spoke of his relationship to his chosen people in spousal terms.  But it is not a healthy marriage: the bride, the Hebrew people, are unfaithful – wandering off to strange gods and seeking worldly success, the break the covenant again and again.  In the face of this infidelity, Isaiah gives voice to a promise: one day God will enter into time and space and put an end to Israel’s promiscuity: he will sweep her off her feet, he will enter into a new covenant with her that will last forever and bestow upon her a kingdom that will never be broken.

The changing of water into wine is an incredibly symbolic act.  Six was a symbolic number for the Hebrews, meaning imperfection and incompleteness.   The water Jesus uses is from 6 stone jars used for ritual purification – it was not clean water.  They represent the old covenant – the time of law, the time of unfaithfulness and rebellion.  Remember the woman at the well, who had 6 husbands.  Just as Jesus chose her, Jesus chooses these six jars.  And in this act he symbolizes the transformation of what was a covenant mired in rebellion, impurity, and unfaithfulness into a new covenant.  He is the 7th man, the seventh jar – he transforms the old water of impurity into a new wine of gladness.  Wine was and still is associated with being heady - its inebriating character symbolizing the Spirit.  We even call alcohols “spirits” today, right?  And this is the new baptism – not the Baptism of repentance through water in the Jordan, but the new Baptism in the Spirit, through the wine of new covenant, poured out from the side of Christ.  It is this Spirit St. Paul speaks of in our second reading today, the Spirit that is at work in us, who are the new bride of Christ, the Church, the people of the new covenant. 

Jesus waits to offer this new, best wine until the end of the meal, rather than at the beginning, and he offers it in abundance – somewhere between 120 and 160 gallons.  It is a sign to us of who Jesus is and what he brings – he is the presence of God among us, come to sweep us off our feet, to inebriate us in the Spirit, a Spirit that will never abandon or leave us but will lead us to the joys of a new kingdom.

We should not forget Mary’s prominence in this miracle.  That was not an accident either.  Christ chose Mary to be with him and to assist him from his very first miracle to his last dying breath.  She was with his apostles in the upper room when he breathed the Spirit upon them and sent them out into the world to Baptize in his name.  

Upon reflection, we become all the more aware that first miracle of Christ was no accident.  It was very intentional.  But it wasn’t intended to speak only to those gathered 2,000 years ago in Cana.  It is meant to speak to us.  To teach us about who Jesus is and what he brings.  To teach us to find hope and new life in him.  To recognize in the wine that is transformed here among us the fulfillment of a promise: the promise of spoken by the prophet Isaiah: As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you;
and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so shall your God rejoice in you.