Journeying with Mary, the Mother of Jesus: The Wedding at Cana | Student Pastor: Sam Rapp

Well, again, good morning.

My name is Sam Rapp, and I serve here as a student pastor.

I'm honored to be here this morning with you.

Um, if you do have your Bibles, I would invite you to go ahead and grab them and turn to John 2.

That's where we're going to be camped out this morning.

In the summer during the month of July, we've been doing a unique sermon series where we've been we've been journeying with this very special woman, Mary, the mother of Jesus.

And on our first week together, uh, Brad worked us through the Annunciation when the uh angel Gabriel approached this young woman and said, You will bear the coming Messiah, which would have been a high calling for a teenage girl, but she responds with her yes to the Lord.

And one of the things that Brad hit on in the sermon is that for many of us, we think of Mary as this very exalted figure, and rightfully so.

She bore Christ, but at the same time, she is born under the same curse that you and I are, which is that she is also in need of a savior.

She is not perfect, she needs forgiveness like we do.

And then last week, uh Keel worked through the story from Luke 2, where Luke, the physician, outlines the story of Jesus' birth.

And it was Christmas in July here at Redeemer.

And Keel hit on such an amazing point that Mary knew her Bible.

That it wasn't as if when she gave birth to this son, she didn't quite know what was happening.

She knew that this was special.

She knew that Jesus, her son, would be different than any other boy born of a woman.

And one thing that he hit on that was so beautiful that I had never noticed before, that was amazing that he spoke to us, was that the main audience of the birth was not kings, political figures, Caesars.

The main audience were shepherds, the lowly men who would be out in the field protecting their sheep.

These are the regular guys that got to witness the moment in history around which all else orbits, the birth of Christ.

And because God works in the ordinary.

And I love that Keel hit on that last week.

And now this morning, we're gonna read a story that's gonna be familiar to many of you that Keel just read for us, The Wedding at Cana, where Jesus turns water into wine.

And it's so popular that it's become a meme.

I found this video, it's very clear.

We'll just have water drink.

Okay.

I'll be right back with this.

Oh, I love that.

I was cackling at my desk this week at that video.

Um so, of course, this this question brings us this this morning.

Is what does the wedding at Cana have to do with Mary?

And further, what does this special wedding from the first century in Jerusalem have to do with me?

So, with that, let's look at John 2, verses 1 and 2.

John 2:1

On the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples.

And so John sets the stage.

There's a wedding here at Cana, and our girl Mary, she's there, and she's there with Jesus.

And the bride and groom were smart with this one, right?

When you're thinking through your guest list at a wedding, you're thinking, okay, we hear that Mary's pretty special.

Not only that, I hear her son is pretty special.

So we should make sure that Jesus of Nazareth gets a save the date.

But the most likely reason that Jesus and his mother and the disciples were invited is this was probably a family wedding.

Maybe it was a distant relative, a cousin.

We're not 100% sure.

But we know that Mary, Jesus, and his disciples were invited and present.

And I want to make note of something very important that John, I think, is tuning us into.

The only person explicitly named in this whole story is Jesus.

Everybody else just gets a title, even Mary.

John doesn't say her by name, John just says Mother of Jesus.

And so I think John's tuning us into something bigger here.

If we think, hey, who is the person explicitly named?

The story is probably revolving around them, right?

And then we're gonna see something goes wrong at this wedding.

So with that, I want to tell y'all a story about uh the curse of the rap family, okay?

So when someone in my family, the rap family, has a wedding, something borderline catastrophic happens, okay?

So we all know, I mean, weddings are hard.

The details are never ending, right?

From the color of the bridesmaid's dresses to other very important things like why that crazy uncle shouldn't sit by grandma, or why that groomsman need to make sure he doesn't drink too much.

I mean, you we all know the wedding pains and the the pressure of the wedding ends up on the host family, right?

They're throwing a party for a few hundred people, and if the if the party goes wrong, the host family will of course feel some sense of shame.

And God bless them, uh, my poor father just went 0 for 3 with weddings because of things way out of his control.

So, oldest sister gets married in May of 2013, and you would think, okay, May of in Marietta, Georgia would probably be around 80 degrees and sunny.

Um, on May 4th, 2013, the average temperature was around 50 degrees, and from 3 to 8 p.m.

it rained five inches, okay?

That's a bad amount of rain if you're gonna have a wedding with an outdoor reception, right?

So parents are panicking, having to get a tent for last second, which tents have a monopoly.

I don't know if you knew that.

They are unbelievably expensive.

I would get into the tent business if you're looking for a few dollars.

Uh so you know, the wedding was fine.

They got married, yes and amen.

But, and it was definitely memorable, but it was not what was expected.

Okay?

So O for one with weather, okay.

Then my middle sister gets married on December 9th, 2017.

Okay.

It's here in Atlanta, so you know, if you're getting married in December, you're like, in Marietta, it should be okay.

It's probably gonna be 50 degrees, like it always is in December, right?

No, so if you live in Minneapolis, you're probably like, there's probably a blizzard warning, but not Atlanta, right?

Well, as it turns out, uh the curse of the Rap family shows no partiality.

So the snow starts falling and falling and falling.

Uh, and it was a full-blown snow apocalypse in December of 2017, where some places in Atlanta got like 18 inches of snow.

I don't know if you remember this.

I've blocked it out from my memory, I think, at this point.

And we know Atlanta drivers are the best, especially in winter weather.

So, what could possibly go wrong?

And of course, she she gets married, the wedding turns out okay, but it was not part of the plan.

So at this point, we're 0 for 2 with weddings.

So everybody's like, hey, when Sam gets married, what's gonna happen?

And I always used to joke that maybe Jesus would return at my wedding.

Um, because what's more catastrophic in a beautiful way than our Lord returning?

And sadly that didn't happen, but I want to tell you what did.

So I proposed to Grace on her birthday in August of 2019, and we set the wedding date to be August 29th, 2020.

Which seems great, right?

It's a it's a really alliterative year, like my OCD, like 2020, I'll graduate college and get married.

It's a beautiful year, 2020.

But that pesky little virus.

Remember that thing?

The one we all thought would end by April, right?

Yeah, that one.

So the Rat family went from 50 degrees and five inches of rain in May to 18 inches of snow in December to a pandemic that shut down the entire world.

That, my friends, is a curse.

And we we jokingly kind of made a pact together that like we the rat family probably shouldn't host another wedding because who knows what's gonna happen.

Maybe World War III, I don't know what's gonna happen, but maybe Jesus actually would come back, so maybe we should have another wedding.

I don't know.

But here's the reality: there has been a curse on all weddings since Genesis 3.

God creates Adam.

He sees that he is alone, he pulls a rib from his side, forms Eve, and then we see the first wedding ceremony in Genesis 2.

A sinless, curse-free wedding.

And the words, the first words we see out of the mouth of our father Adam are a song that as he sees his beloved just flow from his lips.

Look at Genesis 2 with me.

And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Adam, you may kiss your bride.

Now, why would Jesus choose a wedding ceremony to perform his first miracle?

Well, of course, because Jesus knew his Bible, right?

The writer of Genesis, the prophet Moses, would then go on to describe this first married couple using two very important words on their wedding day.

This is Genesis 2, 25.

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

You think about it, Moses could have chosen any two words to describe what it was like to be a human before the fall.

He could have chosen words like perfect or sinless or handsome or skinny.

But he uses the words naked and unashamed.

And I think that's important.

These are the two words describing, again, what it was like to be a human before the curse, which would just come one verse later.

And imagine how beautiful this wedding ceremony must have been.

With no shame, with no fear of being found out, nothing to hide, nothing to be embarrassed about within your soul.

Adam and Eve got to experience the deepest, most core need of a human being to be fully known and to be fully loved.

And since the fall, you and I are seeking that very thing.

To be fully known and fully loved.

And yet, what that means is that what we're most afraid of is to be fully known and unlovable.

That's what we're most afraid of, for someone to get to know the deepest parts of you and find out that you are unlovable.

Maybe it's happened to you before, maybe in a deep friendship, a romantic relationship, a family member, where you opened yourself up to somebody only for them to ultimately reject you, and then shame has been your story ever since.

And for all of us, shame and sin has been the marking of all weddings since the fall.

Thus, Jesus shows up to perform a first miracle at a wedding.

And so I want to put my cards on the table.

Jesus performs his first miracle at a wedding to bring us right back to Genesis 2 and 3.

And what I think is happening primarily is that Jesus is beginning to do the work of undoing the work of evil, of sin and shame, assaulting humanity since the fall.

Because probably you're sitting here this morning knowing this to be true, that Jesus loves you.

But I bet in your core, you're thinking, but there's probably some part of me that God can't actually love.

If you're anything like me, you find that to be true.

So with all of that, I want to read a quote from Kurt Thompson's book, The Soul of Shame.

It says that shame is the emotional weapon that evil uses to corrupt our relationships with God and each other.

Shame, therefore, is not simply an unfortunate random emotional event that came with us out of the primordial evolutionary soup.

It is both a source and result of evil's active assault on God's creation and a way for evil to try to hold out until the new heaven and new earth appear at the consummation of history.

So the curse of Genesis 3 wants you to believe, and I to believe, that in the eyes of God we are unlovable.

And even more importantly, man, if God really got to know the parts of me that I try the most to press down, I know that he couldn't love me.

And that's what shame wants you to believe.

So, in light of our big problem here of sin and shame since the first wedding, here's kind of what the flow of our text in John 2 is gonna bring us this morning with the wedding at Cana.

So sin and shame are gonna be healed by adoption, purification, and our perfect bridegroom.

So that's kind of where we're going this morning in John 2.

That's gonna be our flow.

And what I've been praying for this week for you and for me is not that you'd leave this place with a little bit more head knowledge, but I pray that you would meet your Lord this morning.

That you would bring all of yourself here at church, right to your Lord, and all of the parts of you that you really try to hide.

I pray that you would bring them to the Lord this morning.

So let's begin with our first point.

Adoption, which might seem like an unlikely point from this text.

But as I read these verses, what I want you to look out for is what the titles used for Mary are.

So this is John 2, 1 through 5.

On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples, and when the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, They have no wine.

And Jesus said to her, Woman, what does this have to do with me?

My hour has not yet come.

And his mother said to the servants, Do whatever he tells you.

So what were the titles used of Mary, and by whom were they given?

Well, we see in verse 1, John refers to her as the mother of Jesus.

Then again in verse 3, John says the same, and then we see a flip.

Jesus refers to her as woman, and then John refers back to her as his mother.

So why does Jesus call his mother woman instead of mother?

Well, I think it comes down to this question.

What is Mary's primary identity in relation to Jesus?

I mean, she was his mother.

She did give birth to him, she did wipe his bottom.

So, is it mother?

Or is it like you and I, a woman, a person in desperate need of a savior?

I want to bring us back to a very intimate moment in Luke 2.

So, Mary and Joseph, they give birth to this little sweet boy in the manger.

They bring him to Jerusalem.

It was a Jewish custom of the day to present a baby boy to the temple and offer a sacrifice.

So they meet this man named Simeon, who uh Luke describes as a very devout and religious man, a man filled with the Spirit.

And Simeon speaks a prophecy over Jesus that he will uh reign and rule and be a savior to the nations.

And then this is what happens next.

And his father and mother marveled at what was said about him.

And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed.

And a sword will pierce through your own soul also, so that the thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.

So Mary is there with her husband.

They're rejoicing and marveling over what was said in the power of the Spirit over their sweet little baby boy.

And then Simeon gives them this cryptic and harsh message to Mary.

He says, And a sword will pierce through your own soul also.

Maybe Mary knew what he was saying.

Maybe not.

But what Jesus would go on to do about 33 years later was to be nailed to a Roman cross, all while his mama is right there at the foot of it weeping, as her little boy gets nails through his hands, nails through his feet, wears a crown of thorns.

Is there any more painful experience a mama can have?

The sword will be pierced through her soul at the cross.

My favorite portrayal painting of the crucifixion is this painting by Matthias Gronwald.

It's one of the few portrayals that actually show Christ in anguish.

I mean, you see his hands.

And you see to Jesus' left, the woman in white is his mama.

She falls in anguish as her son.

This little boy she gave birth to in a manger, taught how to walk and talk.

She is now at the foot of his cross, just like the rest of us.

And so here's the first point of adoption, how it comes in.

Regardless of what family we are born into, our shame is healed through adoption into Christ's family.

So Mary must ultimately come to Jesus in the same way that you and I do, in need of a savior.

Even though she gave birth to the Son of God, she did not get special treatment.

She had a problem that needed to be wiped clean.

And so at this wedding, she says, they ran out of wine.

And Jesus says, Woman, my hour has not yet come.

And when every time he says this, especially in the Gospel of John, he's referring to his crucifixion.

And as he says it, he refers to his mom like he would any other woman.

Any other person.

The English could also be something like ma'am, the Southern translation, right?

It's respectful.

But Jesus is intentionally creating some distance between him and his mama.

Because he knows that her deepest need is not just to be his mama, he knows her deepest need is to be his Lord.

And do you notice Mary's reply?

I think she's catching on a little bit.

Look at verse five.

His mother said to the servants, Do whatever he tells you.

At a glimpse of Jesus as Messiah, Mary responds in faith and obedience.

Do whatever he tells you.

So again, my the first point for this morning is that we are healed in our shame as we are adopted into a heavenly family, Christ's family, and this is amazingly good news.

Maybe you had a father figure who was distant or abusive.

Maybe you come from a very broken family.

Maybe you come from a wonderful family where you were known and loved.

From wherever you come, Christ is offering to adopt you into his family, to give you a new name.

Even though Mary was his own mama, she needed to be adopted into a spiritual family far exceeding that of her biological family tree.

Let's keep reading in our story.

Verse 6.

Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, Fill the jars with water, and they filled them up to the brim.

And he said to them, Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.

So they took it.

So again, Mary tells the servants, Do what do whatever he tells you.

So Jesus comes to the servants and he says, Hey, you see those huge stone jars?

I want you to take those, I want you to fill them with water, and don't fill them halfway, guys, up to the brim.

And then they do it.

They take a cup full, they bring it to the materdy.

These weren't just any jars.

These were jars for purification.

They would be jars that would be used for Jewish people to cleanse themselves before entering into the temple.

Before entering into the presence of the holy God who loved them, they would purify themselves in these jars.

And beloved, when we are stuck in cycles of sin and shame, how often do we feel the need to do the same thing?

Like we need to clean ourselves up, and then God will approve of us.

A few weeks ago, I was really just struggling with some doubt, some anger, and it was really hard for me to read my Bible.

I don't know if you've been there.

I really found it hard to pray.

It was, it felt like I had to fix my anger and figure out my doubts, and then I could access the Holy of Holies.

And then I was listening to this song called The Breast of Mercy by John Lucas and Andy Squires, and this lyric just crushed me.

It says, The breast of mercy is bared to the lips of the poor.

Come and drink your fill.

There is no lock on the door.

And it wrecked me.

It brought me to tears.

It felt like God was nudging me in, saying, Sam, the work is complete.

There's no checklist for you to figure out before you bring yourself to me.

Bring yourself in your anger when you stumble in sin, when you're doubting.

And yet, the very sin and shame that I was wrestling with as I was sitting on the side of my bed listening to that song was saying the same thing that it was saying to Adam and Eve in the garden.

Go hide, cover yourself.

And yet that's exactly where God found them and found me.

Was in my place of hiding.

And so here's where our second point, purification, comes in.

Our shame is healed as we are purified by the blood of Jesus.

So remember that deep fear that all of us have?

Right?

To be fully known and then be rejected.

What purification by the blood of Jesus offers you is to be fully known, fully wiped clean, and fully loved.

And so the offer this morning is to plunge yourself under the mercy of God, of Christ's blood.

Don't just dip your toe in it, beloved.

Plunge yourself under it.

Feel it washing you clean.

There is no other place for you to be clean before your Father in heaven or to be fully known and fully loved.

So come and drink your fill.

I think there are three primary ways that all of us try to clean ourselves up.

Number one is comparison.

And what this says is I am clean because I am better than fill in your blank.

And this makes us feel better because, man, at least we're not them.

I parent better, I go to church more, I don't drink as much as them.

I speak kinder to my spouse than them, and yet what this leads to is a cycle of pride when it feels like things are going great, but then slips us into despair when we know we're not living up.

And so then the cycle looks like once we've exhausted ourselves of comparing ourselves with others, we move on to moralism, which says I'm clean because I do blank or I don't do blank.

The all-familiar checklist of religious approval, as if we're bringing a receipt to the Lord of Glory, like we're at Costco, saying, check it off, Lord.

God, I'm tired of comparing myself to others.

So here's just how I'm doing before you.

And yet, you know the feeling.

You get exhausted trying to prove yourself.

And so then maybe there's a third easier option, number three, avoidance.

I'm clean because, well, what's in?

So the pain of being vulnerable, the pain of accepting our weaknesses, just turns out to be too much.

And so we busy ourselves, we cope, likely, with maybe other sinful vices.

We fill our schedules so we don't have to reflect.

So we go as long as we can pretending it's not there.

So much so that the shame actually increases as we're being less and less honest with ourselves.

So then how can we honestly bring ourselves to Christ in that cycle?

But the fourth option, maybe we could say the first option as it ought to be, is to come to the new wine of Christ's death and resurrection.

Come with a big old goblet, drink deeply of it, fill it up to the brim with the blood of Jesus, the new wine of his covenant.

And the blood of Christ is so wonderful because it has no limits for you.

It doesn't find fear in what you've done, what you will do, what you're presently struggling with.

It's not scared of your doubts.

It's not scared of your grief.

It's not scared of what's happened to you.

And you remember from the text how many jars there were.

There were six.

The number six in the Bible consistently meant something along the lines of incomplete.

So it's as if Jesus is saying, hey, the water turned to wine is only a shadow.

What would happen on the cross would be the seventh jar, you could say, where the full, complete, and final sacrifice, the final purification will be ready for you.

Beloved, your shame will lose its grip on you not as you muster up the strength to try to purify yourself.

It will come as you come to the fact that you are broken.

To be vulnerable with yourself and with the Lord who loves you.

Here's all of me, Lord.

Do with it what you will.

Feel his tender embrace of you.

So let's close our story out here.

Verse 9.

When the master of the feast tasted the water and now become wine, and did not know where it came from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew.

The master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, Everyone serves the good wine first.

And when the people have drunk freely, then the poor wine, but you have kept the good wine until now.

This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory.

And his disciples believed in him.

After this he went down to Copernaum with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.

So here we find a groom like all other grooms, not enough.

The groom didn't buy enough wine.

And at his special wedding work, Jesus Christ was invited.

He had the nerve to run out of wine.

Can you imagine?

If you knew Jesus would be present at your wedding, you'd order enough wine, right?

So the master of the feast tastes this water turned to wine.

And this was no Trader Joe's two-buck chuck, beloved.

Christ performs no half-hearted miracles.

This was Opus One, the good stuff.

The back of the cellar stuff, right?

So here stands this groom, maybe just with his hands in his pockets, like all other grooms, right, on wedding days.

Probably unaware of what's even happening, like most grooms.

And so his wedding planner, the master of the feast, comes to him, not panicking about the wine being God, but rejoicing.

Hey, you saved the good wine until the end when everybody's drank a little bit.

What I love about the story is that we don't see what the groom said back.

Maybe he did the strong, tough guy thing that most guys would do.

Oh, yeah, I know.

Yeah, I bought the good wine for the end, right?

Because guys are typically bad at accepting their weaknesses, right?

And then John summarizes.

This, the first of his signs, Jesus did manifesting his glory.

And you notice it wasn't flashy.

Jesus didn't even get the credit at the wedding.

But it was enough.

His disciples believed him and they went on.

So our third point our sin and shame are healed by Christ, our perfect bridegroom who knows our every need.

That's good news.

The groom at the wedding of Cana is like every other groom since Adam, a sinner in need of grace.

One of my favorite things I get to do as a pastor is officiate wedding ceremonies.

And on these days, the company of everyone's closest friends and families, right?

The bride and groom are standing at the altar making vows and promises to one another, and these are good promises.

They say, I will never leave you.

In sickness and in health.

When it gets hard, I'll be there.

But everyone in the congregation, if they're honest, knows this couple is not gonna live up to these vows perfectly.

They cannot.

They can try their hardest and they should, and by God's grace, they will.

But this groom standing at the altar is gonna let his wife down.

He's gonna forget for the millionth time to put the toilet seat back down.

Grooms?

Wives, don't say amen.

Right?

She's gonna want to have a deep, connecting conversation, and for the millionth time, he's gonna pretend to listen, all while replaying Rory's putt at the Masters again.

Beloved, you have a groom who will never let you down.

You have a groom who is never too busy or distracted to listen.

You have a groom who will never run out of wine at the wedding feast.

You have a groom who will never be ashamed to call you his beloved.

You have a groom who will never point a finger of accusation at you, like Adam in the garden.

And yet the problem is that you and I from birth have a felt sense that due to things that have happened to us, the things that we have done, that we are unlovable.

And yet what God has shown us time and time again in the scriptures is that He is a God that moves toward broken people and broken places.

So the question this morning for you is not, do you feel shame?

The question is, what do you think you're gonna do with your sin and shame?

What will you do with it?

Will you try to muster up strength and keep moving, pretending that everything's good?

Or by God's grace, will you bring these parts of yourself, the most hidden, the most shameful, right into the presence of your Lord?

So that's the offer this morning is to be loved and welcomed by your groom, who will never leave you or forsake you, no matter what you do.

If you have a question about this sermon or need prayer, I'll be down front.

Would love to talk with you.

Let's pray together.

Father, thank you this morning that you have continually shown us that you do not shy away from broken things and broken places.

Father, all of us in this room this morning are sitting in these seats, feeling some sense of shame.

Maybe it's about our past, a deep regret of something we did or didn't do, a huge mistake we made, maybe shame because our father didn't love us like he should have.

Maybe shame because we are finding out that we're not enough.

Maybe shame that makes us think that in your presence we're dirty.

And so, Lord, I pray this morning that we would have a real encounter with you by your Spirit.

That we would leave this place convinced that you look at us and feel no condemnation, but that in Christ you look at us and see your Son.

Lord, we pray that as we come to receive this bread and this cup, that you would minister to us.

Pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.