Better understanding the Gospel

with Marie-Noëlle Thabut

THE TIME FOR A NEW CREATION HAS ARRIVED

We must become accustomed to the writing style of John the Evangelist! It is between the lines that the important things are said! For him, this first "sign" (as he calls it) of Jesus at Cana is very important: it alone evokes the great mystery of God's plan for humanity, the mystery of Creation, the mystery of the Covenant, the mystery of the Wedding. What we call the Prologue in John, that is, the very beginning of his first chapter, was a great meditation on this mystery; the text that recounts the miracle at Cana is exactly the same meditation, but in narrative form this time. As if these two texts, at the beginning of the Gospel, were meant to introduce us to the understanding of everything that follows. I therefore propose that we read the account of the wedding at Cana in light of the Prologue.

What happened in between? Events that make up what is called the "inaugural week" of Jesus' public ministry. It begins with John the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan, where Pharisees have come to question him about his mission; and John the Baptist is already announcing the coming of Jesus. The next day, John the Baptist has the joy of seeing Jesus himself come to him, and he recognizes him as "the Son of God, who baptizes with the Holy Spirit" (John 1:33-34). The following day (and it is John who provides the precise date, as if saying, "and there was evening and there was morning"), there is another encounter by the river: this time, two of John the Baptist's disciples leave his group to follow Jesus, and he invites them to spend the evening with him. The next day, Jesus sets out for Galilee, already accompanied by some disciples. And it was in Galilee, three days later, that the miracle at Cana took place: John begins his account of the wedding at Cana by saying, “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee”; one is, of course, tempted to count all these days from the beginning: this gives “the seventh day”; the mention of a week, of a “seventh day,” in a Gospel is obviously not insignificant. The “seventh day” always refers to the completion of Creation.

Like the word "beginning," which the evangelist uses at the end of his account: "This was the first of the signs that Jesus performed." In the Prologue, John affirmed, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." Here we are in the context of the seven days of Creation.

THE HOUR OF GOD'S MARRIAGE WITH HUMANITY

The episode of the wedding at Cana, on the seventh day, therefore gives a distant echo to it: for, in reality, at Cana, Jesus does not just multiply the wine, he creates it; as at the beginning of all things, the Word was turned towards God to create the world, a new stage is inaugurated at Cana: the new creation has begun.

And it is a wedding feast! We could continue the parallel: on the sixth day, God completed his work by creating the human couple in his image; on the seventh day of the new creation, Jesus participates in a wedding feast. This is a way of saying that God's creative project is ultimately a project of covenant, a wedding feast. (We then better understand why we read in the first reading this text from the third Isaiah in which God said to his people: "As a bridegroom rejoices over his husband, so will your God rejoice over you"; Isaiah 62.) The Church Fathers did not hesitate to see in the miracle at Cana the fulfillment of God's promise: the wedding feast of God with humanity begins there.

This is why the word "Hour" in John's Gospel is so important: it refers to the Hour when God's plan was definitively fulfilled in Jesus Christ. This is precisely what Jesus has in mind when he says to Mary, "Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come." Clearly, his concerns go beyond the practical problem of the lack of wine: he does not lose sight of his mission, which is to consecrate the marriage of God with humanity.

But the first sentence (“Woman, what do you want with me?”) remains surprising and has been the subject of much speculation; in reality, in the Greek text, it is “what is there for you and for me?” in other words: “you cannot understand.” Jesus is confronted here, alone, with the great question of his mission: to accomplish this mission, concretely, what must he do? Must he create wine? And thus demonstrate that he is the Son of God?

Perhaps here, in the Gospel of John, we find an echo of the account of the Temptations in the Synoptic Gospels; this would also explain the apparent terseness of Jesus' words to his mother. In the desert, during the episode of the Temptations, the question posed to Jesus was, "What exactly does it mean to be the Son of God?" and the Tempter had whispered to him, "If you are truly the Son of God, now that you are hungry, tell these stones to become bread." It is worth noting that when alone in the desert, Jesus refuses to perform the miracles suggested by the Tempter, because he would be the only one to benefit. At Cana, on the contrary, Jesus multiplies the wine at the feast for the joy of the guests. This suggests that the Son of God performs miracles only for the happiness of humankind.

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Note

1 - The "third day": this detail alone is certainly a message; here again, it is not a mere anecdotal note to fill a logbook, but a theological meditation: the memory of the disciples is forever marked by a certain third day, that of the Resurrection. It thus refers us to the other end, so to speak, of Jesus' public life, to the Passion, death, and Resurrection of Christ. It is John's way of telling us: it is there, and only there, that God's Covenant with humanity will be definitively sealed, its wedding celebrated. Moreover, the last phrase, "He manifested his glory," is also an allusion to the Resurrection. In the Prologue, John also said, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory..." It was at Cana, precisely, that the disciples saw the glory of Jesus for the first time. While awaiting the final manifestation of God's glory on the face of Christ, who died and rose again.

Additional Information

- Saint John specifies that Cana is in Galilee; which considerably broadens the perspective: for Galilee, traditionally, is the land of the pagans, a crossroads of peoples; Isaiah called it the "land of the shadow, the Galilee of the nations": God therefore embraces all of humanity and not just a privileged few.

“Woman, what do you want with me?” Let us not try to minimize the undeniable intensity of this reaction from the Son toward his mother. In Hebrew, this phrase generally marks a difference of opinion, sometimes even hostility (Judges 11:12; Mark 1:24; 2 Samuel 16:10; 2 Samuel 19:23); let us acknowledge that these are extreme cases; Jesus’ reflection is perhaps more akin to that of the widow of Zarephath facing Elijah at the time of her son’s death (1 Kings 17:18): she considers the prophet’s presence an inopportune intervention. But the difficulty remains: would Jesus, the gentle and humble of heart, be disrespectful toward his mother? In reality, perhaps this is the implicit admission of a genuine inner conflict for the Son concerning his mission. He who did not allow himself to perform miracles for his own benefit (changing stones into bread), should he here transform water into wine? Here, we touch upon the depth of the mystery of Christ, a mystery of which he himself gradually became aware: fully human, he had to grow little by little like each of us in the discovery of his mission.

The water tanks at Cana are made of stone, and John intentionally specifies this: terracotta pots were used for drinking water, stone tanks for ritual ablutions. It is this water, symbolic of the Covenant, that became the wedding wine.

The disciples only discovered the miracle afterward; but the only ones truly privy to it, as Saint John emphasizes, were the servants (verse 9): they knew it in their very being, so to speak, because they were the ones who drew the water, who carried it, and all this in blind obedience, perhaps without understanding what this water would be used for. But, of course, we are not overly surprised that the poor were the first to know of God's plan!