Marriage: The first of seven signs

John’s Gospel uses seven signs as a literary structure to shape the first half of his Gospel. The first of the signs that Jesus offers is at a wedding. The literary message is about the marriage of heaven and earth, the marriage of divine and human so that all may be Christ and Christ may be in all. As St Paul put it in Ephesians 1, God’s plan from the beginning was to unite, in Christ, all things, things in heaven and things on earth.

The wedding at Cana is dramatization if you like, a parable drama, describing God’s ultimate plan of marrying humanity. Jesus is God’s design for the whole world. Jesus the Christ is a person from the future not the past. Jesus the Christ is the ultimate vision of our future reality, of who we are already becoming – a unity of Divine and Human.

A wedding invitation

Usually if there is a wedding there is also a wedding invitation. The wedding invitation for the marriage of heaven and earth dramatized at the wedding in Cana John 2.1-11 appears in John 1.14-17. Hidden in the glorious cosmic hymn of our Christmas reading is the heart centre:

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. … From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace…The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 

The wedding invitation is John 1.14-17, the Word that lived among us. The English translation “lived among us” fails to capture the power of the original Greek that describes the Word that became flesh and “pitched his tent among us” or “tabernacled” among us. The significance of “tabernacled among us” is two-fold and relies on the fact it vivifies two memories: the Genesis-Exodus epoch and the Exile-Restoration era.

John’s Gospel and the Genesis-Exodus memory

While some are reluctant to engage the Scriptures of the Old Testament, without the background of the Hebrew Scriptures we cannot discern the meaning of the Gospels that introduce us to Jesus. John’s Gospel is a New Genesis and a New Exodus.

If John’s Gospel is a New Exodus a short summation of the Exodus account is necessary to appreciate its relevance to John’s Gospel. The plot of the Exodus story is the group of refugees who escape oppression in Pharoah’s Egypt through a wilderness into a Promised Land flowing with Milk and Honey. The climax of the Exodus saga is pre-empted by the introduction to the story. Moses and Aaron, who with Miriam are the leaders of the refugees, pronounce to pharaoh: “‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness.”’ (Exodus 5.1). The Exodus story races fast to the climax where it plateaus and overstates in detail the construction of a tabernacle. The tabernacle, a symbol of God’s presence among the people, is at the centre of the group of refugees who traverse a wilderness in search of a Promised Land. Herewith the point of the story, that the refugees are freed from slavery in order to celebrate a festival to God in the wilderness, with the Tabernacle the heart centre of how God comes close to them and how they come close to God. Now it is evident what Exodus means for John’s Gospel; Jesus the Christ is the New Tabernacle who “pitches his tent among us.” Jesus’ incarnation, the Word made flesh among us, is the way in which we now see God with us and among us. What is the significance of God in Christ tabernacling among us (John 1.14)? The significance of Jesus pitching his tent among is that the destiny of cosmos and human beings as kings and queens of the New Creation is made clear; the unity of the Divine and Human, the enspiriting of flesh or the enfleshing of spirit. As Teilhard puts it, God is always in the business of enfleshing spirit or enspiriting flesh. This marriage of heaven and earth or spirit and flesh dramatized in Cana in John 2.1-11 is already hinted at in John 1.14-17: “…, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth… The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 

John’s Gospel and the Exile-Restoration memory

“Full of grace and truth” evokes the recitation of Psalm 85:

Grace and truth have met together;
justice and peace have kissed each other.
Truth springs up from the earth,
and justice looks down from heaven.
Adonai will also grant prosperity;
our land will yield its harvest.
Justice will walk before him
and make his footsteps a path.

 (From the complete Jewish Bible translation. Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern.
All rights reserved).

 Psalm 85 is a restoration psalm. A restoration psalm sings of the Hebrew’s best hope after being in exile, in Babylon, away from their temple and home. The restoration hoped for in exile now takes place in the person of Jesus. In Jesus Grace and truth meet, justice and peace kiss, and the human and divine marry, to offer a new and bright future. Grace represents the refreshing love of God that comes from beyond our world, a compassion that is transcendent. Truth is the love of God from within our world, the holiness of our humanity now embraces the holiness of God’s divinity.

Join the wedding

What does all this mean for us? As for Jesus, so too for us. Through the gift of the Spirit of Love, like Jesus, we too are the place where the unity of heaven and earth takes place. We no longer need look for God in the wrong places: out there, up there. God is within, as the truest part of ourselves. The feast and celebration dramatized at the wedding in Cana is that the marriage of grace and truth, begun in John 1.14-17, brought to fruition in John 2.1-11 will go on and on and on in us and through us until it is complete. Welcome to the wedding.