January 19, 2025
THE WEDDING
The wedding at Cana is an intriguing story usually known as the place where Jesus performed his first miracle, turning water into wine. But it is even more intriguing if we examine the entire circumstances that occurred that day from the perspective of a first century Jew. So this morning, I’m going to take us on an investigative journey as we become detectives to see if we can determine what really happened at the wedding in Cana.
First, let’s clear up who was at the wedding. Our Scripture in John says that Jesus came with his mother and his disciples. But it really wasn’t all of his disciples. So who was it and how do we know? It was Andrew, his brother Simon Peter, Phillip and Nathaniel – the disciples referred to in the previous chapter. And when two generations attended a wedding, it was almost always a family affair. The two generations – Mary and Jesus.
The wedding takes place in Galilee near the village of Nazareth. We are not told whose wedding it is, so let’s examine the facts as we know them and apply them to Jewish custom. Two generations of the same family are in attendance. The situation arises that the wine runs out. Now, I don’t know about you, but the only time that I would be concerned if the wine ran out was if I were drinking it and wanted more, or it was my party! But the mother of the groom would be upset if the wine were running out during the wedding of her son.
Mary does a strange thing. She tells Jesus. Then she tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them. This is a first century Jewish wedding. Imagine a woman who is a guest going to the servants at a wedding that she is attending to tell them to do whatever Jesus says because they have run out of wine. It wouldn’t happen.
Nathaniel calls Jesus “Rabbi.” In and of itself that would not be a strange thing because we have always translated “rabbi” as meaning teacher. However, in first century Jewish life, it was a requirement for a rabbi that he had to be married.
Are these facts that somehow lead to a possibility that this might have been the wedding of Jesus? If so, the church has done a very good job of suppressing this information for years, especially the early church fathers that determined the make-up of the bible. In fact, it would have been highly unusual by Jewish custom if Jesus had NOT been married. That would have been a point that certainly would have been made in the Scriptures because of its oddity, but it wasn’t.
The fourth Gospel leaned heavily on the authority of John Zebedee. While most scholars do not think it was written directly by him, they believe his influence was great and that he probably helped one of his disciples write it. Second, because John had been a disciple of Jesus, this Gospel writer had access to an eyewitness. There are facts challenged or corrected by the writer of John that all of the other Gospels agree upon, among them the length of Jesus’ ministry and the placement of the Last Supper.
But in the Gospel of John, the most telling narrative that would point to the possibility that this wedding was the wedding of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is the interchange between Mary Magdalene and Jesus in the garden. Mary refers to Jesus as “my Lord” consistently in the scene in the garden. For Mary, it is not a resurrection scene. She is in the garden and assumes that someone has stolen the body. No one else made a confession that Jesus was Lord until after there is an assurance of a resurrection. So why does Mary call Jesus “Lord?”
When she encounters the man in the garden she says, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Mary is claiming the right to the body. In first century Jewish society, for a woman to claim the body of a deceased man would be totally inappropriate unless the woman was the nearest of kin, i.e., his wife.
John’s account in the garden goes on. Jesus says her name and she responds with “rabboni,” a familiar form of the Hebrew word for teacher. Those who use familiar forms are expressing a relationship of intimacy. Mary then embraced Jesus. How do we know this? The text has Jesus say, “Mary, do not hold me.” Women did not embrace or touch men in Jewish society unless they were married and even then, it was done in the privacy of one’s home.
Reading John’s Gospel as a whole, it becomes very clear that Mary is a primary female figure in the Gospel. Tradition has labeled her a prostitute. Historic research has uncovered that she was a powerful woman in first century Jewry, but not a prostitute.
I relate these details to you not because they in any way debase the importance of Jesus, but to alert you to the possibility that the suppression of women in the church, and in church tradition for so many years, could quite easily have been contrived by early church leaders. Certainly, those writing from a male, Jewish viewpoint would have done so. But, in the first few centuries of Christendom there were certainly political considerations that would have led to the inclusion of some Gospels and the exclusion of others.
We have rich information in our bible. As most Christians know it, it gives us immeasurable information regarding the nature of our relationships with God and with one another. But do not be mistaken, it is not a literal document, the books that have been included, at least the Gospels, were chosen from among at least 80 other Gospels, and the only justification that we will ever hear for those choices is that the early church thought they were the most accurate.
It is highly suspect exactly why the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were chosen, since there are major spiritual truths missing and certainly, much information regarding the relationship of Jesus and Mary that interestingly, appears in other Gospels not found in the Bible as we know it.
Whose wedding was it? I guess we’ll never know for sure, but the evidence after our investigation certainly points in an intriguing direction. But whatever the answer, whether Jesus and Mary were married or not, it does not affect the impact that Jesus has had on untold millions of people during the last 2,000 years. Neither does it impact our personal and corporate faith. Jesus is sill Jesus and his life is still an example for us regarding what our relationship with others and God ought to be and how we should live our lives. Amen.
