“The third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee . . .” John 2:1

“The Mighty Three, my protection be, encircle me.  You are around my life, my love, my home.  Encircle me O sacred three, the Mighty Thee.”  (Traditional Celtic Wedding blessing spoken by the bride and the groom)

A wedding celebration!  That’s the first miracle recorded in the Gospel of John.  A party! A festive occasion filled with fealty and fun and frolicking.  A wedding celebration!  Did you ever wonder why?  Consider this question for a moment if you will; “Why, of ALL the miracles performed by Jesus, did the Apostle John choose to record the turning of water into wine at a wedding as the first miracle?”

What did you come up with?

Here’s my answer:  God is not the God of the dead, but the living.  Put another way, God loves happiness and joy.  And a wedding is perhaps the human pinnacle of such.

Consider the scene for a moment; Jesus is at a wedding!  Far from being the dour killjoy whose life is filled with sorrow (Isaiah calls Him ‘The Suffering Servant’), Jesus appears to be the life of the party.  When the wine runs out, who does his mother go to?  Jesus!  Why is that?  Because she knew he’d perform a miracle?  I don’t think so.  I think it’s because Jesus was the guy who enjoyed life and would keep the party going!  And he did!  He turned water into wine.  But not just a little wine, but LOTS of wine!  Enough wine for the guests to get drunk on! And not just any wine, but the BEST wine!

What does this say to you?  To me it says that life is to be lived drinking fully from the cup of Christ’s joy!  St. Irenaeus said, “The Glory of God is mankind fully alive.”  Similar to this is something I recently read which said, “The greatest sin is to live a life that is unlived.”

This week my youngest daughter Molley is getting married.  It will be an especially joyous event due not only to the regular festivities associated with weddings, the eating and drinking and such, but because of the family members and friends that will be there.  And yes, there will be an open bar! Weddings are filled with the hopes and dreams and delights of entering into life together and to live happily ever after.  Yes, I know, it’s the stuff of fairy tales and seldom, if ever, does it turn out that way.  The joy thieves can and often-times do take up residence in a marriage.  But that doesn’t mean it’s what God desires.  In the first creation a woman was fashioned from a man, and when he recognized his perfect counterpart the man exclaimed, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”  Think of Adam saying that with excitement and exuberance and the exhilarating feeling of the Holy Other!  What Joy!

Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying that one has to be married or have a life partner in order to experience such joy.  Not at all.  Jesus didn’t. Neither did Paul from what I can tell. Neither did some of the great saints, both men and women, of old.  What I AM saying is that a wedding serves as perhaps the supreme example of the joy that is possible when a man and woman and God all come together, to form a trinity of love and joy.  It is, at least in theory, a sacred relationship that fosters the joy in which God intends for us to live.

The Celts loved celebrations.  The word that is used to describe a festive occasion is Ceilidh.  It wasn’t specifically for a wedding, but any occasion in which the community could come together to drink and dance and eat and laugh and tell stories and enjoy life.  A wedding for the Celts was certainly much more, but nothing less, than an opportunity to have such a celebration.  A celebration in which they recognized the presence of God, as the above reading indicates.  A celebration in which they relished divine love.  And a celebration which they would prefer water being turned into whiskey, not wine!