1. Grace, mercy, and peace to You from God our Heavenly Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word, as we observe the Epiphany of our Lord, is taken from John 2:1-11 and is entitled, “Soaked & Bloody: Our Lord & You,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ. Let us pray: Praised be you, O God, and blessed in eternity, who with your Word comforts, teaches, exhorts, and warns us. May your Holy Spirit confirm the Word in our hearts, that we may not be forgetful hearers but rather daily grow in faith, hope, love, and patience unto the end and be kept unto salvation, through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. Amen.
2. Soaked and bloody. Soaked in water and steeped in blood, soaked and bloody is our Lord. Recently baptized in the Jordan River, his hour has not yet come, but soon he will drench the earth with his blood shed from the cross for the sins of the world. Soaked and bloody is our Lord. Soaked and bloody is his Word throughout. Soaked and bloody is all of God’s story with and among his people.
3. It’s all about water and blood. The Epiphany of Our Lord—we see Jesus revealed, manifested, in a star, in the coming of the Gentile Wise Men and the gifts they bring. Yes, but the manifestation of Jesus, the revelation of his person and his work, his epiphany, is ultimately all about blood and water. It’s all about water and blood, blood and water.
4. Fast-forward from gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Christ turns water into wine for his first miracle and he turns wine into blood at the Last Supper. The Spirit hovers over the waters, and Cain murderously sheds Abel’s blood at the beginning, and at the end the river of life runs through the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem as we will be gathered around the Lamb from whom it flows and who was slain from the beginning of the world, whose robe is still then dipped in blood (Rev 19:13).
5. And you—you entered this world through the water and blood of your mother’s womb, and you were born again unto new life in the water of Mother Church’s womb at the baptismal font and are nourished by your Father who provides his Son’s blood for your sustenance at the Lord’s Supper. And that initial, rebirthing water, like mighty waves, will carry you home to its last act, its final baptismal-raising resurrection on the great day when you see your Lord face to face, including his still red, blood-scarred hands, feet, and side—from which flowed water and blood on that Last Day of his holy work week, the afternoon after he washed his disciples with cleansing water two thousand years ago and still does the same for you today. Again, still early in his epiphany, his first revealings, at Cana of Galilee Jesus attends a party. And, you do know, Jesus was eventually accused of being a winebibber and a glutton, a drunkard and partier, a friend of tax collectors, outcasts, sinners (Lk 5:33; 7:34).
6. Have you ever been accused of something so outrageous, so far-from-reality that you felt like responding, “Oh, yeah, you think so, huh?! You think I’m this way or that. Well, I’ll show you! I’ll show them!—and then you take their accusation and put it into hyperdrive? You take what they’re saying about you, and you embrace it and expand it. You flip it on its head and put three big exclamation points to it, to make a point. Well, as if to make a point—and, nothing our Lord does is by mistake. It’s all very intentional—so, to make a point, after repeating this accusation against him of feasting, partying, and hanging out with all kinds of undesirables, he then goes to another party (Lk 7:36–50).
7. A dinner party, given by a Pharisee. And there he allows—no less than a prostitute to wash, to anoint his feet with her tears—“the heart’s blood,” St. Augustine calls these tears of repentance—and also with ointment, as she wipes his feet with her hair. This was scandalous: a Jewish woman who let her hair down in public could be divorced. It was a sign that she was available to other men. What’s more, when a ceremonially impure person such as this woman touched a Jew, he would also therefore be considered unclean and would not be permitted to enter the temple area, to celebrate festivals, or to offer sacrifices (see TLSB, p 1724).
8. But now one greater than the temple is here (Mt 12:6), the one who offers himself as the greater sacrifice to cancel her guilt and sin, the one who offers himself to her as her true Bridegroom—for he loved her and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with washing of water, that he might present her to himself a glorious Bride, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish, pure. “This mystery is profound, [but] I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph 5:32; cf 5:25–32); I speak concerning you sinners and Jesus. Remember, at the wedding in Cana “there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification” (Jn 2:6). It’s no accident, you see then, that Jesus changes them to wine and that he later changes wine to blood and that the blood of Christ crucified cleanses you from all sin.
9. So this prostitute, by her repentance, does make herself available. Her heart, mind, soul, her all—she does make herself available to another man, to the God-man, Jesus. By his merciful Word he makes himself available to her, saying, “Your sins are forgiven. . . . Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Lk 7:48, 50). “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam 16:7).
10. What a party for her! What a celebration! And of course, this type of party, and this type of feast (altar), this should not come as a surprise, since Jesus’ very first miracle, his first sign, was to turn water into wine at a party. Now, don’t get me wrong. Neither Jesus nor I am saying that Jesus ever engaged in any kind of hedonistic debauchery or depraved, self-indulgent pleasure-seeking. Of course not! It’s not that kind of party. No, this has nothing to do with self-centeredness or selfishness or loss of control, not at all—for though you know that kind of self-appointed partying on your terms in many and various ways all too well, our Lord knew no sin.
11. No, at the party at Cana Jesus was truly rejoicing in the love of a young couple—even more so, rejoicing in his heavenly Father’s love, which makes them one through this wedding. And wine was customary and desired in order to complete the celebration. And so our Lord, through that same thoughtful and generous love, while thinking not of himself but of the others, miraculously provides the wine too.
12. And what Jesus was ultimately revealing in both word and deed? Already at Cana, and also especially with the sinful woman, and most certainly on the cross and coming out of the grave, and in your life here and now. What Jesus brings is the kind of party by and at which you can celebrate, lose yourself in the generosity and happiness of measureless mercy and free forgiveness, by which he fills your emptiness, completes and fulfills your joy and your needs, and restores you to your true self as created and redeemed to be by and in him through water and blood. Water and blood. Oh, joy indeed! After all, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” (Mt 9:15). No, they celebrate, they feast, they rejoice.
13. Whose wedding was it at Cana? It was actually Christ’s—for he is the greater Master; he is the true Bridegroom. It’s his unending feast. From the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorways in Egypt to the Last Supper, which is the final Passover and the first communion of the new covenant in Jesus’ blood. To the Lord’s Supper here and now, to the heavenly marriage supper of the Lamb—it’s always his wedding and feast and party. It’s always him, all his, always, all gift! Water, wine, blood, washing. Maybe that’s an epiphany for us.
14. Now, and still more to come, for as the prophet Joel proclaims: “It will come to pass in that day That the mountains shall drip with new wine, The hills shall flow with milk, And all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water; A fountain shall flow from the house of the Lord and water the Valley” (Joel 3:18 NKJV). “The blood of Jesus . . . cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7). Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds + in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.
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