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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, you’re looking at that gospel reading, the miracle of changing water to wine for our text. Please be seated. There was a picture going around the Internet of a grocery store wine aisle, but the sign that was advertising what’s in the aisle said “water,” and the caption was, “Well, Jesus did it again.” This miracle of Jesus turning water into wine is very familiar; His first recorded miracle, in fact. Lutherans jokingly love this miracle because of Jesus’s use of an adult beverage.
Now, the term miracle gets used in a lot of different ways, and technically, miracles are God intervening in nature. But here’s the definition I want to use: A miracle is God changing things. That’s what I want to focus on—not the water and wine part of the miracle so much, but the change. Because God changes things in miracles.
Think about Jesus’ miracles, okay? He changed things in them. Water to wine, storms to calm, sickness to healing, demon-possessed people to freedom, and even death to life. Yes, they’re glorious and powerful, but more so, miracles change things. They aren’t just for God’s glory, or power, or for Jesus to show off, or for entertainment. They’re not magic. Miracles change things. And not change just for the sake of change, but change for our benefit. Jesus does miracles to change things for our benefit.
Even at this wedding in the Gospel, there was benefit. Wedding receptions back then lasted for a week. To run out of wine early on in that week was a major social blunder, okay? It was shameful to the couple and to the master of the feast to run out of wine. But Jesus changed things. He saved them from shame. He saved the celebration. Back then, wine was a symbol of joy and abundance, so Jesus brought the party, the master of the feast, and the couple great joy by changing water into wine. See, Jesus kept the party alive. You could say Jesus was a party animal.
Again, the definition of miracle that we’re using is God changing things, including you. God changes you. Sometimes those changes that God does in your life come over a period of time, like God revealing to you new biblical truths or gradually steering you and correcting behaviors of yours that are against His will and maybe even harmful to you or to somebody else. Over a period of time, God molds you and forms you to change you. But sometimes, sometimes there’s instant change, miraculous change. Man, wouldn’t some instant miraculous change in this world be great? And wouldn’t it be great too for instant and miraculous change in our lives?
Because life so often seems full of storms and sickness and shame and death. We all have things that we’d like God to change in us. For UT students and any other students, I would suppose, the thing that they’d like to have changed in them is they’d like to have their grades changed; sometimes they like their tuition changed; they like their schedules changed; their roommates changed. But for non-students, the storms and sickness of things like financial troubles, bad employment situations, rocky relationships, health difficulties, worry about the future—things we’d like changed.
And then there’s an even bigger thing that needs to change. I mean those behaviors, those habits, those things that we say, do, or even think that are not only wrong and harmful; they’re sinful. And you need instant miraculous change for your sin. Sin that causes storms and sickness in others and in you. Sin that causes shame. Sin that causes guilt. Sin that steals your joy and stops the celebration in your life. You need instant miraculous change. Because, well, you know how bad your sins can be—the storms that they may cause, how sick they can make you feel, how shameful they can be, maybe even making you feel dead.
And there’s the biggest change that we need: the stormiest, sickest, most shameful thing in humanity—death. We need this death thing changed. Oh, we humans, we try. We try to change death. We try to do miracles through cryogenics or other things that prolong life or try to cheat death, but they don’t work. And that’s because they don’t change the root of the problem of death—and that’s sin. Sin destroys. Sin kills. Sin brings death. Romans chapter 6—a maybe familiar verse that you’ve heard before—says quite simply, “The wages of sin is death.” That’s what we earn for our sin: death. Death is the result of our sin, the consequence of it, the wage of it. Yeah, you and I need a miracle to change that, to change sin and death.
And Jesus does it. He does a miracle that brings instant, miraculous change to our sin and death. And it’s in a way that’s even more glorious and powerful than all of His other miracles put together. That instant miraculous change happened when Jesus died on the cross because it changes things. Jesus’s death on the cross was a miracle to benefit you—to instantly pay for your sin, to instantly take away the punishment for your sin, to instantly forgive your sin and change you instantly. When Jesus was on the cross, just before He died, one of the last things He said was, “It is finished.” The change was made, was done, it was accomplished, and that change was to take your storms and sickness, your sin, your shame, your guilt, and even take your death and change it.
This miracle was to change you, change you to a calm, healed, and living person. A person forgiven of your sins. A person that’s shameless, guilt-free, that can have joy and celebration in life. And talking about miracles, they just get better because of Christ’s resurrection from the dead—a miracle for sure. Also for our benefit, to give us eternal life. When Jesus walked out of His grave, we walked out of ours too— a complete instant miraculous change in Christ’s death and resurrection.
I want you to hear some verses about this death and resurrection miracle and the changes it makes. Galatians 2: “I have been crucified with Christ; it’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” And also from Romans 6: “We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died, He died to sin once for all. But the life He lives, He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” And from 2 Corinthians: “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation.” Completely changed—a miracle!
That’s what the miracle of changing water into wine—and really all of Jesus’s miracles—pointed to: the sin and death changing miracle of Jesus’s death and resurrection. It was all kind of like warm-ups for this. I mean, at Cana, when He changed water into wine, the people were amazed, and His disciples believed in Him. But Jesus could have been thinking, “Just you guys wait. Just you wait. I’m going to die and rise again for you.” That’s the benefit of the miracle for us: forgiveness and life.
You know, we can look at the cross and look at the empty grave and say, “Well, Jesus did it again.” It’s an ongoing benefit. This miraculous change happens every day. Because each time you confess your sin and admit your need to change, the miracle of forgiveness is given. Each time you read or hear God’s Word or see it signed as well, each time you do that—and each time you receive the Lord’s Supper, each time you pray, each time Jesus shows up in your life—He makes a miraculous change in you. And each time this happens, you can say, “Well, Jesus did it again.”
Because that’s what Christianity is: Jesus changing things—changing storms to calm, sickness to healing, guilt to forgiveness, shame to joy, and even death to life. Christ changing you—or at least He wants to. Jesus wants to change you. He wants you to know that miraculously, instantly, His life-changing grace, mercy, and forgiveness are for you.
Now, if you’ve got something that needs changing—sinful thoughts, words, actions, guilt, or shame—Jesus wants to change that in you. He wants to change it in that miracle of His death and resurrection. Your life doesn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t have to be full of shame and guilt. You don’t have to live in that. You don’t have to live in the fear of death. You can live as a changed person. You can live as one who’s been miraculously changed by Jesus, and then changed by Him, you can then be loving and forgiving of others, and you can tell others about this miraculous change that Jesus has for them.
I’m willing to bet that you know people—family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, enemies—people that are struggling with life, struggling with storms, struggling with sickness, struggling with shame or guilt, and you know they need to be changed. You know that Jesus can change them miraculously. We get to tell those people about that miracle of Jesus so that they can know it too, and Jesus can change them too. Again, that’s what Christianity is: God changing things, changing everything, changing you for your benefit. May you always know the changing miracle of God’s love for you in Christ. Amen.
Now may the peace of God, which goes beyond all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
