The Gospel Lesson which you have just heard is from the Second Chapter of John’s Gospel, which tells us about the very start of Christ’s ministry.  Chapter Two begins with Jesus at a wedding feast with His mother.  And you know the rest:  the wine runs out (a big social no-no in First Century Jewish society), and in response to this (at His mother’s urging) Jesus has a number of servants draw 180 gallons of water . . . which becomes just the best wine anyone has ever tasted.  Scriptural Commentators point out that this first miracle of Jesus is to be interpreted as a “messianic sign” foretold in such places as the prophesies of Isaiah, particularly Chapter 25, which says,

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined.

. . . Now, what exactly is a “messianic sign” you might wonder.  Well, the definition provided by The Anchor Dictionary of the Bible is one which suggests that a “messianic sign” indicates that a time has begun in which “God will complete and crown His dealings with His people and with the whole world by effecting a radical and lasting change, inaugurating a new era (Vol. IV, p. 778).  And John, in the Second Chapter of his Gospel, asserts that the first miracle of Jesus, the miracle of abundant wine at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, was just that:  a sign of the beginning of a new thing by which the Lord God Almighty would effect a “radical and lasting change”.

    Following this messianic event of abundant wine, Jesus goes to Jerusalem.  Jesus goes to Jerusalem (with His disciples) for Passover.  . . . And while Jesus is there events unfold as the Deacon has read them to you.  Jesus goes to the Temple . . . and His attention is arrested by all the sheep and oxen and pigeons that are penned only a few feet from the Holiest of Holies, the Tabernacle; . . . only a few feet from the Throne of God!  . . . You all have experience with farm animals.  Imagine such animals penned up in our Narthex; . . . imagine the noises; . . . imagine the odor; . . . you would be begging me to use incense every Sunday in order to hold the animal smells at bay.  . . . Well, Jesus is arrested by this scene and its scents in the Temple, . . . and He sits down on a bail of hay for half the morning, . . . absently weaving, out of lengths of straw, a kind of rope.  . . . Finally, Jesus suddenly stands up and strikes the merchant nearest Him with His improvised whip and yells for him to take his oxen and leave; . . . and then Jesus lays about Him with His whip, opening pens, overturning tables, and striking merchants about their shoulders and on their backsides in order to expel them from the Temple!  . . . Ah, the heat and righteous indignation leveled at those profane, greedy, and impious bankers and merchants.  It must have been an invigorating sight.  . . . But then there is the sound of distant thunder that chills the heart; . . . for, John reminds us of what is written in Psalm 69, verse 10:  “Zeal for your house has eaten me up; the scorn of those who scorn you has fallen upon me.”  . . . In the very same Chapter that records the beginning of Christ’s wonderfully happy ministry of abundant wine . . . we hear rumbles which suggest that His ministry will not conclude happily.  We hear rumbles which suggest that the zeal which Jesus has for God . . . will not be well received by everyone.

    And then John writes,

The Jews then said to him, “What sign have you to show us for doing this?”  [for throwing the merchants and bankers and beasts out of the Temple]  Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?”

During Holy Week, at the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin, you will hear bribed witnesses lie to that court by falsely swearing that Jesus said He would destroy the Temple and in three days build another.  . . . And at the Crucifixion of Jesus you will hear passersby taunt Him as He hangs on the Cross, and they will say they thought He was the big shot who would destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days.  . . . But now, . . . today; . . . at the very start of Jesus’ ministry, . . . John tells us what Jesus meant when He said “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”:

he spoke of the temple of his body [John writes].  When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.

And the thing that John wants us to understand by this . . . is that Jesus is the messianic event!  All the way from the abundant wine He provided at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee . . . all the way from His first miracle to the empty Tomb,  Jesus is the messianic event by which God completed and crowned “His dealings with His people and with the whole world by effecting a radical and lasting change, inaugurating a new era (Ibid.).”

    Saint Paul believes this; . . . it is the very thing he is getting at in the distinction he makes between Law and Grace in the very difficult portion of his Epistle to the Romans which was read to you this morning.  . . . The Law in and of itself as Law reveals the nature of sin to us, Paul says; and so, the Law in and of itself cannot be kept by us; . . . it cannot be kept because sin resides in us, . . . and sin is easier to do than God’s law.  . . . But, Christ is risen(!), Saint John reminds us, and the Resurrection of Jesus has completed and crowned the dealings of the Lord God Almighty “with His people and with the whole world”.  It has done so by “effecting a lasting and radical change.”  Or, as the prophet Isaiah puts it,

he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.  He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth . . .

On the mountain upon which Jerusalem is founded and the Temple of God stood in the days of Jesus, the Lord God Almighty has, in Christ, swallowed up death forever . . . and taken away the reproach of sin, . . . because you are all baptized into the death of Jesus and share in His Resurrection . . . so that you also are as good as risen . . . so that, while sin still resides in your flesh, . . . you have died to the flesh and rose up from the Baptismal Font with a new Life in you . . . so that you are as good as risen (although it has not happened yet and will not happen until the completion of God’s time); but you are as good as risen, nonetheless, for you share in the Life and Communion with God that Jesus shares right now . . . and forever, . . . eternally.

    And so, when we remember the Commandments in our Sunday Liturgy, as we did on the First Sunday in Lent; . . . when we remember the Commandments what do we say?  We say, “Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.”  We know that no Law of God can be kept by human will without God’s Grace to overcome the sin that resides in our flesh by means of the sacred Life that resides in our bodies:  . . . by means of the sacred Life that resides in heart and soul and mind.  And so, we keep the Law; we keep the Commandments of God by remembering Jesus; . . . by dying with Him (every day) to sin . . . so as to live a sacred life in accordance with the Heart of God . . . articulated by His command that
        we have no other gods but Him
        we not fall down and worship that which is not God
        we not disgrace our Name of Christian
        we sanctify our weeks with prayer and Sacrament
        we honor our father and our mother
        we not kill
        we not adulter (make dirty) what God intends to be clean and pure and                 holy
        we not steal
        we not lie . . . and
        we not covet what God has not given us.
. . . That is what the loving Heart of God wills for us, . . . and by His Grace we have the power to be conformed to the Heart of God . . . if we remember Jesus . . . and believe the Holy Scriptures . . . and the word that Jesus has spoken to us.