Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is the Gospel reading from John, Chapter 2, which has already been read.

Dear Friends in Christ, for their wedding, they had pulled out all the stops, sparing no expense. They had butchered the fattened calf, and purchased the best wine they could for their many guests. But they had miscalculated, and in the Greek text of our Gospel reading Mary says that they were running low on wine. And that's a surefire way to ruin a party.

But Mary knew someone who could help. Jesus was in attendance, and she had confidence that He could do something about this, though we can't know exactly what she expected Him to do. "My Son, they're running out of wine," she said. And in His response it sounds like Jesus is snapping at her: "Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come." At first blush it seems that Jesus is being rude to His mother, brushing her off. And He was being very direct with her, telling her that He wasn't ready to act. It wasn't yet His time to address the situation because He was saving the best for later.

Doesn't God do that sometimes when you pray to Him? Doesn't it seem that your prayers are not heard, that your requests to the Father in heaven are falling on deaf ears? Don't you pray to God for your best life now, but still struggle with bad times? Yes, we do experience that delay and silence from the Lord sometimes. And in those cases, we should follow the example of Mary. She doesn't get upset or lose heart but tells the servants, "Do whatever He tells you." Mary did not lose confidence that Jesus would do something to help, but she realized that He would do what was best when and how it pleased Him. In faith, Mary basically prayed, "Thy will be done."

And here we see that our Lord will even tell His mother to wait, and so we should not be surprised when our prayers are answered with "Wait!"-the word that tries our patience. Did Jesus love His mother? Of course He did. Yet He told her to wait. He delayed helping. So when God delays in answering our prayers does that mean He doesn't love us? Perish the thought. Our Father promises to love and care for us and so faith recognizes that He will do what's best for us in His own time. Isn't that how parents are with their children? They know when it's time to tell their kids, "You're going to have to wait" to do this or that. So our Lord also can demonstrate His love for us by answering our prayers with a "Not yet. Be patient. Wait." Or even sometimes a flat out, "No!" But we always know He has our best interests in mind.

At the wedding at Cana we're not told how long Jesus waited before acting. The timeframe isn't clear from the text but it doesn't seem that Jesus acted right after Mary pointed out the problem to Him. It's very possible that Jesus waited until the party had gone bone dry before He told the servants to fill up the huge water jars. Perhaps He waited until everyone was panicking about the wine running out and not knowing what to do. It wasn't like they could run over to HEB or Wal-Mart. Once they were out, they were out.

But if Jesus delayed acting that's because it is often God's way of dealing with His children. Study the Scriptures. Doesn't our gracious God sometimes wait until people are in extreme situations before acting? Doesn't He often save His best blessings for last? Look at Abraham and Sarah. God didn't grant them a son until Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90, or as St. Paul puts it, Abraham was as good as dead and Sarah's womb was barren. Our gracious Lord didn't rescue His disciples from the storm on the lake until they were about to perish. Our merciful God waited until Israel was pinned against the Red Sea with the Egyptians hot on their tail before parting the waters and leading them through the sea on dry ground.

Or remember how St. Paul described his situation in 2 Corinthians 1:8-10. He wrote that in Asia, he and his fellow ministers experienced great affliction. He said, "we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death." They thought they were goners. The Lord had let them get to the end of their ropes. Yet what was the reason God let this happen? Paul explains, "But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again." The Lord lets us reach the end of our rope so that we realize that we can't do anything to help ourselves, and only God can do the impossible, only God can raise the dead.

In all those cases God waited until it seemed that hope was lost before providing a rescue. But when He did finally act, His salvation was greater than anyone could have expected. He saved the best for last. And in our Gospel reading, even in this trivial matter of a wedding party running out of wine, the Lord acts in a mind-boggling way to answer Mary's prayer. All Mary wanted was enough wine to last for the rest of the party. And what does Jesus give? Between 120-180 gallons of the finest vintage ever made, which is between 600-900 regular sized bottles. He provides an extravagant amount and quality of wine to a party that had already drunk its fill.

The surprised master of the banquet thought the groom had broken out this wine so he went to him and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now." And that is how our Lord deals with us. He always saves the best for later even while giving us choice wine right now. At the wedding at Cana, we can assume that the groom had provided the best wine he could at the beginning. He had brought out the choice wine but he didn't have any in reserve. And so the guests were enjoying good wine until they ran out. And this points to part of the meaning of this miracle today, that the Old Testament was good, but God was saving the best for the New Testament, for the last.

God had been with His people Israel throughout the centuries, through the generations of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and King David. He had dwelled with them and promised to be their God. He provided them with a way to worship in the divine service, where He forgave their sins and protected them from their enemies. He gave salvation to all who believed in Him. All these things were good. They were choice wine.

But God promised that the best was yet to come. He promised Israel that a great Messiah (also known as Christ, the King) would come to save them. And He told the people which signs to look for to indicate when the Messiah finally arrived. The miracle at Cana demonstrated that the Messianic age had finally come because of the amazing quality and abundance of the wine Jesus made out of water. The Old Testament predicted that one characteristic of the Messianic age would be a great abundance of fine wine. Isaiah 25:6 says that the Lord will make for all peoples (Jews and Gentiles!) "A feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine." Amos 9:13 says that "the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it." When Jesus changed the water in those giant Old Testament purification jars into wine, He signaled that He was the Messiah and that the old was giving way to the new. He was giving His disciples who knew the Old Testament a sign that He was the one they were waiting for to redeem Israel and bring in a new era of feasting in the Kingdom of God.

As wonderful as God's service to the Old Testament saints had been, the New Testament would be greater. The New Testament was promised to be a time when God would forgive the sins of the people and remember them no more; their sins would be sent as far away as east is from west because the Lord Himself would carry them away by the death of the Suffering Servant. And after the Messiah's resurrection, God would expand His kingdom out to include not just the Jews but the Gentiles too, all peoples, including you and me. And God promised that He would dwell with His people as "Immanuel," which means "God with us." All of this became a reality and the New Testament came in the person of Jesus Christ. In His perfect life, saving death, and glorious resurrection Jesus brought about the New Testament, the best wine that God had saved for last. This was demonstrated in today's miracle at Cana, and what did His disciples do? When Jesus revealed His glory, His disciples put their faith in Him.

This is your God, my friends-the Man Jesus Christ who comes into the world to dwell with sinners and to make peace between God and you. Your sins were placed on His back so that they no longer hang around your necks to drag you to hell. He suffered for all of your sins on the cross and rose to declare you holy and righteous. And now He works through the church to deliver His salvation to you. He takes water and adds His Word to it so that He can claim you as one of His own in Baptism. He takes wine and adds His Word to it so that He can give you the blood that He shed to take away your sins. On the night when He was betrayed, Jesus said, "Drink of it all of you. This cup is the blood of the New Testament which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me." And just as Jesus was able to miraculously turn water into wine, so also can He make the words, water, bread, and wine into eternal-life-giving gifts in Baptism, Absolution, and the Lord's Supper.

The Old Testament was good but God saved the best for the New. He now gives you His Son's body and blood in the New Testament Supper so that you can feast in His presence and even more, on Him, so that you can receive His forgiveness, life, and salvation throughout your lives. He gives you His grace with extravagant abundance by preaching this Good News into your ears and placing that Good News into our mouths.

And the Lord loves to give His gifts to you in great abundance, as He showed in the wedding at Cana. Do you think the bride and groom took the 180 gallons of wine and told the guests, "We're cutting you off. You've already had enough!"? Of course not, everyone there enjoyed the gifts together as a community, enjoying the wine that makes men's hearts glad. Or would the bride and groom have hoarded the gift and said, "This is such good wine we're not going to share"? Of course not, they wanted everyone to enjoy this wonderful gift. Maybe they even expanded their guest list halfway through the wedding.

So it is with Christ's gifts to the church. The gifts of Baptism, Absolution, preaching, teaching, and the Holy Communion are for you and your families and friends and for all people, and the Lord wants to give them out every day and every week. He wants to deliver them to you in abundance. And we just can't get enough of them, because we are poor, miserable sinners who need salvation desperately, because the devil, the world, and our flesh are constantly trying to drag us into unbelief. So the Lord's abundant gifts are given to more than make up for the great lack we sinners face, and so we gather here in the Divine Service and in Sunday School and Bible Class because there is always more to learn, more forgiveness to be received, more ways of growing in the faith, more ways to serve others. The Lord saves the best for now by fulfilling all His promises to Israel in Jesus Christ. Today He gives us more than we could ever ask for through His means of salvation right here in the church. Oh, and one more thing. He really does save the best for last. In heaven we will enjoy an eternal feast with God, better than anything we could ever conceive or imagine here on earth. May God grant it to us. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.