Six Stone Jars

“Six stone jars were standing there.” – John 2: 6

Going back to the first wedding Jesus attends in his ministry, when we look at the six stone jars at Cana much can be said. First, we know they were purification jars, used in the Old Testament for purification rituals. We also know that they were made from stone which can easily be washed clean without any stain for purification.

Many of the purification rituals in the time of Jesus were usually done to prepare for major feasts and festivities. Their purpose was to cleanse oneself spiritually and physically from sin by immersing oneself in water. Running, or in other words, living water was used because it was thought to be pure and clean. The jars themselves are large in size because they were used to bring this running and living water to the mikveh so the cleaning could be done.

Second, it is worth noting that the tradition of the bride washing to prepare for marriage happened in a mikveh. Stone jars, such as those mentioned at the wedding of Cana, would have been used at washing ceremonies such as these.

Back at Cana, we see Jesus choosing to use the very vessels meant to prepare a couple for unity to attest to that very unity he as God has come to redeem. We learn the stone jars at Cana in total would have supplied between one hundred-twenty to one hundred-fifty gallons worth of water. They communicate the abundance of purity from sin God wants to provide each of us and the new state of living he is calling us towards.

Third and most importantly, John mentions there are six stone jars at the wedding. Earlier in his Gospel account, we see John starting to number days throughout chapter one. He begins his account in chapter one with, “In the beginning,” just as Genesis does. His first few chapters rest on the imagery of Genesis, of light and darkness, and of a new creation coming about.

Cana, we notice in John’s Gospel, lies on the seventh day. The Church teaches on the third day after the fourth day (i.e., the seventh day), Jesus arrives at the Wedding at Cana. Seven, we know biblically is the number of perfection. It is the number the Hebrews used to describe their covenant with God; sevah, to seventh oneself. Six on the other hand, we know biblically is an incomplete, imperfect number. Six was the day man was created on, but the seventh day was the day God rested.

We see at Cana then, something is incomplete:

Six stone jars were standing there. – John 2: 6

On the seventh day there are only six stone jars. Where then is the seventh jar? Six stone jars means something is left unsaid. Why isn’t there a seventh jar at Cana? Where is the completeness, the fullness of relationship with God. Where is the covenant we were made for?

The Seventh Jar

Now, let’s look to the cross, the day God again rested. Fra Angelico’s fresco painting above gives us a glimpse of the moment. The painting, which comes from the San Marco convent in Florence, shows the crucifixion of Jesus before his death and the sponge of vinegar being offered to him. There, we will notice another detail not yet mentioned. There, we can see the roman soldier holding onto something:

At Cana:

Six stone jars were standing there. – John 2: 6

At Calvary:

A bowl full of vinegar stood there. – John 19: 29

There it is! The bowl the soldier is holding onto. It is the seventh jar of wine! At Cana, six large stone jars stood there and were filled to the brim with water turned into the best wine. At Calvary, the seventh jar stands there as a small bowl of sour wine. Another translation of the same verse reads as such:

A jar full of sour wine stood there. – John 19:29 (ESV-CE)

At Cana, Jesus prepared six jars of the best wine possible, but the seventh final jar does not come till the cross. What then was incomplete at Cana? The answer is simple:

OUR RESPONSE

At the cross, Jesus extends an invitation for us to respond to his thirst for our love. He asks us to respond in covenant with him. Our wine, our sign of love, is to provide the final small insignificant jar of vinegar to quench the thirst of his desire.

There is something about love Jesus is trying to teach us here. That is, the love he desires of us as his bride is not about how much we can give, but rather about whether we are willing to give what we have. Love is not about making the perfect gift, but about making a gift. Adam couldn’t give much after the fall, but he still desired to love God and did his best building a family after God’s name. We weren’t ready at Cana to provide the final seventh jar, and even on this wedding hour of all hours at the cross we couldn’t give much.

But Jesus’s love for his bride is not about how much we can give, but rather about how much he has given us. The question he asks of us is if we are willing to receive his gift of love and give our soured heart in return. His thirst beckons us to ask if we might be willing to console his love and give the final seventh jar of sour wine to be drunk from for the wedding covenant.

Jesus has done the preparation, he as the bridegroom has initiated. It is up to us the bride to receive the gift of his life, his best wine, and respond by giving him what little we can offer.

The steward of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, "Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now." – John 2: 9-10

When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, "It is finished"; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. – John 19: 30

What is finished? The feast of Passover is finished. The Wedding Feast of Cana is finished. The Last Supper is finished. The New Bridegroom, God, has offered his life for his bride, humanity. Jesus has drunk the wine of the redeemed marriage of human and Divine. The New Adam opens his heart and brings forth new life in a new garden. Upon his resurrection, the fall of the first Adam and Eve will be redeemed. The songs of the eternal Wedding Feast ring.

The Heart Bursts

The steward of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from. – John 2: 9

But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. – John 19: 34

In the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid. – John 19: 41

In a new garden, the New Adam is laid. He dies the death for our redemption and for our new life that no other man could. He is the seed which crushes the head of our enemy, the serpent. Calvary is the day God again, rested. The day God slept in the sleep of death. The day he fulfilled his covenant with humanity. The day God, the New Adam, trusted when facing the serpent; reversing the time the old Adam failed to guard and to trust.

In the first garden, Adam once laid down his life for his bride, trusting in his God that he would be resurrected. God then opened Adam’s heart and used his rib and sleep of death to bring new life. Now, in a new garden, as God become man; Jesus lays down his life for us. He redeems our life and relationship with his Father. As a bridegroom, decked in royal attire, he marches in procession to the place he will offer his life for us. Drinking wine and granting pardon, his side is also opened to bring new life to his bride.

Love Spent

“My beloved is to me a bag of myrrh” – Song of Solomon 1: 13

Nicode'mus also, who had at first come to him by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds' weight. They took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. – John 19: 39-40

Myrrh itself comes from the pierced bark of a thorned tree. When the tree is wounded, its resin bleeds. Then it is distilled, and Myrrh’s scent is released. The Song of Solomon compares myrrh to a sign of love which has wounded itself so that it can emit a beautiful fragrance for its beloved. Now, we see Jesus pierced and fully spent by love. It is fitting then that at the very end of his life, Nicodemus comes with one hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to anoint the bridegroom. Jesus has spent all of his life for his beloved. His wounds emit the scent of spent love.

“For your love is better than wine, your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is oil poured out . . .” – Song of Solomon 1: 2-3

A Heart Pure and Steadfast

We offer to God a wine which was soured, a love which has soured, and he gifts us in return the wine of his perfect love, the blood from which we were bought with a price. Notice the love of the Divine Bridegroom for his bride. It is this kind of love that every man should imitate:

At first Jesus’s heart is not a torrent, it stays bottled up, in a sense. While on the cross and making of himself a gift, he first simply lets his blood drip. Jesus waits for the response of his bride in love, he waits for what little she may be able to offer. It is not until she gifts the sour love of wine, it is not until she grants warrant, that his heart becomes a torrent.

And at once there came out blood and water. – John 19: 34

Jesus in steadfast love waits patiently. Knowing our faults he pursues, for centuries upon centuries, the heart of humanity. Time and time again we turn and turn from him. But all he asks of us is our soured wine, what little we have to offer from the final seventh jar of our hearts. He provides the six most abundant jars of wine; he waits patiently for our offering of the seventh. He provides the most abundant of loves and wines for his bride. He offers her his life; he waits while she is in strife.

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which you have given me in your love for me before the foundation of the world.”– John 17: 24

The disciples he loved so much. They were such a gift to him. So much so that he longs to be with them forever. Jesus prays that they might reach eternity, to be where he is, so that he may always be with them. At the moment of speaking these words in his Farwell Discourse, just before his passion, Jesus knows what he is about to enter into.

He is going to win eternity for his bride, the church, so that she can be with him forever, so that she can delight in the gift she is to him forever. His love and motivation on the cross for his bride is not one of pity, but rather one of intimacy. He endures the impending suffering so as to win a chance to be with his bride again.

In Jesus we see the heart and call of every man. To remain steady and constant, to pursue through the great gift and act of their lives, to wait till the response of love from their bride is given for their heart to burst forth. To focus not so much on what one as a man receives, but rather, on how he gifts his heart, on his willingness to wait and grieve.

A good man, one after the heart of God, looks only to answer his bride’s need. He waits for her consent. He remains a rock despite what little she might be able to offer. He ignores the world and its scoffers. He prefers to wait, nailed on his own cross, doing nothing in her earthly eyes. He patiently sits, letting the offering of the blood of his life drip, until she recognizes his thirst for her and gives her consent.

Then, his thirst for his bride bursts forth. Then, he gives everything to her. He gives the abundance of his love stored up and ready to rush forth. When the hour has finally arrived, the groom goes and gets his bride. He sells everything for her, by way of the pure gift of his life.

“You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes . . . How sweet is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine . . .”

– Song of Solomon 4: 9, 10

To demonstrate the depth and weight of his love, Jesus gives all for the sake of humanity. The Divine Bridegroom dies to go after his bride. He sells all upon the great risk that she may be with him forever. The first man and woman, the ones he first loved, are who he goes to first. They were the ones whose love for him first soured. But they were also the ones for which his heart first flowered.

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. – 1st Corinthians 13: 4-7

The Man of Death

We used to be able to choose life over death. From Adam and Eve’s fall onward, we had no say in the matter. As much as we would hope to live, every human being now has no choice in the matter when the moment comes to die. Whether it be by illness, accident, injury, or age; the pain of human anguish is that when the end of our life arrives, we want nothing but to live. Yet still, we have no choice whether or not to die. Death taunts us and holds us as its victims. It belittles us to make feel weak and insignificant. It enters into our families and leaves us mourning. The pictures of loved ones on our walls hearken to death’s warning.

This was Satan’s aim after all, to trick us to stay inward, distracted from the magnanimous life to which we were called. Death led to our grasping for sin and its comforts. In the here and now, for this short time we thought we were made. We might as well make the most of it, we thought. Live it up we might say, only to realize interiorly we may actually be suffocating and dying. Death took away our responsibility for virtue and sanctity. What would even become the point of earthly charity? This world became too heavy to worry about anyone or anything outside what was our own.

Death swept out our confidence and took away our surety of feet. It offered no remedies. It took the innocent and vulnerable unjustly. There is nothing we could do to stop it. Death left us chained in defeat. It is the unseen power which comes for each of us, in its own season, in its own hour. So goes humanity’s life lived in death.

But what if a man, not subject to the curse of the power of Satan’s lordship, were to walk among us? Surely, he would’ve had the free choice like Adam and Eve to always choose living over dying. What if that kind of man walked the earth? Tempted but never giving in to the lie of knowledge: Free to live like we did in Eden. What would life look like for him? Surely our lives in comparison would be but shadows to his light. Surely his way of living would be hope in our plight.

The truth is that such a man does exist. What if this man in his freedom, knowing all our longings to live, would freely choose to die when he didn’t have to? What if he laid down his life where Adam didn’t? What if this man, in dying, upended Satan’s ruse?

What if he freely surrendered his life, taking no part in grasping for knowledge, but trusting rather in his Father’s promise? What if he went willingly to death, even though his type of life, unbroken and unfallen, was even more worth keeping? Even more so, what if this man surrendered to the power of death for our sake?

What if this man was actually the God we first walked with in the beginning? What would that say about him? His love for our lives amidst our tragic circumstance. What if he, the one freely living, went about the business of freely dying? So we, the unfreely dead, might in our own act of freedom and faith be brought to life again through his act of dying.

This would be his plan: To defeat Satan’s plan of death, God became one of us. For thirty short years he lived a quiet life in our company. Then came three astounding years from which his great announcement springs: The kingdom of God is here! Death no longer will have the final say! There is need no more to be caught up in Satan’s empty charade.

He the only free man, lived unlike any other. Yet still, he chose to live as our brother. God came himself to die for our sake. He entered the plan of the enemy and turn it on its head. God chose willingly to die, and in doing so entered Sheol, the abode of the dead.

“For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison.” – 1st Peter 3: 18-19

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him power over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.” – John 17: 1-2