Isaiah 62.1-5; 1 Corinthians 12.1-11; John 2.1-11

Almighty God, whose Son revealed in signs and miracles the wonder of your saving presence: renew your people with your heavenly grace, and in all our weakness sustain us by your mighty power; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

GOD's glory is revealed! "The heavens are telling the glory of God" sang the psalmist (Psalm 19.1); "the whole earth is full of [God's] glory" said the seraphs whom Isaiah saw (Isaiah 6.3). In a theological prologue, John summarises his whole Gospel: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth" (John 1.14).

Isaiah tells of God's irresistible urge to scoop his people into this extravagant revelation of divine glory. Writing when political upheavals foreshadowed freedom from the Babylonian exile, his excitement was barely contained: kings would see the glory, as God vindicated this tiny, exiled nation; worn-down exiles would be a crown of beauty in God's hand, a royal diadem; their ravaged homeland would be called "Married", "My Delight is in Her". The details are historical; the enduring message is that God's glory is revealed when God acts among his people.

Paul's echoed Isaiah's message when trying to order worship in an immature and irrepressible church: God pours out his blessing with abandon, and reveals his glory among his people, who are open to the Holy Spirit working among them. The initiative is entirely God's, and even the exasperating Corinthians see, and themselves reveal, God's glory in Jesus Christ, the head of the Church.

Against this background of overt revelation of God's glory, the Gospel is stunningly muted. John picked up Isaiah's imagery of marriage's heralding the dawning of the messianic age that comes in Jesus Christ, but the context was not Isaiah's international stage.

Instead, events at a nondescript village wedding constituted the first sign through which Jesus revealed his glory, and few people noticed what happened, let alone saw any glory. The servants knew where the wine came from; the steward knew it tasted good, but not its origin; and the bridegroom seemed blissfully ignorant of everything. Mary and the disciples knew, and believed in Jesus, but that was it.

It all happened in a backwater. If this was Jesus's glory revealed, the "wonder of his saving presence", as the collect puts it, we have to revise our concepts of what it means for heavenly glory to be revealed. Jesus's glory revealed on earth was modest and unassertive. It was a costly glory; Michael Ramsey identified it with Jesus's utter self-giving to the Father, which breaks the power of human, sinful glory.

The crucial thing at Cana was not that everyone was wowed by something spectacular, but that the disciples believed in Jesus. The seven signs that John recorded teased and disturbed people enough to raise questions, but, for glory to be revealed, they needed to be met by faith. Thus, near the end of his life, Jesus said to Martha: "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"

St Augustine sums it up: "The presence of his glory walks among us, if love finds room." For those at Cana with eyes to see and hearts open to love, the revelation of Jesus's glory was life-changing. It can be the same for us when God's glory is disclosed in the everydayness of life - and suddenly our world is charged with the grandeur of God.

When I lead pilgrimages in Durham Cathedral, we stop at the crossing, the heart of the intersecting architectural cross, to look up at the tower, and be dwarfed by its design and beauty. Inevitably, people gasp in wonder. Once, Ruth Etchells, the former Principal of St John's College, was present, and said softly: "When you are here, your fingertips are resting on glory; you are living on the edge of eternity."

Our fingertips rest on glory: we are in the Epiphany season of glory revealed in Jesus Christ. Rarely is this glory revealed blindingly, as at the transfiguration; but it is there for the seeing, when suddenly we glimpse, as though through a crack in the ordinary into heaven, a miraculous foretaste of the fuller revelation of glory to come (John 17.24).

Then our world is charged with glory, and Cana's simple marriage-feast takes on a messianic meaning, as God rejoices over us as a bridegroom with a bride. Dare we believe that we will see the glory of God where we live and work? Can love find room?