Mike Graves is professor of preaching at Central Seminary. In one of his classes, he takes students to the Nelson-Atkins Museum so that students can experience art as one of the great resources for preaching.

One day the class was led to a picture of the wedding at Cana. The picture was painted by the Italian artist, Sebastiano Ricci. As the students looked at the biblical scene so powerfully expressed on canvas, the Bible came alive in a new way. It was as if they were invited, too. They entered the scene themselves. They were at a wedding party. Eventually one student was heard to say, "Wow!" Another remarked, "fantastic."

But after more time lapsed in quiet reflection, one student, standing just a little off to the side, said: "It's just a painting. What's the joint?"

What do you say to someone who just doesn't get it? If someone looks and there is nothing there, what do you do? I take my wife to the ballpark. The other team has runners on first and third with one out. The batter hits a shot in the gap just out of reach of the Royals' third baseman. Suddenly the shortstop dives for the ball and traps it in his glove. On his feet like a flash he sidearms a perfect strike to the second baseman who touches the bag, goes straight up in the air to avoid the sliding runner's spikes and relays the throw to first beating the runner by half a step.

The crowd goes wild. It's the play of the game. Baseball at its best. And my wife, still seated, looks up from the book she has brought to the stadium to read and says with an expressionless face: "How many more innings?" What do you say to someone who doesn't get it?

If you had been a guest at the wedding in Cana, do you think you would have known what was going on? Would you have had the eyes and the heart to see? Or would it have been just another wedding?

Not that weddings were drab affairs. A wedding was a significant event, just as it is today, especially if you are the parents of the bride and you are paying all or most of the tab. Take my word for it: there are no inexpensive weddings. We tried. It cannot be done. But don't feel sorry for me (or yourself) about the high cost of modern weddings. The wedding in Cana must have been far worse on somebody's checking account. This wedding in Cana probably lasted seven days. Seven days of eating and drinking. Think of what that must have meant to a peasant farmer whose daily fare consisted of some bread, olive oil, cheese and water because that's all he could afford.

It must have taken that poor chap years and years of sacrifice and savings to put on a wedding, because a wedding was a time when there was meat and food for a week. A wedding was a time of feasting. The dull, drab diet of bread and cheese was replaced this week with a banquet of meat -- and wine.

But every wedding has a crisis. It's got to, or it wouldn't be a wedding. In my daughter's wedding -- scheduled in a non-air-conditioned seminary chapel in upstate New York because summer is delightful in Rochester -- the temperature hit 104 degrees on our big weekend. Guests from England were fainting. Cakes and candles were melting. And the minister -- me -- started crying when it came time to read the vows to my daughter, the bride, bringing the whole thing to a stop for what seemed forever.