Thu, Feb 25th - 11:11PM
John Chapter Two
"On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and His disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine ran out, Jesus' mother said to Him, "they have no more wine." "Woman, why does this concern us?" Jesus replied. "My hour has not yet come." His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever He tells you." Now six stone water jars had been set there for the Jewish rites of purification. Each could hold from twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus told the servants, "Fill the jars with water." So they filled them to the brim. "Now draw some out," He said, "and take it to the master of the banquet." They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not know where it was from, but the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, "Everyone serves the fine wine first, and then the cheap wine after the guests are drunk. But you have saved the fine wine until now!"
Jesus performed this, the first of His signs, at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed His glory, and His disciples believed in Him."
John 2:1-11
Imagine that you are one of these servants who are serving people at this wedding banquet. You are standing aside and listening to this conversation between Jesus and His mother. First you would think that after Jesus' mother tells you to do whatever He tells you to do that He will send you somewhere nearby to bring back more wine. That would be the logical conclusion to assume. But Jesus tells you and the other servants to go fill those stone jars with more water! Are you kidding me? What good is that? But then, Jesus tells one of you to ladle some of the water out and take it to the master of the banquet to taste. I do not know about you, but the entire time I am carrying this ladle out to the hall I am thinking that I am going to get beat for bringing water and not wine! Then when this man tastes what is in the ladle, it has become wine! Not just okay wine, but really fine wine! I would want to turn around to look back to see Jesus, and then to run back to those stone jars to see for myself that it all has been changed into wine.
Talk about experiencing a life altering event! How could Jesus possibly do this so quickly? How could He even do this! Did Jesus' mother know that her son would do it? Where did she go? I need to speak with her about what she said to us. Or, I need to speak to Jesus and have Him explain to me how He did it.
Mary simply knew that her son could solve the problem of no more wine. She probably did not know exactly how, just that He could and would. More than likely the marriage involved people that Jesus and His mother knew and that is why they had been invited. Mary would have then suspected that her son would not want there to be a scandal over lack of sufficient wine and would fix the lack thereof. Initially we see that Jesus almost rebukes His mother for making such a request. He states that it is not His hour yet. Obviously, Jesus was living according to a preconceived timetable of events. But He relents and the miracle takes place.
We can see the power of God at work here. Jesus did nothing special or out of the ordinary to convert the water into wine. He simply told the servants to fill all of the stone jars and when they had done so, the water changed into wine. And we are then told that after witnessing this, the disciples with Him believed in Him. Wouldn't you? The only people at that wedding banquet who knew what miracle had just happened were the servants, Jesus, probably His mother, and His disciples.
Some of those servants' lives must have been changed forever by what they had witnessed that day. How could they not? And that is what Jesus still does today. He comes to people at the appointed time in their lives, touches them, reveals Himself to them, and they are transformed. Their old lives are destroyed and they are given new lives with new perspectives on how this world operates and new behaviors. Jesus leads people to the foot of His Cross to confront their sin-stained lives and to realize that they can't pay the penalty of death demanded for their sin.
That is all for today my friends. Just some thought on this passage as we move through this season of Lent towards celebrating Easter.
Peace and love.
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Name: Eric Rajaniemi
