Water into Wine

In today’s Bible reading, we read about the first of Jesus’ miracles. It happened at a wedding in a small and inconspicuous town called Cana. At the wedding banquet, wine was supposed to be in excess so everyone could have as much as they liked. Unfortunately or fortunately, at this wedding, the wine ran out. Mary, the mother of Jesus, gave Jesus a heads up about the situation, only to have Him tell her to relax, for His time hadn’t come, or had it?

Jesus, the Son of God, knew when His time would come, but it wasn’t on the wedding day. With typical maternal intuition, Mary told the servants to do whatever her son asked them to do. I’m guessing that over the years, Jesus had astounded his mother with doing the miraculous with the mundane, so she seemed ready for anything. Jesus followed through on his mother’s instinct and asked the servants to fill huge stone jars that were used to fill water for ritual purification by the Jews. After they filled the jars, he asked them to draw some out and take them to the host. From the time the water was poured into the jars till it was tasted by the host, something miraculous had happened. It couldn’t have been a magician’s trick or some tricky maneuvering by a steward because the miracle was experienced in tasting the wine. The host mentioned that this wine was the best he had tasted all day! Wow! The proof of the wine was in its tasting. In just a few minutes, Jesus proved His divinity to His disciples, who put their trust in Him, while His glory was revealed.

As we walk out the next 30 days, the hope is that you will experience His glory unfolding right before you through the profoundly ordinary and mysteriously supernatural things you encounter. God’s glory will surprise you, yet it will comfort you, and God-willing, should restore a deep and abiding faith in Him.

Another interesting shift in this snippet of Jesus’ early ministry is how He skillfully and simply articulates a more profound shift in the spiritual realm now that He has entered into ministry. Jesus often spoke of the “new wine in new wineskins” analogy, which He used in reference to the fresh work that His anointing would do within people. This incident at the wedding clearly demonstrates what that would begin to look like in centuries to come. Stone jars, which were used for the ritual washing of hands and feet of Jews, were now used to contain fine wine that would gladden the hearts of all who drank it. Wine, in this cultural context, denoted joy or abundance. Jesus, in His own words, asked us to remain in Him so that His joy would come to us and be made complete (John 15:11). Jesus also spoke of Himself in comparison to the enemy in John 10 verse 10 where He said that He comes to give life in abundance while the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy.

In turning water into wine, it is possibly a deeper invitation that Jesus is giving us to draw from Him instead of drawing from old religious traditions, so that we live a life of greater fulfilment and genuine joy. All those who choose to follow Jesus are made new. The old has gone, the new has come (2 Cor 5:17).