The Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to John
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. (John 2:1-11)
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A priest was driving his car rather erratically. It was weaving from side to side. Naturally, a policeman sitting in his car watching the traffic go by, on seeing how this car was being driven, gave chase. It didn’t take long to catch up with the car and the driver readily pulled over when signaled to do so.
The priest wound down the window, and looked at the officer with a big smile. The officer asked, “ Sir, have you been drinking?” The priest answered, “Yes, but only water.”
The policeman then spotted an empty bottle on the floor of the car, and asked the priest to pass it to him. The priest did so. The officer smelled the bottle, and said,” This bottle smells like wine.”
“Would you believe it,” said the priest,” He’s done it again.”
The event that took place at Cana and which is related in today’s Gospel has inspired many stories like that.
Mary was invited to a wedding, and asked Jesus to come along. He did so, but he arrived with five disciples. Five unexpected guests might have put a strain on the resources of bride and groom, and sure enough the wine ran out.
An incident like that would be terribly embarrassing for anyone, but in Palestine, because of the strong tradition of hospitality, it would be doubly so.
In some accounts, Mary is the sister of the groom’s mother Salome. She may have had some official function at the wedding. She certainly was able to speak authoritatively to the servants. It was she who first noticed that the wine was gone, and she mentioned it to Jesus.
It’s a bit like, if a woman, accompanied by her son, handy at fixing computers, was visiting friends, and seeing that their computer was on the blink, says to her son, “The computer is broken, “ meaning, “Go and fix it.”
Jesus at first says, “My time is not yet come.”
His mother ignores him, and tells the servants, “Just do whatever he tells you.”
She knows he will do something about the situation.
And Jesus does.
He, in effect, provides 120 or more gallons of wine. Six stone jars, each holding twenty odd gallons – more than enough for a half dozen wedding receptions.
This looks like overkill doesn’t it? They asked for wine. They got wine. Oh boy, did they get wine.
There are several points to this story.
This is the first recorded miracle, or sign, that Jesus did. It sounds rather frivolous at first. There is so much to do in the world, and here is Jesus making water into wine.
But to the couple whose wedding was being celebrated, running out of wine would be disastrous. It would be a monstrous shame.
If you think that is an overstatement, then just cast your mind back to your own wedding, or to the wedding of a son or daughter and remember the stress, the worry, the tumultuous part that wedding played in the lives of groom and bride, father of the bride, mother of the bride, attendants, groomsmen, and so on, for weeks, or months.
I see it a lot, I tell you, and although it dismays me that it is so, it is a fact that a wedding is an extremely worrying event.
Jesus had compassion on that couple and helped them out.
Are you like me in that when you pray you are kind of ashamed to ask God to help with simple everyday things? Like, I pray for peace in the world. I pray for those I know are sick, or who have asked for my prayers. But if there is something in my own life that is bothering me, and even though it is a serious worry for me, in the world scheme of things it seems trivial, then I am reluctant to ask God to help me out.
How about you?
But this story tells us that God is concerned with our everyday problems and we can take them to him.
As soon as Mary heard there was a problem, she immediately turned to Jesus, and so can we. In fact he should be the first one we turn to.
The story works on another level too.
John the evangelist, the writer of this Gospel, said nothing that was not meaningful. He wrote this Gospel seventy years after Jesus was crucified.
He had all that time to consider, to ponder the deeper meanings of the events he remembered, and he brings all that consideration to his Gospel.
At the very beginning of his ministry, in a little village almost within sight of Nazareth, Jesus did this miracle.
He replaced water with wine. It was better wine than had been there before. It was so plentiful that there was more than enough for everyone there, more than enough for the whole village, probably.
The deeper message that John wants us to understand is that Jesus is entering into a momentous time, a wonderful ministry of word and deed, that will put an end to the old stale ways of doing things. He is doing a new thing. He will bring a different, new, more wonderful way of knowing God.
The way of worship epitomized by Temple sacrifice will be ended. The way of worship epitomized by the Pharisees and their obsession with the law will be discredited.
People will have access to a God that had appeared to have become distant, not because God wanted it, but because the priests and the temple and the law and all the stuff around religion, plain got in the way of the people and their God.
Jesus was bringing the blessing of freedom to worship, and to experience joy in that worship.
Anyone who thinks that religion should be gloomy has got the wrong idea.
Here are Jesus and the disciples having a good time, with people they know, at a celebration.
The old ways, like the old wine had run their course. New ways, much better ways, like the new wine, would take their place.
The story works on another level too.
What changed in the story primarily was the water. It became wine. But what also changed?
The attitude of the wine steward changed. One moment he had no wine to serve, the next moment he had plenty. Imagine the grin on his face.
The attitude of some of the people there changed too. They always thought that the best wine was served at the start of a celebration and the not-so-good wine near the end when people would be less discerning. This time the best was served last.
The attitude of the couple was changed from one of consternation to one of joy.
The attitude of the bride’s father was changed. He was responsible for providing the wine, and was probably white with worry when it ran out. Now he is happy, relaxed, can enjoy the evening, and looks like a great planner.
Mary’s attitude didn’t change. She knew Jesus could fix things, and here he had fixed this.
You see, Jesus did what he did, for people.
This story therefore, works for us. Jesus is not in this world physically, but he still does his miracles for us, and through us.
Some years ago, Bob Proctor was doing a week-end seminar at the Deerhurst Lodge north of Toronto. He was there on that awful Friday night when a tornado swept through Barrie, killing several people and doing millions of dollars of damage. I am sure you remember that.
I met someone just a few months ago whose trailer was smashed to ruins, and who were lucky to get out alive.
Sunday night as Bob was going home, he stopped his car in Barrie and got out on the side of the road and looked around. It was a mess. Everywhere he looked there were smashed houses, and overturned cars.
The same night a man by the name of Bob Templeton was driving down the same highway – probably Highway 400. He stopped to look at the disaster just as Bob Proctor had. His thoughts, however were different. Bob was the vice president of Telemedia Communications, which owned a string of radio stations in Ontario and Quebec. He thought there must be something he could do to help the people of Barrie, using the radio stations they had.
The following night Bob Proctor was doing another seminar in Toronto. Bob Templeton and Bob Johnson, another vice president from Telemedia came and stood in the back of the room. That night they shared their conviction that there had to be something they could do for the people in Barrie. They went back to Bob’s office.
Templeton was now committed to the idea of helping those caught in the tornado. So the following Friday he called all the executives at Telemedia to his office. At the top of a flip chart he wrote the numbers 3-3-3.
He said to his executives, “How would you like to raise three million dollars three days from now, in three hours, and give the money to the people of Barrie?”
Finally someone said, “Templeton, you are crazy. There’s no way we can do that.”
Bob said, “Wait a minute. I didn’t ask you if we could , or even if we should,
I just asked if you’d like to.”
They all said, “Sure, we’d like to.” He then drew a large T underneath the three threes. On one side he wrote, “Why we can’t,” and on the other, he wrote,” How we can.”
He put a big X on the ‘why we can’t’ side, because he said that was a waste of time.
He told them he would put down all their ideas on the other side, and said, “We are not going to leave the room till we figure it out.”
There was a long period of silence, until someone finally said, “We could do a radio show across Canada.” Bob said that was a great idea and wrote it down.
Before he had finished writing, someone else said, “You can’t do a radio show across Canada, we don’t have radio stations across Canada.” That was a pretty valid objection, They only had stations in Ontario and Quebec.
Templeton said, “That’s why we can. That stays.”
It had also been a valid objection because radio stations are very competitive and don’t usually work together.
All of a sudden, someone suggested, “You could get Harvey Kirk and Lloyd Robertson, the biggest names in Canadian broadcasting to anchor the show.”
At that point it was amazing how the ideas began to flow. They came fast and furious.
That was Friday. The following Tuesday they had a ‘radiothon.’ They had fifty radio stations all across the country that agreed to broadcast it. It didn’t matter who got the credit for it as long as the people in Barrie got the money. Harvey Kirk and Lloyd Robertson anchored the show and they succeeded in raising three million dollars, in three hours, in three business days.
That’s a miracle if you ask me.
People working together to help people who needed help, probably prayed for help, and help came.
Miracles are still being done in this His world.
Don’t tell me that God doesn’t care, or that Jesus came for nothing, or that there is no good going on in this world.
Jesus began something with that first miracle, that has endured.
He merely changed water into wine, but it was a beginning that saw mighty changes, miraculous changes, take place in people’s lives.
More, much more has happened since Jesus died than during his short three year ministry – as he promised it would.
Proof that His Spirit is still at work, in the world, in the church, and in us.
Amen.
I found the story told by Bob Proctor, about his friend Bob Templeton,, in Chicken Soup for the Soul, written and complied by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, published in 1993 by Heath Communications Inc., Florida.