The Power (to make your Son) Turn Water into Wine
John 2:1-12
John 2:1-12
I had a nice couple of weeks at home with my children, but now they are back to school (with the exception of the one zoom schooler on lockdown behind me), so I’m back to work. I should be back to a weekly schedule as we follow along with the lectionary. This week we are taking a look at John’s gospel, and if you are used to the Jesus that we have been talking about for the last several weeks, you may find Jesus a little odd this week.
When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’
You may remember that the last several passages we have looked at have all come from Matthew, Mark and Luke. These three have a lot in common because, while there is some material that is different in each of them, they share the same structure and they often have whole passages that are close to word for word copied in each book. If you are interested in a side by side comparison, here’s a cool chart.
Rather than following the mold of the other three canonical gospels, John goes it’s own way in both the structure of the story of Jesus’s life and the way that Jesus acts. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus generally tends to keep a low profile. He tells people not to tell others who he is, and he is very vague about his exact relationship with God. John’s Jesus is essentially the opposite of that. He makes bold declarative statements about himself to practically anyone who will listen. John’s gospel was written the latest after Jesus’s death, so it might make sense that the author would try to make many of the things that are hinted at in the other gospels a bit more explicit.
In the passage we see Jesus at a wedding with his mother, and the wedding hosts make the most tragic mistake ever. They run out of booze! Mary tells Jesus about the lack of wine with a little implied horror, and Jesus has a pretty perplexing response. He says, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” Even more oddly, Mary just seems to ignore him. She doesn’t respond at all. Instead she tells some servants to do what Jesus says. The servants gather the materials that Jesus asks for, and boom! Water is turned into wine. The story even contains a moment to share with the reader that this is really good wine!
The purpose of the passage in the book is to be another miraculous example of Jesus’s power, but to me what I find interesting is this passage is how normal it seems. Most stories of Jesus’s life that we find in the gospels follow one of two paths. Jesus goes to a place and teaches, and Jesus goes to a place where he encounters someone in need and helps them. We often don’t get much from the setting and background. In this passage we have Jesus just taking part in the regular life activities that don’t specifically focus on him at all. He is with his mother, his brothers and the disciples at a random wedding. We don’t know who is getting married, but we can assume that the focus of the day is not on Jesus for most people there. They came for the wedding and for the party.
This story is similar to some of the stories where Jesus helps someone in need, but the difference is that the stakes are so much lower. Jesus isn’t healing the blind or feeding the masses. He is keeping the party going. He’s just a guy at a wedding that runs out of wine, and his mom thinks he might be able to do something about it. He doesn’t want to get involved, but his mother makes him do it anyway. It’s hard to say no to your mom, even when you are Jesus. I think it’s a good reminder that while Jesus did many amazing things and called us to do amazing things as well, he also was a guy that did normal stuff and took part in all the normal parts of life.
With Epiphany in the rear view and Lent a good ways off, it's easy to feel like we are a little less connected to God when those big moments of focus are gone. We are not. Jesus took part in all the most mundane normal human stuff and reminds us that God is with us in all that normal human stuff as well. When we are putting away groceries or making sure the laundry is folded, God is with us. In a raging pandemic, with weather that makes us stay inside, it’s a great comfort to remember that God is with us in the mundane normalcy of January. Even in the cold and even when we feel alone, God is with us.