John 2:1-11
In our gospel reading from John today we have the first of Jesus’ seven miraculous signs recorded by John, the changing of water into wine.
But it’s about more than that too, this is a story about how involved Jesus is in our everyday lives, not just when we may feel we are close on a Sunday, and how Jesus transforms how we live on a day-to-day basis.
We’ll start at the end today and in v.11 John writes, “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”
In John’s Gospel, Jesus does seven miraculous acts, seven signs that point to him being the Son of God who points to God the Father and is himself God the Son.
So we can truly say that Jesus turning water into wedding wine is really important because it tells us something really important about God.
In the context of a Jewish Marriages of the time in a small town in Galilee, to run out of wine would have been a major social embarrassment. Weddings often went on for about 7 days and it was expected that the wine would keep going for the whole time.
Anyway, the hosts had run out of wine here in Cana and Jesus intervenes and in so doing reveals his Glory. The sign that revealed his glory to the disciples and the world
I find it so wonderfully every-day that the first great miraculous sign of our Saviour’s glory is his getting involved and sorting out a socially embarrassing situation at a wedding.
Please note this: This is the God we worship! A God who really cares about our lives in all its detail, and really and truly wants what is best for us and will get involved in our lives, really get his hands dirty for us to impact us for good.
But this morning, it’s not really the miracle of turning water into wine that I want to think about. Instead, I want to focus on how people responded to Jesus and what we can learn about how we might respond to him in our own lives.
And the first thing to notice is that Jesus was invited to the party. Now this might seem a strange thing to say, but in verse 2 it says, “Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding”. Jesus was not viewed as being antisocial or a killjoy.
Jesus was clearly fun to be around. There was something about Jesus that people felt comfortable with, and they weren’t afraid to have him at their party where the wine was flowing freely.
Now the wedding hosts welcomed Jesus into their own family’s pleasure and pleasure isn’t a word we associate with our Lord. Jesus wants to be part of everything we do, all our pleasures. Would that perhaps take the fun out of our pleasures?
If we have a picture of God Almighty as a killjoy, we haven’t come to to grips with what Jesus has done for us. We would be worshipping the wrong Jesus! We would be worshipping a Jesus self-created in our own mind, and not the Jesus of the Bible.
The Jesus of the Bible gets invited to the party and people love having him there. That’s the Jesus who wants to get involved in our life, so let’s invite him to the party.
The second thing to say is this: Jesus was a family man and knows our struggles. Elsewhere in the Bible, we are told that Jesus had brothers and sisters: he had four brothers called James, Joseph, Jude and Simon, and also some sisters whose names we are not told.
And it was probably a family wedding that Jesus was attending that day, because his mother Mary seems to have had some sort of stewarding role at the wedding, which is why, in v.3, she notices the wine has run out and comes to Jesus with the problem.
As the eldest Son he had probably become used to being given responsibility by his mum. He understands families, in fact he invented the idea of family from the very beginning of creation.
We can pray to him about all the tricky stuff that happens in families in confidence: confident in the knowledge that he hears and understands and will stand with you – through his own experience – in all the stresses and anxieties that family life can bring.
The third thing to notice is that we are actually at our happiest when we are obedient to Jesus. Now that may sound like a strange thing to say, but Jesus doesn’t take our freedom away.
Instead, he creates safe boundaries around our lives so that we can know joy to the maximum.
I sometimes think that is a good metaphor for the Christian life: Jesus puts boundaries around us but leaves us plenty of space within that to play, take pleasure, and enjoy a relationship with him.
And it’s when we are obedient to those boundaries that we are at our happiest. When we look at the wedding story, I think we see that shift in thinking in Mary, the mother of Jesus.
In v. 3, Mary relates to Jesus as a mother does to an eldest son and comes to him with a problem: she says, “They have no more wine”, but just a few moments later, her relationship with Jesus is transformed when she tells the servants at the wedding, “Do whatever he tells you”.
In a matter of moments, she moves from thinking about Jesus as her son and starts thinking about him as Lord whose will must be obeyed. And she knows that obedience to his will is the only way to address the problem she is facing.
Now, I think this is crucial for us if we want to allow Jesus the space to make a difference in our lives. Like Mary, when we pray to God, we can just name the problem and leave it with him.
Mary says, “They have no more wine” – simple as that: she doesn’t try to analyse the situation, she doesn’t give Jesus any suggestions on how to fix the situation, she doesn’t ask him for various options to choose between.
Mary just names the problem and leaves it with him. But – and here is the crucial bit – when Jesus comes up with a solution, we must have the courage and the obedience to follow his will. As Mary says here, “Do whatever he tells you”.
Now, sometimes that is hard to do. We might name a problem to God and, as we pray, we may get a sense of what we need to do to get a solution to that problem and we may not like the answer and so we are tempted to say to God, “Thanks for the advice. Have you got any other options?”
Name the problem. But then be obedient to the solution, no matter how hard it may appear to be, because as soon as to take your first step, Jesus swoops in and takes us, but we need to take the step!
The wine stewards must have thought this carpenter crazy to want all that water brought to him (nearly 700 litres). But, without questioning, they obeyed him, and the miracle happened.
So it can be in our lives. Take all problems before God. Leave it with him. Pray that the Lord will make us aware of his response to our prayer, so we can be obedient with great peace and joy.
Jesus wants to make a profound difference in our lives. Jesus wants us to know joy and happiness and to have life in all its fullness. Jesus understands and Jesus cares.
Let me pray ...