January 17th ,2010
No wine? No whine!
I love the the story of the wedding feast of Cana for many reasons, but certainly because the “back story” has got to be funny. Think about it: if you were God and wanted to make your first big move in bringing about your reign on earth, what would YOU choose to do? Cure cancer? Bring world peace? Help the suffering? Forgive sins? I doubt it would be “bring wine to a wedding.” I suspect that was the case with Jesus.
He’s just gotten together his band of believers (the apostles) and he’s probably got something in mind in order to roll out the new ministry which he’s stepped into after many years of carpentry.
I really doubt that the first thing on his checklist was to do a miracle involving wine.
That might be the reason he says to his mother, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”
And why does she go to him in the first place when she notices that the wine ran out? (There is no suggestion that throughout his growing years he helped the family by turning sand into flour or stones into steaks.) So why go to him? Well I laughed out loud the other day when someone suggested that the reason they ran out of wine is because Jesus brought all his friends to the wedding and they (with all the other guests) drank all the wine up. Of course she would go to him if she thought his friends were the reason they ran out. In fact she probably was as surprised as the steward as to how he solved the problem. She might have expected him to take his friends over the local wine merchant and bring back a few extra jugs.
But instead, Jesus surrendered his plans for his first sign of the kingdom-come and made a decision at that moment to show God’s glory by providing not just enough wine, but over 150 gallons of the finest vintage.
And he did the wine without whining. We who are his disciples could learn a thing or two about this, don’t you think? There are plenty of opportunities for us to do things we didn’t plan on doing or want to do -- without whining. Let’s get to it!
