John 2:1–11
On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’
And Jesus said to her, Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.’
His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.
Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim.
And he said to them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.’
So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.’
This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.[p 19]
The truth about miracles
The story of the changing of water into wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee is unashamedly the record of a miracle. In fact, it is one of a series of miracles, or ‘signs’, recorded by John with the purpose of leading us to ‘believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name’ (20:31). In that sense, this story is directed at us, the readers of John’s Gospel, and invites us to consider Jesus for ourselves.
At once some will protest that they cannot believe in miracles, and so it is no use reading any further. We must stop a while, therefore, and examine the reasons why they cannot believe in miracles. If we find that we can take seriously what this first sign is saying, then we will be better prepared to listen to what else John will tell us, whether miraculous or otherwise.
Objections to miracles in general
First, some people say that it would be unscientific and therefore intellectually dishonest to believe in miracles; that the physical laws by which the universe runs are quite invariable; and therefore, because miracles go against these physical laws, by definition they cannot happen. In saying this, however, they seem to have forgotten what physical laws are, and who made them. After all, physical laws are not something we find written up on the sky. Physical laws are simply descriptions formulated by humans of what, so far as they can see, normally happens. They deduce these descriptions of what normally happens from studying as much as they can of what goes on.
But what does go on, and what has gone on through these many centuries? You can’t decide that by appealing to some law, but only by studying the evidence. Now, there is an enormous amount of evidence to show that miracles have taken place. For instance, the evidence for the resurrection of Christ is overwhelming. If then a scientist or philosopher is willing to put this evidence in front of him along with the evidence for what you might call normal happenings, he will come up with the law that while miracles are not normal happenings, they do sometimes happen. But if he is not prepared to consider the evidence that miracles have happened, but arbitrarily confines himself to studying normal happenings, he will of course[p 20] come up with a law that miracles don’t happen. But his law will not be valid, for his evidence was biased and incomplete. And if he goes further and says that miracles cannot happen, he is not being scientific, but deliberately preventing the facts from speaking.
Objections to this miracle in particular
But granted, someone will say, that it is theoretically possible for miracles to happen occasionally, what evidence have we that this particular miracle of turning water into wine happened? The answer is: very powerful evidence. There is first, the character of John who recorded the miracle. Whatever we may think of the Christian apostles— that they were silly, or deceived—it would be a strange, indeed an impossible, reading of their characters to suggest that they were deliberate liars. John was one of Christ’s disciples, and he explicitly says that the disciples were present when the miracle took place. And secondly, behind John and his record stands Jesus Christ himself. He deliberately chose John and the other disciples for this very purpose of witnessing and recording his acts.
But there is another approach along which we can arrive at a decision about the truth of the story. The story offers a diagnosis of one of humanity’s basic spiritual diseases. And we can certainly judge whether the diagnosis is correct. It also offers Christ’s cure for that disease. It is open to us to try the cure and see if it works. There’s nothing like experiencing a miracle to make you sure they can happen.
The miracle of turning water into wine then was not simply an act of supernatural power; it was at the same time an enacted parable. We can see that more easily if we first look at another miracle recorded in this Gospel. Chapter 6 tells us that Christ miraculously multiplied bread and fish, fed the multitude, and then used this physical miracle as an object lesson to bring home to them, and to us, humanity’s spiritual hunger and Christ’s ability as the bread of life to satisfy that hunger. So it is with the story of the wedding at Cana of Galilee.
When the wine runs out
At this wedding the wine ran out. But then the wine still runs out at many weddings these days. Not the literal wine—that’s only there[p 21] to express the joy of the occasion. The real wine that a wedding celebrates is the joy of the relationship of marriage.
We would be indulging in childish fantasy if we imagined that every marriage led to a conclusion of ‘and they lived happily ever after’. The hard facts are that the joy runs out of a good many marriages, and quite a few actually break up. And not only marriages, but other relationships too. Teenagers get fed up with parents, and parents get annoyed and heartbroken over teenagers. Employers get disgusted with employees, and employees lose all patience and confidence in employers. A man will go chasing ambition, only to find that the satisfaction of attainment does not last as long as he thought it would. Young people, pampered by modern affluence, demanding every experience life can give, and getting it all before they are twenty years old, soon discover that their interest has run out. So they become bored and disappointed and feel resentful against life.
The reason the joy goes
Yes, the wine still runs out. But why? We can learn why, if we watch the means Christ used to perform his miracle. You see, he didn’t produce wine out of thin air. He didn’t even multiply the wine in people’s glasses so that it replenished itself as fast as they drank it. No, he got the servants to fill some water jars with water and then he turned this water into wine. Actually, those jars were to hold water for purification, which these people used as a religious duty. Being decent folk they had doubtless also had some kind of religious ceremony at the wedding; but for the moment that was all over, and now they were getting on with the fun. Christ used these religious water jars as vehicles for the renewed joy of the party. Quietly, but effectively, he was giving them, and us, a very telling object lesson that would preach its own sermon as they reflected on it in later days.
Let me illustrate the point. Suppose a woman has a daughter whose face keeps breaking out with sores. She brings the doctor in to have a look at the child and find out what’s wrong. Presently without saying a word the doctor goes and gets the bread bin, takes the lid off and sets it in the middle of the lounge floor. Mother looks in and sees to her horror that the bread bin is alive with dirt and maggots! It hasn’t been cleaned out for ages. The doctor doesn’t need to say anything. By dragging that bread bin into the centre of the situation,[p 22] he gives a silent but eloquent diagnosis of the trouble and puts his finger on the cause of the girl’s illness.
The cure Christ offers
So it was with Christ and these water jars. They were there for the purpose of purification; not simply for hygiene either, but for religious purification. With the wedding feast in full swing, they would have been left very much on the fringe of the party. And they were empty, too. Christ begins by bringing them to the fore and ordering them to be filled. He is offering us, in the language of parable, his diagnosis of our trouble. We are not clean. Our personal hygiene may be all that could be desired, but spiritually in God’s sight we are far from clean.
We like to think of course that we are decent—we wouldn’t blaspheme, or anything like that. In fact, we go to church sometimes, particularly at weddings and funerals, and even on a few Sundays when we don’t actually have to. But, if we’re truthful, for the rest of life we leave God very much out in the cold. Perhaps on holidays we make a distant and very polite bow in his direction; but we wouldn’t think of making him the centre of our hearts and activities. Why, if a guest got up at a wedding reception and began to say that the secret of lasting joy is to receive Christ personally as Saviour, and began to illustrate the point by recounting the story of his own personal experience of conversion to Christ, how many of the parents and guests would hear him through without getting most uncomfortably embarrassed? He might well be told afterwards that church is the place, if anywhere, to talk about things like that, and that he had no right to ruin people’s fun by dragging God and religion into a wedding reception.
And then we wonder why life goes sour on us, and its joy doesn’t last! How could it do otherwise, when we treat the Almighty in this fashion? He made us; he has given us every beautiful and joyful thing we have, and yet we persist in keeping him at arm’s length and cutting ourselves off from any real friendship and fellowship with him. And it is pathetically inadequate to think that, as long as we are decent and behave courteously, God will be satisfied. What would you think of a young man who from the time he was married treated his wife with great courtesy—always getting up and offering her his seat when she[p 23] entered the room, and always opening the door for her when she went out—but never loved her passionately with all his heart, mind, soul and strength? Would not his mere courtesy make a travesty of the relationship? And God our maker, who has given us proof of his love in a thousand ways, will not be fobbed off with mere courtesy and decency. He expects us to love him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and he regards our failure to love him like this as our most grievous sin, and the root of all the others.
What it will take
But somebody will say: ‘You can’t make yourself love God. If you don’t love him, you just don’t love him, and that’s all there is to it.’ Sadly enough, that’s very true. Sin and selfishness have not only defiled our hearts, they have bankrupted them; and the fact that we do not love our creator more than anyone or anything else is an indication of how far things have gone wrong. Can they be put right? Yes. Most emphatically yes! But it will take a miracle to do it, and Christ doesn’t try to hide that fact from us. Quite the reverse. In fact, he tells us bluntly that the best we can do in the way of moral reform by our own natural effort is inadequate. We need the miracle of regeneration, performed within us by the Holy Spirit: forgiving, cleansing, enlightening, empowering. And above all, putting us right with God, so that the springs of our thoughts, actions and relationships may be purified and a new kind and quality of life given to us. A miracle in fact; not a physical one of turning water into wine, but that spiritual miracle of which Christ spoke when he said,
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ (John 3:5–7)
Born of water and of the Spirit, what does it mean? We will think about those verses in their context in the next chapter, but here we have an illustration to help us begin to think about them.
The water jars that Christ used to perform his miracle of turning water into wine held about twenty gallons each, and there were six of[p 24] them. One hundred and twenty gallons then, all told; it was rather a lot of water to have around the place, especially when you remember that it was for use in some kind of religious purification. And it was rather chilly stuff, too: there was no joy in it. What was worse was that, for all its large amount, it was inadequate.
More than washing with water
What help or joy can religious ceremonies and ceremonial water give us? After all, the real human plight that we are discussing goes very deep. Our problem is that the wine of life’s joy runs out because human relationships become sour and embittered, and this is because of our deep-lying selfishness, peevishness, jealousy, envy, cruelty, ingratitude, cowardice, pride, and above all because our sinfulness has ruined our relation with God. What can water do about that? Very little or nothing.
It is true that the Old Testament speaks of ceremonial washings in water, and the New Testament requires people, once they have received Christ, to be baptized in water. But neither one nor the other claims that this water does anything to deal with the cause of our spiritual trouble. The Old Testament washings in water cleansed the skin from ceremonial defilement contracted by touching a dead body or something like that. But our spiritual uncleanness lies far deeper than the skin, and no water can reach it. For it is not what touches a person’s skin or goes into a person’s stomach that defiles them; it is what comes out of their corrupt and sinful hearts (Mark 7:18-23).
Christian baptism too is only a symbol, by which a Christian confesses and illustrates the change that came about when he or she received the Saviour. But until a person receives the Saviour, there is no change there to symbolize, and a thousand baptisms would never bring the change about.
It will take a miracle
We need to be very clear about this. Christ offers us a miracle of regeneration, giving us new life, but he performs no magic. Yet it is surprising how many people there are even in this modern age who still regard baptism as a kind of magic. You will hear now and again of an argument between some parents and a clergyman who has refused[p 25] to baptize their infant because the parents never go to church. It is quite clear that such parents regard baptism as some kind of magic that somehow communicates some benefit to the child without the child’s personal faith, or the parents’ either. And there are many other people who base their hope for eventual acceptance with God on the fact that in the dim and distant past they underwent some similar ceremony. It is nothing but superstition; and if we are going to be realists and face the realities of our condition, we shall have to give up these mediaeval superstitions and recognize that spiritual trouble can only be cured by spiritual means. Unless we do, the result can only be either self-deception or else cynical disillusionment. The cleansing that Christ brings is a spiritual cleansing and it is brought about by spiritual means. Hear it described in the words of the Apostle Paul.
But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:4–7)
Paul’s experience was certainly outstanding, but it was not meant to be unique. In fact, the Bible says that his experience is basically the pattern along which God saves and changes everyone who trusts the Saviour.
You may think that all this talk about conversion to Christ, salvation and forgiveness is rather chilly, watery stuff. But people who have actually experienced it know that Christ turns the process of saving and cleansing them into the very wine of lasting joy.
So it was with David, the ancient Jewish king. Under temptation he committed adultery, and trying to cover it up he got involved in indirect murder. For a time, he tried to tell himself that it didn’t matter; at some time everybody gets mixed up like this, and so forth. But conscience and the worry of it began to affect him in both his body and his mind. He couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t eat, and he[p 26] developed all kinds of mysterious ailments. Then, to cut a long story short, God brought him to repentance and to confession of his sin, and faith brought him the assurance of forgiveness and acceptance with God. (You can read the whole story in 2 Sam 11–12.) Well, when that happened, he went home with such deep joy welling up in his heart, that he sat down and immediately wrote a poem about his experience. He set it to music, got out his harp and sang and played for all he was worth. The words were: ‘Oh, the sheer happiness of the man whose sin is forgiven, whose transgression is covered; Oh, the sheer happiness of the man to whom the Lord imputes not iniquity!’ (see Ps 32:1–2; Rom 4:6–8).
John Newton, of more recent times, was a brutal, foul-mouthed, captain of a slave ship. He too found forgiveness and the cleansing of the new birth. In his gratitude he wrote a hymn in the words of which he and millions after him have expressed their response of love to the Saviour:
How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
In a believer’s ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.
The fear that personal commitment to Christ is a chilly experience that will drag a wet blanket over life’s joys is an empty fear. As they will tell you themselves, people who accept Christ’s diagnosis and experience his cure discover that he turns the process of his spiritual cleansing of their lives into the source of their greatest joy.[p 27]
English (US) · 