“This, the first of His signs, Jesus
did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested His
glory. And His disciples believed in Him.”
John’s account of the water turned to
wine doesn’t portray Jesus speaking to the water, or touching the water, or
having any direct interaction with the water. He doesn’t say, “Water, I command
you to become wine.” He doesn’t go over to each water pot and touch it, close
His eyes, open them, and behold – the water is now wine! There is no drama such
as when Jesus stands outside Lazarus’s tomb and commands, “Lazarus come forth.”
Jesus performs this sign, this miracle,
in the midst of daily life; to be sure it is at one of those special moments in
life, it is at a wedding; but weddings do happen everyday. Births and weddings
and deaths and tax collecting and fishing and illness and festivals – all of
these things are the stuff of life, we read about them in our newspapers; on
the front page, in the obituaries, in the sports section, on the society page, the
religious section; it’s all the stuff of life. Jesus touched people in the
midst of the stuff of life, in the midst of daily life Jesus interacted with
people. But not only did He touch people in the midst of daily life, He also
called people out of mundane life, out of the cycle of living and dying and
making a living – He called them out of mundane life to hear Him and to follow
Him so that life would never be the same; so that making a living would never
be the same, so that attending a wedding would never be the same, so that all
the facets of living from Monday to Sunday would never be the same, and so that
– for certain! – dying would never be the same.
Before John Chapter Two is finished
Jesus will make an appearance in the Temple
and in making an appearance He will make a scene, and in making a scene He will
offend many people. Jesus will talk about destroying a Temple and it will be a mysterious talk with
many facets – facets that we have been uncomfortable with for over 2,000 years.
We like to keep Jesus in the buildings we have erected for Him, He is safe
there, we can control Him there. We cannot control Jesus if we bring Him to
work, nor can we control Him if we invite Him to a wedding or a picnic or a
funeral or a hospital; but we can do a pretty good job of controlling Jesus if
we can keep Him in church buildings. Lucky for us that the world wants to help
us, it wants to help us keep Jesus in church buildings and out of public life;
we can always blame it on the world when we stand before Jesus and He wants to
know why we didn’t obey Him in daily life or why we didn’t tell others about
Him in daily life, we can always reply, “Well Jesus, surely you know it wasn’t
permitted.”
Turning water into wine was not a
marquee event, most people didn’t know it happened; but the disciples knew,
they saw His glory. How does one describe glory? There is a visual glory, such
as Isaiah and Ezekiel saw; and there is a glory of “sense”, which accompanies
the visual but which may also be experienced without the visual. One of the
Biblical words for “glory” is a Hebrew word that carries with it the meaning of
“weight” and “heaviness”. Yes, glory can be euphoric, but it can also be heavy
– perhaps this is why the ancients often worshipped prostrate, it was
not only a posture of acknowledgment of Deity, it was also a physical response
to the weighty Presence of God.
Did the disciples at the wedding in Cana sense the weight of the glory of God as Jesus turned
the water into wine? John writes in John 1:14, “…and we have seen His glory,
glory as of the only Son from the Father…” Whatever they sensed, whatever they
saw, it was a manifestation of His glory and they believed in Him.
It is not Sunday mountain-top
experiences that constitute the fabric of our pilgrimage, nor is it occasional
retreats or conferences or other special times or places; these may all have
their place if we have the freedom and leisure and the means to enjoy them. But
the fabric of pilgrimage is daily life, be it in the home or neighborhood or in
the marketplace or in education, whatever constitutes daily life is the primary
fabric of our pilgrimage. Do we see His glory in daily life?
When we see His glory in daily life it
is not that we might make merchandise of it and trade on it, nor is it to draw
attention to ourselves – it is that we might know Him and believe in Him and
that we might introduce Him to others.
It isn’t likely that the bridegroom
knew the Son of God was at his wedding, it isn’t likely the master of the feast
knew that the Son of God had turned the water into wine, it isn’t likely that
the servants knew Who this was that was commanding them to put water into pots
and then take it to the master of ceremonies; people didn’t know that the Son
of God was at the wedding. The same is true today, some will know He is at
work, some will not; some will know He is in the neighborhood, some will not;
some will know that He is at the funeral or wedding, some will not. One thing
is certain, He will not be there at all if He is not there in us and through
us, if we are not there as His bread and His wine.
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