On the
third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus
was there. 2 Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his
disciples. 3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said
to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what
does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His
mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”6 Now there were
six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each
holding twenty or thirty gallons.[a] 7 Jesus said
to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up
to the brim.8 And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to
the master of the feast.” So they took it. 9 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 10 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.” 11 This, the first of his signs,
Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his
disciples believed in him.12 After this he went down to Capernaum,
with his mother and his brothers[b] and his disciples,
and they stayed there for a few days.
I am to be married soon, to a woman who makes this passage
come alive to me! Why did God give me such a remarkable woman? The answer is
the same as the answer to the why question provoked by this passage. The quick
answer is that God is the author of pleasure, a feasting God, a God who loves
love, and loves to give good gifts to undeserving people! And there may be no
other reason for what transpires at this wedding, or mine!
Jesus scolds his mother about the impracticality of the requested miracle. As I see it, Jesus makes it clear that the time is not right for His public ministry to begin. There is no ministry benefit to such a miracle, and so the question is clear: Why does Jesus do it? Was he guilted into it by his mother? My theory is that Jesus did it simply because it increased the pleasure of this great celebration of marriage. He did it to miraculously magnify the merriment, to enlarge the dimensions of the feast to supernatural proportions.
Wine is an important biblical symbol of pleasure and community. During the passover seder, Jews consume four glasses of wine. The imagery of abundance everywhere in Scripture includes wine as a central instrument of the pleasure associated with abundance. But there is no more central passage on both the symbolism of wine and its role in pleasure than John 2. Here Jesus supplies the wine, no doubt the finest ever made upon the earth, and here He does it for the sake of love and pleasure and for no other reason! One could perhaps say that He does it to magnify His glory, but that glory is not separated from pleasure here. In other words, He is glorious in this context because there is no greater vintner on the planet and no greater founder of the feast! He must be exalted as the author of pleasure!
"You have reserved the best wine until now." It is so unassuming a line that one is tempted to ignore it as irrelevant, but it is profound to me in these days beyond my ability to express it. Anyone who has been wine tasting knows what the master of the feast is saying here. When one goes wine tasting, one notices the subtleties and elegant complexities of the wines being tasted, until the third or fourth winery. After awhile, one's senses are dulled by the wine and can no longer appreciate the subtle artfulness of the wines served at the end. People know this at dinner parties and will bring out the worst wines if people choose to keep drinking to the point of revelry.
And here is Jesus, supplying a wine that stuns the master of the feast. He wants to know why a wine of this quality and depth is given to buzzed people at the end of the feast. Think of the last wedding you went to, where some wines of decent quality were perhaps served for a few hours, then imagine that the master of the feast brings out cases of Chateau Petrus (a wine that goes on auction for $4000 a bottle) for the remaining guests at 10 o'clock. Surely Jesus' wine was at least as good as the best of Bordeaux! It was probably so good that even in a stupor the guests were shocked by it's power into silence and moved to appreciate its beauty. They probably had tasted nothing like it, and the taste of all other wine was cheapened by its singular excellence.
Why has he saved the best for last? Because that is what God does! He saves the best for last! This first miracle is a foretaste of things to come, especially the telos (end/purpose) of Jesus' ministry, which is to lead sinful people to the great wedding feast of the lamb, where our work of bold penultimate wreckage of the world is answered at last. This beautiful story is yet another in the collection of stories that God tells of His final word! Indeed the whole universe languishes in misery, broken because of the enervating effects of human sin, but God will see to His glory in the end! And this story tells us that included in His glory is the fact that He is the author of all joy and pleasure and feasting, pleasures we hold now with trembling hands in the knowledge they cannot last. But God's answer to this is that all the pleasures of earth are mere shadows of things to come for His people. They exist to train us to love what we ought to love, and to cast our eyes ahead in hope to the source of all good.
The theme of my wedding to the incomparable Amy Dobson is a word that early became important to us. That word is "Someday." What we mean by it is that one can trust that God will save the best for last, and that He will give peace and patience while we await His timing. Misery will never be an end for God's people. It may be a winnowing, a pruning, but it will always be temporary. Perhaps it is simplest just to say that I waited a long time for my fiancé. I say this because my noble, lovely and true fiancé is the Wine of Cana for me. She is the best that God has reserved until now for me! Just as the attendees of the feast of Cana didn't possess the rational equipment or imagination to think wine could be so good, nor could they anticipate God's timing in providing it, so I didn't possess the rational equipment to visualize a woman of such complexity, beauty, intelligence, and spiritual depth. Behind the appearance of a gentle woman of soft words, modest dress, and kind eyes is a universe of soaring, exultant attributes at the extremities of human expression. She is a luminous masterwork that God saved and lavishly gave to this miserable sinner at the age of forty-seven.
God indeed has reserved the best wine until now!
