One evening in 1991, on
BBC 1’s Wogan show, a former Coventry City goalkeeper made an amazing
claim. David Icke said that he was the
Son of God. The packed studio audience
responded with laughter and ridicule.
The press said that he was mentally ill.
Icke later had to qualify the sense in which he had used the term.
John makes the same
declaration about Jesus. He says that
Jesus is the Son of God. He records a
number of miracles (or ‘signs’) of Jesus to demonstrate this. But what do we make about John’s testimony
and his claims about Jesus. Do we
dismiss them with the new atheists, or ignore them like so many people who
refuse to make up their mind about Christ?
With regards to John’s
testimony, he is adamant that he was an eye-witness to these things and that he
can be trusted. Personally, I see no
reason to doubt his credibility as a witness.
After all his claims about Jesus resulted in his spending time
imprisoned on the island of Patmos, and his own brother died for being a
Christ-follower. Do people allow
themselves be imprisoned or are they willing to die for something that they
made up?
With regards to the
miracles (or ‘signs’), we will see that what we have here is more than a simple
party-trick designed to get someone out of a tight corner. What Jesus does at Cana is a massive pointer
as to who he really is and what he came down from heaven to do.
The
Cross is the hour when Jesus fully reveals his identity (1-3)
On
the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee, Jesus’ mother was there,
and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.
It was the end of the first week of
Jesus’ public ministry. It is two days
after his encounter with Nathaniel (at the end of the last chapter) and the
disciples are about to witness one of the ‘greater works’ that Jesus had spoken
of. At this stage he has called just
five of the twelve disciples and has not yet preformed any miracles.
Jesus is at a
wedding. He was no killjoy. He attended parties. But he never forgot his mission in life. He was a very purposeful person. In everything he sought to bring glory to
God. When we are at parties we must not
forget who we are to God, and we should always act in a way that seeks to bring
God glory.
But there was a problem
at this wedding. The bridegroom had one
major responsibility—to get the wine sorted!
Not only was his bride going to give him an earful about his organisational
skills or lack of generosity, in that shame-culture he is going to lose
credibility. In that culture there were certain obligations to the guests, and
it was not unheard of for the groom’s family to end up facing legal proceedings
in such a situation.
So Mary approaches her
son and said to him, “They have no more
wine.”
Jesus’ response is sounds
surprising to our ears. ‘Dear woman, why do you involve me? . . . My
time [literally ‘my hour’] has not
yet come.’
This is the first of
many references in John’s Gospel to Jesus’s ‘hour’. In John the term ‘hour’ almost always refers
to the events that surround the cross.
Jesus is cautious about revealing his identity as Messiah until that
hour because there were so many false-expectations about what the promised
Messiah would be like. Indeed, there is
something quite private in how Jesus preforms this sign.
Christianity makes no
sense without the events surrounding the cross.
Jesus knew that you could not understand his mission until you saw the
events of his hour. But not everyone understands
this. I heard a mission leader explain
that his organisation did not include the cross in their logo because he felt
that the cross was bad public relations in our age.
But what do you get if
you take the cross out of Christianity?
You get ‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism’.
‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism’ is a term that was coined after a study
of the beliefs of three thousand American young people. It is the belief that being a good and moral
person is central to a happy life; religion is mainly concerned with feeling
good or being at peace with oneself; and that God exists to take care of human
needs. Beware that you don’t swallow a
false-gospel of a God without wrath who brings a people without sin into a
kingdom without judgement through the ministry of a Christ without a cross (H.
Richard Niebuhr).
Only
Jesus can give us the life that we were made for
(4-10)
Before the wedding meal
the servants would have poured water on the hands of every guest. This was not
about hygiene, it was a religious ritual. It was a part of the ritual associated with
the Covenant made in the Old Testament.
This washing served as a reminder of the fact that we have been unclean
in God’s sight and need his cleansing.
Jesus sees six stone
jars—the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing—and tells the servants to
fill them to the brim with water. Then
the servants draw the water and take it to the master of the banquet—who was
apparently one of the guests charged with presiding over the commencements. The master of the banquet doesn’t realise
where it had come from—only the disciples, Mary and the servants know! He is impressed with the quality of this wine. So he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first
and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you
have saved the best till now.”
It is surely
significant that Jesus uses the jars that were for ritual purification. The old covenant, with its ritual cleansings,
was a gift from God. However, it pointed
forward to something better. The old
water would be replaced with new wine. The
ritual washings could not provide permanent relief for a conscience troubled by
failure. But the cross shows us how all
our sin has been dealt with. The old
covenant had a law that should people how they should live, but didn’t enable
them to do so. The new covenant that
Jesus inaugurates promises a law written on our hearts and the strength to
obey.
The abundance of this
wine is also significant—Jesus gave far more than was needed. The prophet Amos had looked forward to a time
of blessing when wine would flow from the mountains and hills (Amos 9:13). Now God, in the person of God the Son, is
bringing about such blessing. Jesus’
presence saved the party and made it a much better wedding to be at and what
Jesus did at that party he offers to do in our lives! C. S. Lewis wrote, ‘… most people,
if they really had learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they
do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world
that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise’ (Mere
Christianity). We end up empty when we
try to find our satisfaction in the latest purchase. Many you people thing that the ache in their
soul would disappear if they found the right partner (it won’t). Many people put an intolerable strain on
their marriages by expecting that their spouse can make them truly whole. The truth is, we search in vain for meaning
and purpose if our search does not lead us to Jesus.
One person who grasped
the cleansing, transformation and satisfaction that comes through the wine of
the new covenant was a convict called Harold Morris. He later wrote, ‘… a person in Christ becomes
a new creature. Old habits and attitudes
were replaced as the Spirit of God worked in my life. The vengeance that I had nourished for five
years and the rebellious spirit that had been a driving force in my life
relaxed their grip when Christ took control. Little by little he replaced my hatred with
his love. Sometimes I lay in the prison-yard
looking at the sky and relishing the joy and peace I had found in Christ. The bars and fences were still there, as were
the guards with their high-powered rifles. But I had an inner strength I’d never known
before – the very presence of Christ.’
Conclusion:
This sign shows us who Jesus is so that we may believe in him and have life in
all its fullness.
This,
the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples
put their faith in him.
When David Icke claimed,
on the Wogan show, that he was the Son of God people responded with laughter
and ridicule, and the press claimed that he must be mentally ill. What’s your verdict on this man who claims to
be God the Son?
John recorded this
sign, which is loaded with meaning, so that we might believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God (the verb can be translated ‘go on believing’, and reminding
ourselves of these signs is one of the ways God keeps us going in the faith). Jesus did this so that we would do what the
disciples did—put our faith in him. For
it is only through faith in Jesus that we can know life that is rescued from
the pain of guilt, that is free from the voice of condemnation, that
experiences the transforming power of Christ’s presence within us and has the
hope of a greater banquet that awaits us when this life is through.
Finally, one
Bible-commentator writes, ‘this miracle can happen again as the water of guilt,
habitual failure and legalism, is transformed by the word of the risen Jesus
into the wine of forgiveness, victory and joyful obedience.’
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