4. A DISCIPLE REMEMBERS: WINE AT THE WEDDING
You know, as I try to think back on the time we spent with
Jesus, it’s hard to remember what happened when. I remember the stories, but it’s hard to put
them in order. We never wrote anything
down at the time…ha, most of us couldn’t read or write anyway. Who knew we would want to remember everything
that happened and everything Jesus said?
At the beginning, we just thought we were hanging out with and learning
from a great teacher. It was only later
that we began to really believe that he was the messiah who would restore
David’s kingdom. It wasn’t until after
the resurrection that we really understood who he was and the purpose he had
for us. By then, we all remembered
different events and happenings and talked about them together, but we couldn’t
always agree about when it happened.
When guys started writing stuff down, they just wrote what they
remembered. That’s what I’m doing now.
This is the story about the water turning into wine. Some of us were there with Jesus, but it was a
wedding party and we weren’t just hanging around with him. I noticed some conversation going on between
Jesus and his mom, but I didn’t know until later what happened. Jesus
said it was his first miracle, but when he told us what had happened, it didn’t
seem to be such a big deal, because by then we had seen lots of miracles like
healings and small amounts of food feeding thousands. I mean, we saw him walk on water…so turning
water into wine didn’t seem so amazing to us and it became an inside joke. We kept asking Jesus when he was going to do
it again and why wouldn’t he do it for us…his close friends. He would just laugh. He never did make any more, as far as we
knew, but we would often jokingly smell his cup when he was having a drink of
water.
Anyway, when Jesus was telling us about that night, he
remembered feeling pressured by his mom.
The couple’s family was related to her family and they had run out of
wine. That was a big deal socially. You could run out of food, but you didn’t run
out of wine. So Mary came to Jesus and
told him they were out and Jesus said something like, “What do you expect me to
do?”
Now, we have to get some background here. I told you in an earlier story that Jesus had
always felt close to God and had talked with Mary about it and that Mary seemed
to know something she wasn’t telling. It
wasn’t until after Jesus was resurrected that Mary let out her little story
about his birth. So, here at the wedding you have Mary, knowing that Jesus was the
son of God and you have Jesus, who thought he heard God’s voice saying, “Here
is my son…” He has some of us following
him around listening to him teach, but he seemed to be hesitant to really begin
announcing that he was here to bring in the Kingdom of God. It’s like he was practicing the teachings on
us.
I think Mary was ready for him to step out as who she knew
him to be and this seemed the perfect time to her. She knew Jesus could save her family from the
humiliation of having guests start leaving because the wine was gone.
So Mary told the servants to do whatever Jesus told
them. Jesus remembers that he was like,
“Really?” So he told them to fill up
some water jars with water and then start serving it. He laughed and said that you should have seen
their faces when he told them that…serve drunk people water? But one of them took a sip and the water was
now wine. So they started serving it and
everyone was amazed that the best wine was coming out now. The servants acted like they had just found
it and meant to serve it earlier. They
and Jesus and Mary were the only ones who knew what happened. Even the wedding family didn’t know where it
came from. They only knew they were
saved from embarrassment. So the party,
which was about to die, continued for awhile.
When Jesus told us about it he said he really didn’t know
what to do. He had never done anything
like that before. He hadn’t practiced
making wine or doing other miracles. He
said he just seemed to know that he could help save the family from a terrible
moment. He jokingly said, “Now I ask
people to have faith in me, but back then ‘I’ had to have faith in me. It wasn’t easy. I understand how hard it is for people to
believe who I am. It was hard for me,
too.”
