Jesus here in his first miracle, the first of seven signs recorded by John, is making a first impression. He is beginning his ministry in a way that tells us something about how his ministry is going to go.
John begins this story with the words “on the third day”, calling back to the creation story and ahead to the resurrection. The third day was the traditional day for a wedding, and the wine involved has many roles and connotations, and it was very important to the wedding celebration.
In a shame/honor culture, running out of wine would not just have been an awkward event, but potentially a shameful event that could have stained their reputation for the rest of their lives.
So Mary asks her son to fix it, but he replies enigmatically “it is not my time.” He means that a public miracle would begin the countdown to his death and resurrection, but Mary is unmoved and tells the servants to do what he says. So Jesus does a miracle quietly, creating the best wine the emcee had ever drunk.
This is the beginning of the symphony of seven signs John writes about, which will crescendo with the raising of Lazarus. It is a miracle almost entirely devoted to joy.
Jesus wants us to have joy. Salvation is not just about getting a ticket punched at the end of your life, but rather about the Kingdom of God, age all the joy that comes with it, coming into our lives here on earth.
We don’t one why the wine was gone. Maybe the groom was poor, or they were irresponsible, or maybe it was because the disciples crashed the wedding and drank it all. But it clearly doesn’t matter to the purposes of God, or to the joy that He wants to bring to us.
Our religious selves might have responded differently. We might have had Jesus preach about how he is the water that satisfies, or that the wine of his blood brought salvation, or that he is the bridegroom and we are his bride.
But Jesus didn’t preach a sermon. Instead, he specifically took the jars set aside for the religious ritual of purification and turned it into wine for celebration. He could have done it any way he wanted, but instead he took something set aside for dry religiosity and turned it upside-down – setting the tone for the rest of his ministry through the end of his earthly life and even up through today.
– Sermon Notes, Tim Schaaf, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, January 27, 2019
John 2:1-12
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