Canter Bridge

One of the shocking details of John’s report of Jesus’ first sign, at a wedding in a Galilean village, is the notice that his disciples ‘believed in him’ as a result of his action. One wonders what they were doing prior to the moment:

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

One does not accrue the plausible accusation of being a glutton and a drunkard unless one hangs in places known for serious eating and heavy drinking. Jesus’ accusers must have had plausible grounds for such an accusation, reported in the gospels of Matthew and Luke.

In alignment with this background, Jesus appears eminently comfortable at a wedding in which the exhaustion of the couple’s supply of wine threatens to turn a day of celebration into one of shameful infamy. At his mother’s behest, Jesus intervenes.

Merely to note the organic participation of Jesus in a special day in the life of his people would make for a satisfying read. Yet John’s report, with his emphasis that this was Jesus’ first sign, wants to point beyond village solidarity to the thing signified. Jesus seems to have become identified through this feat as a man who by nature transforms. It may be that it is Jewish piety—starched up by the traditional insinuation of rigid legalism—that is here converted into something more immediate, something Jesus-like. Yet this is probably a false dichotomy.

Jesus’ sign seems to point in a more generic direction: Jesus is expert at taking what is raw, naive, unpromising, mundane and even profane and turning it into something scarce, valuable, joy-giving.

Water turned into wine stands in for a host of engagements in which encounter with Jesus would force the tranformation of the unremarkable person into something that is precious.

Jesus would be remembered—even celebrated—in that Galilean village for a truth both local and granular: there was no wine, now it abounds. Yet John and his readers trace the path of the sign into a deeper reality: Jesus transforms.