Jesus Changes Everything

“This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.” (John 2:11)

The first miracle that John records about Jesus is the turning of water into wine at a wedding. How unexpected! Jesus’ first sign is not a healing of a disabled person. In fact, it does little more than provide some wedding-guests with a good time, and it helps the groom (who hadn’t purchased enough wine) to get out of an embarrassing situation. Beyond that, little is directly accomplished.

But Jesus is making a point. By providing wine at a celebration (a very, shall we say, ‘unchristian’ thing to do, if we go by contemporary ideas of christianity), Jesus shows that he intends to bless people. We need not shy away from the truth: Jesus provides the best possible wine to help people celebrate God’s good gift of marriage.

What is even more astonishing is how Jesus makes the wine. The wedding guests at Cana had run out of wine, but they were in no lack of water for purification. The six stone water-pots that were present each held around 16-25 gallons of water a piece. All told, here were more than 100 gallons of water for purification – but not a drop was left of the wine for celebration.

Jesus reverses all this. By taking some of the water for purification and turning it into wine for celebration, Jesus shows that the new age which he inaugurates is not going to be focused on rituals of purification. This is a subtle but significant shift. Looking back, we can see that the Jews were focused on purification so that they could come to God; Christians have already been purified by Jesus, so we can focus on the joy of having a relationship with God. The emphasis of the new age has changed.

The first sign of the Mosaic Age – the first plague enacted by Moses – turned the waters of the Nile to blood. The first sign of the new age, inaugurated by Christ, turned the waters of purification to wine. Here we see that the law came by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

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