There are lots of things to think about regarding the gospel reading that we have just heard (John 2:1-11). It is the well known account of the water being turned into wine at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. One certainty that we have is that this was a good party, with the best wine kept until last – in the verse that follows the section we heard, we are told that after the feast Jesus, his mother, his brothers and his disciples all returned to Capernaum for a few days, and you get the sense that a good rest was needed !
But one of the things I’ve often wondered about this account is what people thought of Jesus when he arrived at the wedding. This is his first recorded miracle, so did the guests know him just as a friend, perhaps a family friend as Mary the mother of Jesus had also been invited, or did they know him as a teacher, as a potential leader, or as something more than that which they couldn’t actually put their finger on !
And then there would have been the small number of people who realised what Jesus had done when he transformed the water into wine, and I wonder what they felt like after that. Of course the answers to these questions are ones upon which we can only speculate, but sometimes it’s good to spend some time just on speculation.
I imagine that for many people Jesus would have been a good friend, maybe the life and soul of the party. His presence at this feast suggests someone who was keen to be involved in normal everyday life. The wedding of course was not just a one day event, but more like a week’s preparation and celebration. Jesus was someone that people wanted there. He was an attractive figure which was reflected by the fact that so many were drawn to listen to him.
But for some perhaps he was a bit of a mystical figure – someone a little bit out of the ordinary, or perhaps just extraordinary. Jesus mother certainly had no doubts about his power and ability to produce the extra wine, and I suspect others, who had no explanation for it, felt the same about Jesus.
Maybe there would have also been some who didn’t trust him, who didn’t like the fact that he was popular or that he could somehow do extraordinary things, and others who didn’t like the fact that he didn’t always do what established customs and principles would have him do.
And how true each of those characteristics remain in different people today. For many people Jesus is an interesting person, a person who seems to have played an important and useful role in the history of the world. He seems to have been a good teacher, a strong moral leader, and a courageous fighter for his principles.
Jesus remains to these people an outstanding figure of history, but a man who has little real impact on their lives today. And this group of people is not just found outside the Churches, there are many inside Churches who seek to concentrate on the Jesus of 2000 years ago without recognising his relevance and his life today. They seek to maintain Jesus as a figure to be preserved in a museum.
And there are others who really haven’t made up their minds about Jesus at all. He remains a mystical figure – someone of interest, but not someone of enough interest to really impact upon them….
Well there is an awful lot that is mystical about Jesus, and an awful lot which none of us can ever or should ever try to explain. There is the virgin birth, there are the miracles, there is the question of his resurrection from the dead – all of these things tell us something of Jesus but we can’t explain them all.
But there is perhaps something even more mystical than any of those things, and that is his desire to love even those who persecuted and ultimately put him on the cross – he resisted fighting back against the taunts, but instead did something which must have even more impact on those who watched – as he hung dying on the cross, he prayed for forgiveness for those who had put him there – he did so with compassion and love ringing out…
Today he continues to love a people who have rejected him, ignored him, betrayed him, humiliated him and failed to stand up for him…
And then there are of course another group of people who hate Jesus and the Church and everything that he stands for – it’s a common saying that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, and those who spend time attacking Jesus are sometimes those who are very close to finding him, because people who spend enough time in his presence may ultimately not be able to resist responding to his love, his grace and his mercy, particularly if they are seeing and hearing something of Jesus in the lives of his followers today.
And so those different views, the people who find Jesus to be a good man and a popular source of interest that needs preserving, or the people who regard him as a strange, unexplainable mystical figure and those who simply passionately reject everything about him, are similar to those who would have known the Jesus at this wedding.
But what about that small number who saw his transforming work – their lives can surely never have been the same again. They saw someone providing abundantly, they saw someone lavish an extravagant gift on all those at the celebration… they saw God moving and working right there amongst them…
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