Did you hear the one about Jesus
turning water into wine? Jesus’ mother
asks him to help save a groom from the embarrassment (and potential lawsuits
from disgruntled guests!) for running out of wine before the party was over. Jesus,
in a quiet, hardly-noticed way, provides. (John 2:1-11)
Modern ears, rendered
skeptical by science, hear that story and respond, ‘Really? This sounds just like some ancient
Greek myth about their god of wine.’
But, in our less skeptical
moments; in our more faith-filled moments, I wonder if we want this story to be
true. We want to see it as the new reality, because deep down, we dare to dream
and hope that there will be a day when none will be in want, when all will be
invited to the Party. (You should stop here and read Amos 9:13-14)
Jesus is at the party, and he
is just doing that which God does every year, but in a super-sped up way. We see it with every glass of wine, but, like
the guests at that wedding in Cana, we don’t see the Maker. So, if when you
read about Jesus turning water into wine your response is ‘balderdash’, perhaps
the problem lies not in the story but in your eyes.
Look!
“God creates the vine and teaches it to draw up water
by its roots and, with the aid of the sun, to turn that water into a juice
which will ferment and take on certain qualities. Thus every year, from Noah’s
time till ours, God turns water into wine.
That, men fail to see. Either like the Pagans they refer the process to
some finite spirit, Bacchus or Dionysus: or else, like the moderns, they attribute
real and ultimate causality to the chemical and other material phenomena which
are all that our senses can discover in it. But when Christ at Cana makes water
into wine, the mask is off’ (John 5:19). The miracle has only half its effect
if it only convinces us that Christ is God: it will have its full effect if
whenever we see a vineyard or drink a glass of wine we remember that here works
He who sat at the wedding party in Cana.”
C.S. Lewis, “Miracles,” God
in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970)
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