May 2 (Saturday) -- Jesus Made Wine

Having an eye for a gal can cost you your eyes: Judges 15:1-16:31

Needs some wine? Ask Jesus: John 2:1-25

From everlasting to everlasting: Psalm 103:1-22

Evil men will bow down in the presence of good: Proverbs 14:17-19

Turning water into wine? Jesus?

That does sound odd. But some notes on the wine:

1) I think it’s wrong to say that it was non-alcoholic / grape juice. The word translated to “wine” in this story is the Greek word “oinos”, which means wine in a way that implies fermentation. Plus, in that day there were no refrigerators to preserve grape juice like we have today. If they drank grape juice that was more than a couple of days old, it had started fermenting and they called it “oinos”  wine.
2) But at the same time we can’t run on a tangent and say that all wine mentioned in the Bible is of the high alcohol sort bought in a liquor store today. They had some wine that they stored for years and it fermented enough to have a high alcohol content. But for the most part, the wine they drink had fermented just a little since the last batch of grapes were pressed. They drank wine like this fairly regularly.

Now, onto what I think are the more spiritual matters. A lot of people get hung up on the wine part and miss a lot of neat stuff.

A) This is the first miracle of Jesus that’s recorded. I wish it was in the other Gospels, but John is the only one who recorded it.
B) It happened in Cana, an obscure part f the country far away from Jerusalem where most of the action usually was.
C) Jesus came to the wedding, contrary to John the Baptist who “came neither eating or drinking” (Matthew 11:18). Weddings were feasts.
D) Jesus had already called His disciples at this point, but He was a man of the people. He attended gatherings of His loved ones.
E) Even Mary lifted Jesus up. Mary, the mother of Jesus, told the servants to do whatever Jesus told them to do. She’s also the one who came up with the idea of bringing the problem to Jesus. Even Mary treated Jesus as greater and having more authority than herself.

So if you can get past the whole was-it-alcoholic-wine-that-Jesus-made argument, you’ll see that we ought to serve & lift up Jesus, who loves us enough to hang out with people even while trying to get His ministry started.