1. Water Turned Into Wine
The Water Turned Into Wine John 2:1-11
This beginning of miracles" is as truly an introduction to all other miracles which Christ did, as the parable of the Sower to all other parables which He spoke (Mark 4:13). No other miracle has so much in it of prophecy, and thus no other would have inaugurated so fitly the whole future work of the Son of God. For that work might be characterized throughout as an ennobling of the common, and a transmuting of the mean; a turning of the water of earth into the wine of heaven. But it will be better not to anticipate remarks, which will find their fitter place when the miracle itself shall have first been considered.
"And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee". The "third day" after what? No doubt, the third after that on which Philip and Nathanael, of whose coming to Christ there is mention immediately before (i. 43), had attached themselves to Him. He and his newly-won disciples would have journeyed without difficulty from the banks of Jordan to Cana in two days, and might so have been present at the "marriage" or, better, "the marriage festival," upon the third day after. "And the mother of Jesus was there." The silence of Scripture leaves hardly a doubt that Joseph was dead at the time when the Lord's open ministry began. He is last expressly mentioned on occasion of the Lord's visit as a child to the Temple (Luke 2:41); which, however, he must for a certain period have overlived (ver. 51). "And both Jesus was called and Ms disciples." These, invited with their Master, and, no doubt, mainly out of respect to Him, are commonly taken to have been the five whom He had just gathered, Andrew and Peter, Philip and Nathanael (Bartholomew?), and the fifth, the Evangelist himself. For St. John is generally considered to have been the second of the two scholars of the Baptist mentioned John 1:35, 40, of whom Andrew was the other, both from the particularity with which that calling is narrated, and from this Evangelist's way of concealing his own personality under language such as there is used (cf. John 13:23; 18:15; 19:26, 35). Only thus can we account for the name of the fifth disciple being past over, while all the others difficulty be twisted to the same, the Kefr having first to be dropped altogether, and in Kenna, the first radical changed, and the second left out; while "Kâna el-Jelîl" is word for word the "Cana of Galilee" of Scripture, which exactly so stands in the Arabic version of the N. T. In addition, he decisively proves that the mistake is entirely modern, that only since the sixteenth century Kefr Kenna has thus borne away the honours due rightly to Kana el-Jelil. Till then, as he shows by numerous references to a line of earlier travellers and topographers reaching through many centuries, the latter was ever considered as the scene of this first miracle of our Lord. It may have helped to further the mistake, and to win for it an easier acceptance, that it was manifestly for the interest of guides and travellers who would spare themselves fatigue and distance, to accept the other in its room, it lying directly on one of the routes between Nazareth and Tiberias, and being far more accessible than the true. The Cana of the New T. does not occur in the Old, but is mentioned twice by Josephus, who also takes note of it as in Galilee (Vit. §§ 16, 64; Bell. Jud. 1:7, 5). This addition to the name of the place, occurring as often as it is mentioned, is to be regarded here not as a specification on the part of the Evangelist, but as part of the. name, just as we speak of Stoke by Nayland, or Burton on Trent, The 0. T. has only Kanah in Asher (Josh. 19:28), S. E. of Tyre, are mentioned. If this assumption is correct, St. John will then have been an eye-witness of the miracle which he relates.
None need wonder to find the Lord of life at that festival; for He came to sanctify all life,—to consecrate its times of joy, as its times of sorrow; all experience telling us, that it is times of gladness, such as this was now, which especially need such a sanctifying power and presence of the Lord. In times of sorrow, the sense of God's nearness comes more naturally out: in these it is in danger to be forgotten. He was there, and by his presence there struck the key-note to the whole future tenor of his ministry. He should not be as another Baptist, a wilderness preacher, withdrawing himself from the common paths of men; but his should' be at once a harder and a higher task, to mingle with and purify the common life of men, to assert and bring out the glory which was hidden in its every relation. And it is not, perhaps, without its significance, that this should have been especially a marriage, which He "adorned and beautified with his presence and first miracle that He wrought. "He foresaw that some hereafter should arise in his Church who would despise marriage, or, if not despise, yet fail to give the Christian family all its dignity and honour. These should not find any countenance from Him.
"And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto Him, They have no wine." It may have been that his presence and that of his disciples, a presence unlooked for, as of those who had just arrived from a journey, increased beyond expectation the number of the guests; and so the provision made for their entertainment may have proved insufficient. The Mother of the Lord was perhaps near akin to the bridegroom or the bride; at all events from one reason or another did not account it unseemly to mingle with, and in some sort to guide, the festal arrangements. She was evidently distressed at the embarrassments of that humble household, and would willingly have removed them. Yet what exactly she expected from her divine Son, when she thus turned to Him, is hard to determine. We know that this was his first miracle (John 2:11), so that she could not, from anterior displays of his power and grace, have now been emboldened to look for further manifestations of the same. Some indeed, of whom Maldonatus is one, take not so absolutely the denial of all miracles preceding, but with this limitation understood:—this was the first of his miracles wherein He showed forth his glory; other such works He may have performed already in the smaller circle of his family, and thus have prepared them for more open displays of his grace and power. But, without evading thus the plain declaration of St. John, we may well understand how she, who more than any other had kept and pondered in her heart all the tokens and prophetic intimations of the coming glory of her Son (Luke 2:19, 51), should have believed that in Him powers were latent, equal to the present need, and which, however He had restrained them until now, He could and would put forth, whenever the fit time had arrived. This is much more reasonable than to suppose that she had no definite purpose in these words; but only turned to Him now, as having ever found Him a wise counsellor in least things as in greatest. Bengel's suggestion is curious, that it was a hint to Him that they should leave, and thus by their example break up the assembly, before the necessities of their hosts should appear; and Calvin's is more curious still.
Her interference seems not at first to promise any good result. "Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee?" The expositors of the Church of Rome have been very anxious to rid this answer of every shadow of rebuke or blame. Entire essays have been written with this single purpose.. Now it is quite true that in the address "Woman" there is nothing of severity or harshness, however it may have some such sound to an English ear. In those last and tenderest words which the Lord addressed to his mother, He used the same language, "Woman, behold thy Son" (John 19:26). So far from any harshness, the compellationhas something solemn in it, and cannot but have such where the dignity of woman is duly felt. But it is otherwise, with the words following, "What have I to do with thee?" Comparing them with the same or like expressions elsewhere, their meaning is clearly this: "Let me alone; what is there common to thee and Me? we stand in this matter on altogether different grounds. "All expositors of the early Church have allowed, even by the confession of the Romanists themselves, that there is more or less of reproof and repulse in this answer; and they themselves are obliged to admit the appearance of such; only they deny the reality. He so replied, they say, to, teach us, not her, that higher respects than those of flesh and blood moved Him to the choosing of the present moment for the first putting forth of his divine power. Most certainly it was to teach this; but to teach it first to her who from her wondrous position as the "blessed among women" was, more than any other, in danger of forgetting it; and in her to teach it to all. "She had not yet," says Chrysostom, "that opinion of Him which she ought, but because she bare Him, counted that, after the manner of other mothers, she might in all things command Him whom it more became her to reverence and worship as her Lord." The true parallel to this passage, and that throwing most light on it, is Matt. 12:46-50.
Any severity which this answer may seem to have in the reading, we cannot doubt was mitigated by the manner of its speaking; suffering, as it plainly did, a near compliance with her request to look through its apparent refusal. For when she "saith unto the servants, Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it" it is evident she read a Yes, and, as the sequel shows, rightly read it, in his apparent No. It must be confessed that these words are not without their difficulty, following close on that announcement, "Mine hour is not yet come." For that, most of all when taken in connexion with what just went before, seems to put off not for the present, only for a few minutes, or for an hour, the manifestation of his glory as the Messiah, but to postpone it altogether to some remote period of his ministry. Indeed, his "hour" is generally, most of all in the language of St. John, the hour of his passion, or of his departure from the world (John 8:30; 8:20; 12:23, 27; 13:1; 17:1 ). Here, however, and perhaps on one other occasion (John 7:6), it indicates a time close at hand. His hour had not yet come. Not till the wine was wholly exhausted would it arrive; as yet that was only failing. Then would be the time to act, when by its entire failure, manifest to all, the miracle would be above suspicion; else, in Augustine's words, He might seem rather to mingle elements than to change them. When all other help fails, then, and not till then, the "hour" of the great Helper has arrived. Luther here notes, and presents to us for an example, the faith of Mary, who, nothing daunted by the semblance of a refusal, reads between the lines of this refusal another answer to her implied petition; is sure that even the fault which clave to her prayer shall not hinder it altogether; but that in due time it shall be granted; is indeed so sure of this that she not obscurely guesses at, and even indicates the manner of the granting, "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it."
Very beautiful is it here to observe the facility with which our Lord yields Himself to the supply, not of the absolute wants merely, but of the superfluities, of others; not indeed so much for the guests' sake, as for that of the bridal pair, whose marriage feast, by the unlooked-for shortcoming of the wine, was in danger of being exposed to mockery and scorn. This He will avert, who can enter into all needs, the finer no less than the commoner needs of our life. For all the grace, and beauty, and courtesy of life are taken account of in Christianity, as well as life's sterner realities; and the spirit of Christ, in Himself and in his disciples, allows all, while giving to each its due place and importance. We may contrast this his readiness to aid others, with his stern refusal to minister by the same almighty power to his own extremest needs. He who made wine out of water, might have made bread out of stones; but spreading a table for others, He is content to hunger and to thirst Himself.
The conditions under which the miracle was accomplished are all, as Chrysostom long ago observed, such as to exclude any possible suspicion of collusion. "And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim." They were vessels for water, not for wine; thus none could insinuate that probably some sediment of wine remained in them, which lending a flavour to water poured on it, formed thus a thinnest kind of wine; even as the same explanation is excluded by the praise which the ruler of the feast bestows upon the new supply (John 2:10). The circumstance of these vessels being at hand is accounted for. They were there by no premeditated plan, but in accordance with the customs and traditionary observances of the Jews in the matter of washing (Matt. 15:2; Mark 7:2-4; Luke 11:39); for this seems more probable than that this "purifying" has reference to any distinctly commanded legal observances. The quantity, too, which these vessels contained, was enormous; not such as might have been brought in unobserved, but "two or three firkins apiece." And at the beginning they were empty; so that the servants who, on that bidding, had filled them with water, and who knew what liquid they had poured in, became themselves, by this act of theirs, witnesses to the reality of the miracle. Else it might only have appeared, as in fact it did only appear to the ruler of the feast, that the wine came from some unexpected quarter; "he knew not whence it was; but the servants which drew the water," —not, that is, the water now made wine, but who had drawn the simpler element, on which the Lord put forth his transforming powers,—" knew."
"And He saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it." Like most other acts of creation, or, more strictly, of becoming, this of the water becoming wine, is concealed from sight. That which is poured into the jars as water is drawn out as wine; but the actual process of the change we toil in vain to conceive. And yet in truth it is in no way stranger, save in the rapidity with which it is effected, than that which is every day going forward among us, but to which use and custom have so dulled our eyes, that commonly we do not marvel at it at all; and, because we can call it by its name, suppose that we have discovered its secret, or rather that there is no secret in it to discover. He who each year prepares the wine in the grape, causing it to absorb, and swell with, the moisture of earth and heaven, to transmute this into nobler juices of its own, concentrated all those slower processes now into the act of a single moment, and accomplished in an instant what usually He takes many months to accomplish. This analogy does not indeed help us to understand what the Lord at this time did, but yet brings before us that in this He was working in the line of (above, indeed, but not across, or counter to) his more ordinary workings, which we see daily around us, the unnoticed miracles of everyday nature. That which this, had peculiarly its own, and which took it out from the order of nature, was the power and will by which all the intervening steps of these tardier processes were overleaped, their methods superseded, and the result attained in an instant.
It has been sometimes debated whether "the governor of the feast" was himself one of the guests, set either by general consent or by the selection of the host over the banquet; or, as Chrysostom and others will have it, a chief attendant, charged with ordering the course of the feast, and overlooking the ministrations of the inferior servants. The analogy of Greek and Roman usages points him out as himself a guest, invested with this office for the time; and the passage from the Apocrypha quoted below, shows that a similar custom was in use among the Jews. Indeed the freedom of remonstrance which he allows himself with the bridegroom seems decisive of his position; for such would hardly have found place but from an equal. It was for him to taste and distribute the wine; to him, therefore, the Lord commanded that this should be first brought, even in this little matter allowing and honouring the established order and usage of society, and giving to every man his due.
"When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was (but the servants which drew the water knew), the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,"--called, that is, to him, and with something of a festive exclamation, not unsuitable to the season, exclaimed: "Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now." Many interpreters have been very anxious to rescue the original word, which we have given by "well drunk," from itself implying aught of excess. They have done this, lest otherwise it might seem as though the guests at this marriage festival had already overpassed the limits of temperance, and that we had here one of those unseemly revels (temulenta convivia Cyprian calls them) which too often disgraced a marriage, —with all the difficulties, of Christ's sanctioning with his presence so great an abuse of God's gifts, and, stranger still, ministering by his divine power to a yet worse excess. But there is no need of this anxious dealing with the word. We may be quite sure there was no such excess here; for to this the Lord would as little have given allowance by his presence, as He would have helped it forward by a special wonder-work of his own. The ruler of the feast does but refer to a common practice, that of producing the best wine first, at the same time noticing the motive, namely, that men's palates after a while are blunted, and their power of discerning between good and bad is diminished; and thus an inferior wine passes with them then, which would not have "past with them before. There is no special application to the guests present, but only to the corrupt customs and fashions too common in the world;—unless, indeed, it be in the minds of some who would mar, if by. any means they could, the image of a perfect Holiness, which offends and rebukes them.
Of a piece with this is their miserable objection, who find the miracle incredible, since, granting that the Lord did not actually minister to an excess already commenced, still by the creation of "so large and perilous a quantity of wine" (for the quantity was enormous ), He would have put temptation in men's way. With the same right, every good gift of God which is open to any possible abuse, every plenteous return of the field, every large abundance of the vineyard, might be accused of being a temptation; and so in some sort it is (cf. Luke 12:16), a proving of men's temperance and moderation in the midst of abundance. But man is to be perfected, not by exemption from temptation, but rather by victory in temptation; and the secret of temperance lies not in the scanty supply, but in the strong self-restraint. That this gift should be large, was only that which we should look for. He, a King, gave as became a king. No niggard giver in the ordinary bounties of his kingdom of nature, neither was He a niggard giver now, when He brought those common gifts into the kingdom of his grace, and made them directly to serve Him there (cf. Luke 5:6, 7).
But this saying of the governor of the feast must not be suffered to pass by, as describing only a trivial practice and a sordid economy of this world. He may not have intended, doubtless he did not intend, any more; and yet his worda excellently set forth to us the difference between the manner and order of the world's giving, and of Christ's; the man giving utterance to a far larger and deeper thought than he meant. The world does indeed give its best and choicest at the beginning, its "good wine" first, but has only meaner and poorer substitutes at the last. "When men have well drunk" when their spiritual palate is blunted, when they have lost the discernment between moral good and evil, then it puts upon them that which it would not have dared to offer at the first,—coarser pleasures, viler enjoyments, the swine's husks. Those who worship the world must recognize at last its fittest representation in that great image which Nebuchadnezzar beheld in his dream (Dan. 2:31); the head, indeed, showing as fine gold, but its material growing ever baser, till it finishes with the iron and clay at the last.
"To be a prodigal's favourite, then, worse lot!
A miser's pensioner,"
This is the portion of its votaries. But it is otherwise with the guests of Christ, the heavenly bridegroom. He ever reserves for them whom He has bidden, "the good wine" unto the last. In the words of the most eloquent of our divines, "The world presents us with fair language, promising hopes, convenient fortunes, pompous honours, and these are the outside of the bowl; but when it is swallowed, these dissolve in an instant, and there remains bitterness and the malignity of coloquintida. Every sin smiles in the first address, and carries light in the face, and honey in the lip; but when we 'have well drunk,' then comes 'that which is worse,' a whip with six strings, fears and terrors of conscience, and shame and displeasure, and a caitiff disposition, and diffidence in the day of death. But when after the manner of purifying of the Christians, we fill our waterpots with water, watering our couch with our tears, and moistening our cheeks with the perpetual distillations of repentance, then Christ turns our water into wine, first penitents and then communicants—first waters of sorrow and then the wine of the chalice;.... for Jesus keeps the best wine to the last, not only because of the direct reservations of the highest joys till the nearer approaches of glory, but also because our relishes are higher after a long fruition than at the first essays, such being the nature of grace, that it increases in relish as it does in fruition, every part of grace being new duty and new reward."
"This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory." The Evangelist expressly, and, it would seem, pointedly, excludes from all historic credit the miracles of the Infancy, which are. found in such rank abundance in nearly all the apocryphal Gospels; for, of course, he means not merely that this was the first miracle which Jesus wrought in Cana, but that this miracle in Cana was the first which He wrought; and the Church has ever regarded these words as decisive on this point. The statement is important, and not unconnected with one main purpose of St, John, in his Gospel, namely, to repel and remove all unreal notions concerning the person of his Lord,—notions which nothing would have helped more to uphold than those merely phantastic and capricious miracles,—favourites, therefore, with all manner of docetic heretics,—which are ascribed to his infancy.
Of none less than the Son could' be affirmed that He "manifested forth his glory;" for every other would have manifested forth the glory of God"; He only, being God, could manifest his own; for "glory" (δόξα) here must have all its emphasis; it is assuredly no creaturely attribute) but a divine; comprehended and involved in the idea of the Logos as the absolute Light, As such He rays forth light from Himself, and this effluence is "his glory!' (John 1:14; Matt 16:27; Mark 8:38). This his "glory" during the time that He tabernacled upon earth for the most part was hidden; the veil of our flesh concealed it from the sight of men: but now, in this work of his grace and power, it burst through the covering which concealed it, revealing itself to the spiritual eyes of his disciples; they "beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father." And as a consequence, "his disciples believed on Him." The work, besides its more immediate purpose, had a further end and aim, the confirming, strengthening, exalting of their faith, who, already believing in Him, were thus the more capable of receiving an increase of faith,—of being lifted from faith to faith, advanced from faith in an earthly teacher to faith in a heavenly Lord (1 Kin. 17:24).
This first miracle of the New Covenant has its inner mystical meaning. The first miracle of Moses was a turning of water into blood (Exod. 7:20), nor was this without its symbolic fitness; for the law, which came by Moses, was a ministration of death, and working wrath (2 Cor. 3:6-9); but the first miracle of Christ was a turning of water into Mine, and this too was a meet inauguration of all which should follow, for his was a ministration of life; He came, the dispenser of that true wine that maketh glad the heart of man (Ps. 104:15). Another prophetic aspect this miracle offers; which yet indeed is not another, but only a different aspect of the same; namely, that even as Christ turned now the water into wine, so should He turn the poorer dispensation, the thin and watery elements of the Jewish religion (Heb. 7:18), into richer and nobler, into the gladdening wine of a higher faith. The whole Jewish dispensation in its comparative weakness and poverty was aptly symbolized by the water; and only in type and prophecy could point to Him, who should come "binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine;" who "washed his garments in wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes" (Gen. 49:11. cf. John 15:1), but now by this work of his He gave token that He was indeed come, that his people's joy might be full. Nor less do we behold symbolized here, that whole work which the Son of God is evermore accomplishing in the world,—ennobling all that He touches, making saints out of sinners, angels out of men, and in the end heaven out of earth, a new paradise of God out of the old wilderness of the world. For the prophecy of the world's regeneration, of the day in which his disciples shall drink of the fruit of the vine new in his kingdom, is here. In this humble supper we have the rudiments of the glorious festival, which when it shall arrive, his hour shall have indeed come, and He shall be there, Himself the Bridegroom, and his Church the Bride.
Irenaeus, in an interesting passage, associates this miracle and that of the loaves; and contemplating them together as a prophecy of the Eucharist, finds alike in each a witness against all Gnostic notions of a creation originally impure. The Lord, he says, might have created, with no subjacent material, the wine with which He cheered these guests, the bread with which He fed those multitudes; but He rather chose to take his Father's creatures on which to display his power, in witness that it was the same God that at the beginning had made the waters and caused the earth to bear its fruits, who did in those last days give by his Son the cup of blessing and the bread of life.
Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord.
This beginning of miracles" is as truly an introduction to all other miracles which Christ did, as the parable of the Sower to all other parables which He spoke (Mark 4:13). No other miracle has so much in it of prophecy, and thus no other would have inaugurated so fitly the whole future work of the Son of God. For that work might be characterized throughout as an ennobling of the common, and a transmuting of the mean; a turning of the water of earth into the wine of heaven. But it will be better not to anticipate remarks, which will find their fitter place when the miracle itself shall have first been considered.
"And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee". The "third day" after what? No doubt, the third after that on which Philip and Nathanael, of whose coming to Christ there is mention immediately before (i. 43), had attached themselves to Him. He and his newly-won disciples would have journeyed without difficulty from the banks of Jordan to Cana in two days, and might so have been present at the "marriage" or, better, "the marriage festival," upon the third day after. "And the mother of Jesus was there." The silence of Scripture leaves hardly a doubt that Joseph was dead at the time when the Lord's open ministry began. He is last expressly mentioned on occasion of the Lord's visit as a child to the Temple (Luke 2:41); which, however, he must for a certain period have overlived (ver. 51). "And both Jesus was called and Ms disciples." These, invited with their Master, and, no doubt, mainly out of respect to Him, are commonly taken to have been the five whom He had just gathered, Andrew and Peter, Philip and Nathanael (Bartholomew?), and the fifth, the Evangelist himself. For St. John is generally considered to have been the second of the two scholars of the Baptist mentioned John 1:35, 40, of whom Andrew was the other, both from the particularity with which that calling is narrated, and from this Evangelist's way of concealing his own personality under language such as there is used (cf. John 13:23; 18:15; 19:26, 35). Only thus can we account for the name of the fifth disciple being past over, while all the others difficulty be twisted to the same, the Kefr having first to be dropped altogether, and in Kenna, the first radical changed, and the second left out; while "Kâna el-Jelîl" is word for word the "Cana of Galilee" of Scripture, which exactly so stands in the Arabic version of the N. T. In addition, he decisively proves that the mistake is entirely modern, that only since the sixteenth century Kefr Kenna has thus borne away the honours due rightly to Kana el-Jelil. Till then, as he shows by numerous references to a line of earlier travellers and topographers reaching through many centuries, the latter was ever considered as the scene of this first miracle of our Lord. It may have helped to further the mistake, and to win for it an easier acceptance, that it was manifestly for the interest of guides and travellers who would spare themselves fatigue and distance, to accept the other in its room, it lying directly on one of the routes between Nazareth and Tiberias, and being far more accessible than the true. The Cana of the New T. does not occur in the Old, but is mentioned twice by Josephus, who also takes note of it as in Galilee (Vit. §§ 16, 64; Bell. Jud. 1:7, 5). This addition to the name of the place, occurring as often as it is mentioned, is to be regarded here not as a specification on the part of the Evangelist, but as part of the. name, just as we speak of Stoke by Nayland, or Burton on Trent, The 0. T. has only Kanah in Asher (Josh. 19:28), S. E. of Tyre, are mentioned. If this assumption is correct, St. John will then have been an eye-witness of the miracle which he relates.
None need wonder to find the Lord of life at that festival; for He came to sanctify all life,—to consecrate its times of joy, as its times of sorrow; all experience telling us, that it is times of gladness, such as this was now, which especially need such a sanctifying power and presence of the Lord. In times of sorrow, the sense of God's nearness comes more naturally out: in these it is in danger to be forgotten. He was there, and by his presence there struck the key-note to the whole future tenor of his ministry. He should not be as another Baptist, a wilderness preacher, withdrawing himself from the common paths of men; but his should' be at once a harder and a higher task, to mingle with and purify the common life of men, to assert and bring out the glory which was hidden in its every relation. And it is not, perhaps, without its significance, that this should have been especially a marriage, which He "adorned and beautified with his presence and first miracle that He wrought. "He foresaw that some hereafter should arise in his Church who would despise marriage, or, if not despise, yet fail to give the Christian family all its dignity and honour. These should not find any countenance from Him.
"And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto Him, They have no wine." It may have been that his presence and that of his disciples, a presence unlooked for, as of those who had just arrived from a journey, increased beyond expectation the number of the guests; and so the provision made for their entertainment may have proved insufficient. The Mother of the Lord was perhaps near akin to the bridegroom or the bride; at all events from one reason or another did not account it unseemly to mingle with, and in some sort to guide, the festal arrangements. She was evidently distressed at the embarrassments of that humble household, and would willingly have removed them. Yet what exactly she expected from her divine Son, when she thus turned to Him, is hard to determine. We know that this was his first miracle (John 2:11), so that she could not, from anterior displays of his power and grace, have now been emboldened to look for further manifestations of the same. Some indeed, of whom Maldonatus is one, take not so absolutely the denial of all miracles preceding, but with this limitation understood:—this was the first of his miracles wherein He showed forth his glory; other such works He may have performed already in the smaller circle of his family, and thus have prepared them for more open displays of his grace and power. But, without evading thus the plain declaration of St. John, we may well understand how she, who more than any other had kept and pondered in her heart all the tokens and prophetic intimations of the coming glory of her Son (Luke 2:19, 51), should have believed that in Him powers were latent, equal to the present need, and which, however He had restrained them until now, He could and would put forth, whenever the fit time had arrived. This is much more reasonable than to suppose that she had no definite purpose in these words; but only turned to Him now, as having ever found Him a wise counsellor in least things as in greatest. Bengel's suggestion is curious, that it was a hint to Him that they should leave, and thus by their example break up the assembly, before the necessities of their hosts should appear; and Calvin's is more curious still.
Her interference seems not at first to promise any good result. "Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee?" The expositors of the Church of Rome have been very anxious to rid this answer of every shadow of rebuke or blame. Entire essays have been written with this single purpose.. Now it is quite true that in the address "Woman" there is nothing of severity or harshness, however it may have some such sound to an English ear. In those last and tenderest words which the Lord addressed to his mother, He used the same language, "Woman, behold thy Son" (John 19:26). So far from any harshness, the compellationhas something solemn in it, and cannot but have such where the dignity of woman is duly felt. But it is otherwise, with the words following, "What have I to do with thee?" Comparing them with the same or like expressions elsewhere, their meaning is clearly this: "Let me alone; what is there common to thee and Me? we stand in this matter on altogether different grounds. "All expositors of the early Church have allowed, even by the confession of the Romanists themselves, that there is more or less of reproof and repulse in this answer; and they themselves are obliged to admit the appearance of such; only they deny the reality. He so replied, they say, to, teach us, not her, that higher respects than those of flesh and blood moved Him to the choosing of the present moment for the first putting forth of his divine power. Most certainly it was to teach this; but to teach it first to her who from her wondrous position as the "blessed among women" was, more than any other, in danger of forgetting it; and in her to teach it to all. "She had not yet," says Chrysostom, "that opinion of Him which she ought, but because she bare Him, counted that, after the manner of other mothers, she might in all things command Him whom it more became her to reverence and worship as her Lord." The true parallel to this passage, and that throwing most light on it, is Matt. 12:46-50.
Any severity which this answer may seem to have in the reading, we cannot doubt was mitigated by the manner of its speaking; suffering, as it plainly did, a near compliance with her request to look through its apparent refusal. For when she "saith unto the servants, Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it" it is evident she read a Yes, and, as the sequel shows, rightly read it, in his apparent No. It must be confessed that these words are not without their difficulty, following close on that announcement, "Mine hour is not yet come." For that, most of all when taken in connexion with what just went before, seems to put off not for the present, only for a few minutes, or for an hour, the manifestation of his glory as the Messiah, but to postpone it altogether to some remote period of his ministry. Indeed, his "hour" is generally, most of all in the language of St. John, the hour of his passion, or of his departure from the world (John 8:30; 8:20; 12:23, 27; 13:1; 17:1 ). Here, however, and perhaps on one other occasion (John 7:6), it indicates a time close at hand. His hour had not yet come. Not till the wine was wholly exhausted would it arrive; as yet that was only failing. Then would be the time to act, when by its entire failure, manifest to all, the miracle would be above suspicion; else, in Augustine's words, He might seem rather to mingle elements than to change them. When all other help fails, then, and not till then, the "hour" of the great Helper has arrived. Luther here notes, and presents to us for an example, the faith of Mary, who, nothing daunted by the semblance of a refusal, reads between the lines of this refusal another answer to her implied petition; is sure that even the fault which clave to her prayer shall not hinder it altogether; but that in due time it shall be granted; is indeed so sure of this that she not obscurely guesses at, and even indicates the manner of the granting, "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it."
Very beautiful is it here to observe the facility with which our Lord yields Himself to the supply, not of the absolute wants merely, but of the superfluities, of others; not indeed so much for the guests' sake, as for that of the bridal pair, whose marriage feast, by the unlooked-for shortcoming of the wine, was in danger of being exposed to mockery and scorn. This He will avert, who can enter into all needs, the finer no less than the commoner needs of our life. For all the grace, and beauty, and courtesy of life are taken account of in Christianity, as well as life's sterner realities; and the spirit of Christ, in Himself and in his disciples, allows all, while giving to each its due place and importance. We may contrast this his readiness to aid others, with his stern refusal to minister by the same almighty power to his own extremest needs. He who made wine out of water, might have made bread out of stones; but spreading a table for others, He is content to hunger and to thirst Himself.
The conditions under which the miracle was accomplished are all, as Chrysostom long ago observed, such as to exclude any possible suspicion of collusion. "And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim." They were vessels for water, not for wine; thus none could insinuate that probably some sediment of wine remained in them, which lending a flavour to water poured on it, formed thus a thinnest kind of wine; even as the same explanation is excluded by the praise which the ruler of the feast bestows upon the new supply (John 2:10). The circumstance of these vessels being at hand is accounted for. They were there by no premeditated plan, but in accordance with the customs and traditionary observances of the Jews in the matter of washing (Matt. 15:2; Mark 7:2-4; Luke 11:39); for this seems more probable than that this "purifying" has reference to any distinctly commanded legal observances. The quantity, too, which these vessels contained, was enormous; not such as might have been brought in unobserved, but "two or three firkins apiece." And at the beginning they were empty; so that the servants who, on that bidding, had filled them with water, and who knew what liquid they had poured in, became themselves, by this act of theirs, witnesses to the reality of the miracle. Else it might only have appeared, as in fact it did only appear to the ruler of the feast, that the wine came from some unexpected quarter; "he knew not whence it was; but the servants which drew the water," —not, that is, the water now made wine, but who had drawn the simpler element, on which the Lord put forth his transforming powers,—" knew."
"And He saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it." Like most other acts of creation, or, more strictly, of becoming, this of the water becoming wine, is concealed from sight. That which is poured into the jars as water is drawn out as wine; but the actual process of the change we toil in vain to conceive. And yet in truth it is in no way stranger, save in the rapidity with which it is effected, than that which is every day going forward among us, but to which use and custom have so dulled our eyes, that commonly we do not marvel at it at all; and, because we can call it by its name, suppose that we have discovered its secret, or rather that there is no secret in it to discover. He who each year prepares the wine in the grape, causing it to absorb, and swell with, the moisture of earth and heaven, to transmute this into nobler juices of its own, concentrated all those slower processes now into the act of a single moment, and accomplished in an instant what usually He takes many months to accomplish. This analogy does not indeed help us to understand what the Lord at this time did, but yet brings before us that in this He was working in the line of (above, indeed, but not across, or counter to) his more ordinary workings, which we see daily around us, the unnoticed miracles of everyday nature. That which this, had peculiarly its own, and which took it out from the order of nature, was the power and will by which all the intervening steps of these tardier processes were overleaped, their methods superseded, and the result attained in an instant.
It has been sometimes debated whether "the governor of the feast" was himself one of the guests, set either by general consent or by the selection of the host over the banquet; or, as Chrysostom and others will have it, a chief attendant, charged with ordering the course of the feast, and overlooking the ministrations of the inferior servants. The analogy of Greek and Roman usages points him out as himself a guest, invested with this office for the time; and the passage from the Apocrypha quoted below, shows that a similar custom was in use among the Jews. Indeed the freedom of remonstrance which he allows himself with the bridegroom seems decisive of his position; for such would hardly have found place but from an equal. It was for him to taste and distribute the wine; to him, therefore, the Lord commanded that this should be first brought, even in this little matter allowing and honouring the established order and usage of society, and giving to every man his due.
"When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was (but the servants which drew the water knew), the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,"--called, that is, to him, and with something of a festive exclamation, not unsuitable to the season, exclaimed: "Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now." Many interpreters have been very anxious to rescue the original word, which we have given by "well drunk," from itself implying aught of excess. They have done this, lest otherwise it might seem as though the guests at this marriage festival had already overpassed the limits of temperance, and that we had here one of those unseemly revels (temulenta convivia Cyprian calls them) which too often disgraced a marriage, —with all the difficulties, of Christ's sanctioning with his presence so great an abuse of God's gifts, and, stranger still, ministering by his divine power to a yet worse excess. But there is no need of this anxious dealing with the word. We may be quite sure there was no such excess here; for to this the Lord would as little have given allowance by his presence, as He would have helped it forward by a special wonder-work of his own. The ruler of the feast does but refer to a common practice, that of producing the best wine first, at the same time noticing the motive, namely, that men's palates after a while are blunted, and their power of discerning between good and bad is diminished; and thus an inferior wine passes with them then, which would not have "past with them before. There is no special application to the guests present, but only to the corrupt customs and fashions too common in the world;—unless, indeed, it be in the minds of some who would mar, if by. any means they could, the image of a perfect Holiness, which offends and rebukes them.
Of a piece with this is their miserable objection, who find the miracle incredible, since, granting that the Lord did not actually minister to an excess already commenced, still by the creation of "so large and perilous a quantity of wine" (for the quantity was enormous ), He would have put temptation in men's way. With the same right, every good gift of God which is open to any possible abuse, every plenteous return of the field, every large abundance of the vineyard, might be accused of being a temptation; and so in some sort it is (cf. Luke 12:16), a proving of men's temperance and moderation in the midst of abundance. But man is to be perfected, not by exemption from temptation, but rather by victory in temptation; and the secret of temperance lies not in the scanty supply, but in the strong self-restraint. That this gift should be large, was only that which we should look for. He, a King, gave as became a king. No niggard giver in the ordinary bounties of his kingdom of nature, neither was He a niggard giver now, when He brought those common gifts into the kingdom of his grace, and made them directly to serve Him there (cf. Luke 5:6, 7).
But this saying of the governor of the feast must not be suffered to pass by, as describing only a trivial practice and a sordid economy of this world. He may not have intended, doubtless he did not intend, any more; and yet his worda excellently set forth to us the difference between the manner and order of the world's giving, and of Christ's; the man giving utterance to a far larger and deeper thought than he meant. The world does indeed give its best and choicest at the beginning, its "good wine" first, but has only meaner and poorer substitutes at the last. "When men have well drunk" when their spiritual palate is blunted, when they have lost the discernment between moral good and evil, then it puts upon them that which it would not have dared to offer at the first,—coarser pleasures, viler enjoyments, the swine's husks. Those who worship the world must recognize at last its fittest representation in that great image which Nebuchadnezzar beheld in his dream (Dan. 2:31); the head, indeed, showing as fine gold, but its material growing ever baser, till it finishes with the iron and clay at the last.
"To be a prodigal's favourite, then, worse lot!
A miser's pensioner,"
This is the portion of its votaries. But it is otherwise with the guests of Christ, the heavenly bridegroom. He ever reserves for them whom He has bidden, "the good wine" unto the last. In the words of the most eloquent of our divines, "The world presents us with fair language, promising hopes, convenient fortunes, pompous honours, and these are the outside of the bowl; but when it is swallowed, these dissolve in an instant, and there remains bitterness and the malignity of coloquintida. Every sin smiles in the first address, and carries light in the face, and honey in the lip; but when we 'have well drunk,' then comes 'that which is worse,' a whip with six strings, fears and terrors of conscience, and shame and displeasure, and a caitiff disposition, and diffidence in the day of death. But when after the manner of purifying of the Christians, we fill our waterpots with water, watering our couch with our tears, and moistening our cheeks with the perpetual distillations of repentance, then Christ turns our water into wine, first penitents and then communicants—first waters of sorrow and then the wine of the chalice;.... for Jesus keeps the best wine to the last, not only because of the direct reservations of the highest joys till the nearer approaches of glory, but also because our relishes are higher after a long fruition than at the first essays, such being the nature of grace, that it increases in relish as it does in fruition, every part of grace being new duty and new reward."
"This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory." The Evangelist expressly, and, it would seem, pointedly, excludes from all historic credit the miracles of the Infancy, which are. found in such rank abundance in nearly all the apocryphal Gospels; for, of course, he means not merely that this was the first miracle which Jesus wrought in Cana, but that this miracle in Cana was the first which He wrought; and the Church has ever regarded these words as decisive on this point. The statement is important, and not unconnected with one main purpose of St, John, in his Gospel, namely, to repel and remove all unreal notions concerning the person of his Lord,—notions which nothing would have helped more to uphold than those merely phantastic and capricious miracles,—favourites, therefore, with all manner of docetic heretics,—which are ascribed to his infancy.
Of none less than the Son could' be affirmed that He "manifested forth his glory;" for every other would have manifested forth the glory of God"; He only, being God, could manifest his own; for "glory" (δόξα) here must have all its emphasis; it is assuredly no creaturely attribute) but a divine; comprehended and involved in the idea of the Logos as the absolute Light, As such He rays forth light from Himself, and this effluence is "his glory!' (John 1:14; Matt 16:27; Mark 8:38). This his "glory" during the time that He tabernacled upon earth for the most part was hidden; the veil of our flesh concealed it from the sight of men: but now, in this work of his grace and power, it burst through the covering which concealed it, revealing itself to the spiritual eyes of his disciples; they "beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father." And as a consequence, "his disciples believed on Him." The work, besides its more immediate purpose, had a further end and aim, the confirming, strengthening, exalting of their faith, who, already believing in Him, were thus the more capable of receiving an increase of faith,—of being lifted from faith to faith, advanced from faith in an earthly teacher to faith in a heavenly Lord (1 Kin. 17:24).
This first miracle of the New Covenant has its inner mystical meaning. The first miracle of Moses was a turning of water into blood (Exod. 7:20), nor was this without its symbolic fitness; for the law, which came by Moses, was a ministration of death, and working wrath (2 Cor. 3:6-9); but the first miracle of Christ was a turning of water into Mine, and this too was a meet inauguration of all which should follow, for his was a ministration of life; He came, the dispenser of that true wine that maketh glad the heart of man (Ps. 104:15). Another prophetic aspect this miracle offers; which yet indeed is not another, but only a different aspect of the same; namely, that even as Christ turned now the water into wine, so should He turn the poorer dispensation, the thin and watery elements of the Jewish religion (Heb. 7:18), into richer and nobler, into the gladdening wine of a higher faith. The whole Jewish dispensation in its comparative weakness and poverty was aptly symbolized by the water; and only in type and prophecy could point to Him, who should come "binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine;" who "washed his garments in wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes" (Gen. 49:11. cf. John 15:1), but now by this work of his He gave token that He was indeed come, that his people's joy might be full. Nor less do we behold symbolized here, that whole work which the Son of God is evermore accomplishing in the world,—ennobling all that He touches, making saints out of sinners, angels out of men, and in the end heaven out of earth, a new paradise of God out of the old wilderness of the world. For the prophecy of the world's regeneration, of the day in which his disciples shall drink of the fruit of the vine new in his kingdom, is here. In this humble supper we have the rudiments of the glorious festival, which when it shall arrive, his hour shall have indeed come, and He shall be there, Himself the Bridegroom, and his Church the Bride.
Irenaeus, in an interesting passage, associates this miracle and that of the loaves; and contemplating them together as a prophecy of the Eucharist, finds alike in each a witness against all Gnostic notions of a creation originally impure. The Lord, he says, might have created, with no subjacent material, the wine with which He cheered these guests, the bread with which He fed those multitudes; but He rather chose to take his Father's creatures on which to display his power, in witness that it was the same God that at the beginning had made the waters and caused the earth to bear its fruits, who did in those last days give by his Son the cup of blessing and the bread of life.
Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord.
