DAY 131

WATER TO WINE
2 Kings 13 & 14 and John 2

In our Old Testament reading we continue to see the rulers of the nations struggle, and at times completely fail, to follow God. We continue to see over and over again the effects of syncretism (the mixing of faith traditions). We continue to see that “as the king goes, so goes the people.” Jesus is Prophet, Priest and King. He will assume all three Old Testament roles. It is crucial that He does. For in Christ we see a true King, one whom we should follow.

In the Gospels we hear Jesus speaking of the Kingdom of God and we hear Pilate ask Jesus, “So you are a king?”

Seeing Jesus clearly falls heavily on the Gospels. John in his Gospel uses a different approach then Matthew, Mark and Luke. Those three, while not writing biographies, do chronicle many of Jesus’ miracles. John on the other picks seven (a nice perfect Jewish number) signs, progressively demonstrating Jesus’ divinity – today we read of the first sign.

He is how one author reflects on this miracle:

“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 the 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. 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.” – from “Miracles,” God in the Dock by C.S.Lewis.