Jesus frequently confounded the people of His day. For an expected Messiah, He often does the unexpected. When Jesus shows up at the Temple, we certainly would expect Him to worship, to pray, to preach or teach perhaps. But to make a whip out of cords? To overturn tables and scatter coins? To yell at people? Unexpected. Surprising. Of all the artistic representations you have seen of Jesus, how many of them are of this scene?
Yet this is how Jesus chooses to introduce Himself to the religious authorities in the Book of John. And when they indignantly demand He perform some kind of miracle to prove His credentials, He makes them an offer: Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days. This brings up another theme noticeable in the Gospels - there is an air of mystery, or concealment, about Jesus' identity. He speaks in metaphors and parables, sometimes saying things that sound like riddles, and can only be understood later, as in 2:22, when it is only after the resurrection that the disciples realized what He had meant all along.
In John 2, we also have Jesus' first miracle, or "sign." It is the act of turning water into wine. Personally, I love the subtext of the interaction here between Jesus and Mary! Although exasperated by His mother's nudging request, He indulges her and performs a needed miracle. C.S. Lewis has remarked that Jesus' miracles come not really as a contradiction to nature, but as a supernatural intervention on nature. For example, in the natural world, water does become wine. It happens all the time - although the process is usually quite lengthy, involving precipitation and botanical processes and fermentation and time. What normally happens over the course of many months, however, Jesus can make happen instantly.
Something else that sticks out to me in this account of Jesus' first sign is that faith, often demonstrated in visible obedience, is required to accompany miracles. Here it is the faith of the servants. Mary's word to them ("Do whatever he tells you") would make a great motto for the Christian life. Can you imagine being one of these servants - following Jesus for the FIRST time, before He has worked any miracles at all - filling jars with water, and then immediately ladling some out to give to the master of the banquet? I wonder how much trepidation they felt as they carried out Jesus' instructions!
Some would say that Jesus continues to confound and surprise us today. I know many Christians who would prefer the miracle of John 2 to be Jesus turning wine into water. That seems to be an emphasis of some believers today, and sometimes for good reasons. Yet the account is one where Jesus not only produces wine from water, but really gooood wine! Could we still be maintaining expectations of Jesus today that would be turned on their head if we met Him face to face? How has Jesus surprised you lately?
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