Jesus Offers A Better Drink (John 2:1-11) Series

Our story continues this week in John 2. In the series of days we've seen so far in the gospel of John, this is day 7.

Now, before I do anything else, I want to say this up front:

I'm not sure I've ever studied a passage before, and seen so many gifted scholars come to so many different ideas about it. Almost every verse is understood a half dozen ways.

How is that possible?

I think the main reason for this is that AJ (Author of John) has told this story in a way that leaves a lot of holes. We find ourselves with questions, not understanding why some of the people say or do certain things. And there are things we'd like to know that would help fill out the mental picture we have of this story. We want to take this story, and make it into a movie showing all the details, in HD.

But AJ very deliberately refuses to tell the story this way. He has one main purpose in telling this story, and everything else in the story-- what people say, and do, and how it's described-- pushes toward this purpose. When something isn't important for the point he's making, he writes about it using the bare minimum. And when he does this, he shows us a great kindness, because he draws attention to the details that actually matter.

Our story begins like this, in verse 1:

(2:1) And on the third day, a wedding, there was in Cana in Galilee,

and the mother of Jesus was there.

AJ starts by giving us two pieces of background information. First, there's a wedding in Cana in Galilee. Second, the mother of Jesus was there.

Why does AJ start by talking about the mother of Jesus, and not Jesus? That's a signal to us that the mother of

Jesus will be important in this story.

Verses 2-4:

(2) Now, Jesus was also invited, with his disciples, to the wedding,

(3) and when the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus says to him,

"Wine they don't have,"

(4) and Jesus says to her,

"What do you want, woman?

My hour has not yet come."

Scholars disagree here in how they answer three related questions in these verses:

(1) Why does the mother of Jesus come to Jesus?

(2) How are we supposed to hear her words? Is she criticizing Jesus, maybe for not bringing an adequate gift of wine to cover the drinking of him, and his disciples? Or is she simply appealing to Jesus to help, in order to protect the honor of the bridegroom?

(3) What exactly does she expect from Jesus? Does she expect a miracle? Or does she expect him to simply come up with wine some other way?

It's possible to answer these questions different ways. The text is open at this point. And the reason it's open, I think, is because AJ didn't care enough to answer these questions. They don't matter to him.

What does matter? 2 things:

(1) They ran out of wine at the wedding. And that is a shameful, terrible thing-- especially at a first century wedding.

(2) The mother of Jesus goes to Jesus, assuming that, one way or another, Jesus can or should do something about it. Notice-- she doesn't actually ask Jesus to do anything here. She simply states the need (Westcott). And she hopes that Jesus, upon hearing these words, will be moved to do something.

But this is how Jesus responds:

"What do you want, woman?"

This sounds brutal, right? But when Jesus calls people "woman" in the gospel of John, it's not supposed to sound sexist, or belittling, or demeaning. Let's turn to John 19:25 (also, John 4:21). Here, Jesus is dying on the cross, and we read what are, very nearly, his last words:

25 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” 27 Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.

As Jesus is dying, he thinks about his mother. He wants to make sure that she's taken care of. Here again, he calls her "woman." But there's no way that this is supposed to sound harsh. Jesus is a good son, to the end.

Now, even if "woman" isn't supposed to sound brutal, Jesus' overall response is still shocking. In the Greek, it sounds like this: "What to me and to you?" The sense of these words is that there is this gulf between Jesus and his mother (compare Mark 1:24; 5:7). There is a gap. The mother of Jesus may be concerned about a wedding running out of wine. But Jesus has other priorities-- other things that are more important to him. So Jesus hears her words, and her unspoken request, and does nothing with it.