A friend gains your faith
John 2:1-11
As we follow the early career of the disciples in John 1 and 2 we are actually looking at a relatively short period of time.
Day 1 - John and Andrew spend a day with Jesus
Day 2 - Peter, Phillip and Nathanael follow Jesus as he goes back to Galilee
Day 3 - They attend a wedding in Cana
Let’s go to a wedding.
On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, "They have no more wine."
"Dear woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied. "My time has not yet come."
His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water"; so they filled them to the brim.
Then he told them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet."
They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now."
This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.
John 2:1-11 (NIV)
I wonder whose wedding this was. It strikes me that it might have been Nathanael’s or a member of his family’s. John just got done telling us that he was from Cana, and the next day we are there. We know that Peter was married. We also know that the apostles were relatively young men. It isn’t impossible. Of course, it also isn’t certain.
Jesus had a life
What is certain is that Jesus and His disciples are invited to this wedding separately from Mary. In fact, from some translations, we get the impression that Jesus was invited separately from His disciples too. In other words they were not invited due to their association with each other, though that probably played a role. I might naturally be invited to the same wedding as my parents, but all of you would not necessarily be invited to the same wedding, just because I was.
It is difficult for us to imagine Jesus in the context of the world where he lived. We can do historical and cultural studies, and they will tell us something about the events in the gospels, but that is not the same as seeing someone in their own surroundings.
Jesus had:
• family
• and friends
• and a job
• and a neighborhood
• He had coworkers
• and brothers
• and sisters
His mother was the person who tied his shoes and bathed him and fixed his boo boos.
At this stage, when Jesus went to a wedding, it was not as a local dignitary or a famous person. He was not an honored guest, the bride and groom were honored. He was just a guy, circulating among the other guests, eating and talking. He probably danced, as the Jews did, with other men. He probably extended congratulations to the happy couple and had a good time. As a single man of 30, he probably put up with a lot of guff about when he was going to find a wife and settle down.
The point is, these people knew Him, or thought they did. He had grown up around some of them and had worked with some of them. He had probably done construction work for many of them. They did not yet understand who He was or what he was capable of. That is what he means when he says to his mother:
Dear woman, why do you involve me? My time has not yet come.
We have a tendency to think of Jesus’ miracles in the broader context of His ministry. They were part of the vehicle that spread His popularity. They were His gateway to the ear and the belief of the masses. They were expressions of His power and compassion. They demonstrated His authority over nature and the legitimacy of His place in people’s hearts.
We don’t tend to think of them as personal, at least not to Jesus as a man and certainly not personal, for the most part, to his family and friends. But Jesus’ miracles did not start as a part of His ministry, this one, the first one, was a favor to a personal friend and his mother.
However, we do get a sense of the local response to Jesus as His ministry developed.
When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.
"Where did this man get these things?" they asked. "What’s this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him.
Jesus said to them, "Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor." He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith.
Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village. Mark 6:2-6 (NIV)
I find that last verse kind of ironic. I wish I had the lack of power Jesus had there. I wish I could lay hands on a few sick people and heal them. We would see this as incredibly significant, but to Jesus, it was minor. It was not enough to turn the heads of His critics.
His critics were the people that knew Him. They knew His family and his background. They knew His resources and His education. And they did not understand.
Alternative versions of Jesus’ early life cannot be true, because He had family and friends
A couple of years ago, a book came out that has kept the attention of the country. In May, the movie will be released. This is not like Narnia. We will not be getting a church group together to go see it. It is called The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. The book is a political thriller full of secret plots and devious deeds.
In The DaVinci Code it is suggested that the Gospels are only the Catholic Church’s approved version of Jesus’ life. The characters in the book draw attention to the practices of secret societies and ancient books that reveal a whole different Jesus. Specifically, they suggest that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and that they had children who were meant to perpetuate an ongoing dynasty of world leaders.
Let me start by saying that the "authorities" Brown cites are dubious scholars on the fringe of the academic world who write popular books rather than professional studies, because they can’t get serious scholars to take them seriously.
However, the so called "gospels" Brown talks about are real. They have not been suppressed as he suggests. They have been read and studied for centuries and are known as the Gnostic Gospels because they support the views of an early splinter group known as the Gnostics. They do not, as per The DaVinci Code, support the idea that Jesus was married and had children. This is complete fiction.
The Gnostic Gospels, for the most part, were written after all the apostles had died. They were the attempts of the Gnostics to legitimize their teachings by suggesting that Jesus was their source. This was a common practice and still is. People write things and put a higher profile person’s name on them in order to gain acceptance. It has not been so many years since someone tried that with Hitler’s diaries, and even older names and artifacts.
In these "gospels," Jesus is supposed to have done all kinds of strange miracles as a child. One of them was highlighted in the recent TV movie Jesus. In the scene, Jesus the child raises a dead bird to life. This is one version of another story where Jesus formed a bird out of clay and brought it to life. This is just one of dozens of similar stories. In them, Jesus is presented as having done all kinds of things that the Gospels do not record.
These books are gaining popularity now because many people are searching for what went wrong. As they have grown up and seen the church, their needs have not been met and they are disillusioned. They want to find out why. One assumption is that the church missed something and all the disillusioned person has to do is look hard enough and they will find what was missed. Then they find this collection of books that the Church doesn’t acknowledge and they read closely to see if they can fill a need.
The problem is, that the people who wrote the books in the first place did not know Jesus and did not write their books till all the people who could validate them were dead. The books do not carry even close to the same authority that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John carry. They are not inspired, a false trail for anyone looking for truth. Jesus did not grow up in a vacuum.
He had friends, some of whom were just as disillusioned with Him as some people today are.
I don’t believe the Gospels record everything Jesus ever did, that isn’t possible and John tells us as much. But the Gnostic Gospels that are gaining popularity to not fill this gap.
The need disillusioned people sense is the same need the host of this wedding had. They need a friend who will look out for them and help them when they need help. Sadly, the church sometimes fails at this task. But if the church is functioning properly, it does not try to win friends for itself, but points toward the best friend a person could ever have, Jesus. The host of this wedding did not know his friend as well as he thought.
If the child Jesus had been going around raising his friends from the dead and creating birds out of clay, they would have known. I like to think I would know if one of you had a child doing this stuff. But Jesus didn’t do those things. John tells us that this is the first miracle. And it was a surprise.
Jesus was simply helping out his friend
When we were in Kenya, there was a large concrete building on the fringe of town. It had been built years ago as a gift to the town and a developmental project. It was a fish cannery. It was also in the desert at least three miles from a lake among a tribe whose ownership of automotive transportation consisted of the sandals they wore that were made of tire tread.
When the building was built, it was on the shore of the lake and fish could be delivered by boat. The lake receded, and now the building is empty, but not entirely useless. The building front is used as a market place for people selling baskets.
Whoever built that cannery did not do their geological research. If they had, they would have known the lake was receding and they would have thought of a way to make the project viable. It was a good idea; it was just not well planned. They were unprepared.
Some of Jesus’ parables show us the social stigma His culture put on being unprepared.
• Guests at a wedding who don’t have the right clothes are tossed out (Matthew 22)
• Wedding attendants who have no oil, must go buy some and miss the wedding entirely (Matthew 25)
• A man tries to build a tower or go to war but does not count the cost and comes up short, as a result, he becomes a laughing stock (Luke 14)
And Jesus is at a wedding where the host doesn’t have enough wine. It would have been a social faux pas he would never live down. Mary is concerned and employs Jesus’ help.
Jesus could have refused on the grounds that such an act did not have a place in His life purpose. He could have said that it did not fit in with His mission parameters. He was not in the ministry of rescuing weddings from social disaster. The people might even be better off without additional wine.
But Jesus is one of the guests. He knows the embarrassment his friend will face. He knows the talk that will degrade his reputation. He knows how the problem will taint the festivity of the occasion and draw attention away from the couple. His host would be embarrassed, the couple would be disappointed, the guests would be distracted. Jesus chose not to allow that.
• So he made some quick wine
• Not just any wine ... good stuff
• And lots of it
We could go into a lot of things about that, but I think the important point is that Jesus did it, and the main reason he did it was to help out his friend.
That help had major implications. It caught some people’s attention ... the attention of his friends and here is what John says about that:
... His disciples put their faith in him.
Some of you know I have recently begun a teaching position with Eastern’s School of Christian Ministry. My students are a great bunch and they treat me with respect.
Last time I spoke with a member of my family here is the way they talked about it:
"How is that teaching thing coming?"
They aren’t so impressed. They are family. They know me better than my students.
Jesus could have healed the sick and raised the dead and walked on water and all the other things He did, but that did not impress his family and friends:
• His neighbors refused to believe
• His family thought he was crazy
But ... do a favor for a friend of the family, and that might have an affect. That might win some points.
We know that it did not turn the head of Jesus’ brothers, but it did get the attention of the disciples. And they put their faith in Him that day.
What got your attention?
Most of you put your faith in Jesus. Some of you many decades ago. Some of you just a few years ago.
Something Got your attention.
Jesus is your friend and He has always wanted to get closer to you. He has always wanted to get your attention. At some point He did.
What was it?
In your prayers for this week, I would like you to focus a little on something important. What about Jesus has gotten your attention the most.
I don’t mean something impersonal and generic. I mean something close to your heart. What turns your head and makes you think:
I would follow Jesus because He is special to me.
I contend that many "Christians" would not be Christians if they had known Jesus personally. If they had walked with Him and talked with Him, they would not have followed Him.
• They would have thought Him rough around the edges
• They would have thought Him disrespectful to authority
• They would have thought He needed to get a job
• They would have thought He should use different methods
• They might have thought He showed poor judgement in friends and associates
If it wasn’t for the fact that Jesus loved them enough to die for them, regardless of their opinion of someone like Him personally ... they wouldn’t give Him a second thought.
It shouldn’t be like that. We should not love Jesus just for His ultimate sacrifice. We should love Him because He loved us.
He did. And He does. And He has made efforts to make that ultimate sacrifice personal to each of us. What did He do and what does He do to make it personal to you? How has he gotten your attention?
If I was to answer the question: What did my friend Jesus do to get my personal attention I would say:
• He changed the unhealthy and dangerous habits of my family
• He gave me life’s work ... His word ... that I can be engrossed in and passionate about
• He healed my sister’s deadly disease
• He formed the character and abilities of a wife who takes up some of my slack
These are very personal things to me. I am very thankful that He died for me, but He has gone to great lengths to prove His love for me in ways that are personal and would be less meaningful to anyone else. He works with you personally too.
What has He done?
What is He doing?
