If you’ve been in or around Christian culture for more than a few minutes, you’ve likely heard about the wedding in Cana. It was the moment when Jesus performed His first miracle[1] and debatably “began His public ministry,” securing its place in Top 10 Stories About Jesus. However, there’s a quiet and beautiful detail of this storyline we don’t often hear of in all the sermons about water turning to wine.
Let’s set the stage: it’s John chapter two. Jesus and His boys, His mom, and the servants of the event (let’s call them caterers) are at a wedding of two people (who go unnamed but may have been important). It’s estimated that Jesus was around thirty years old; Mary was present, but we don’t know where Joseph is. We haven’t heard about him since Jesus was twelve;[2] he may have died early in Jesus’ life, but regardless, he silently faded out of the story awhile ago. Interestingly, we were given very little about Jesus’ earthly father in Scripture. However, the text gives us a lot about His mother. So she’s at the wedding, and somehow figures out that there’s no more wine—a classic Middle Eastern mom. Like any good Israeli wedding guests, they want this problem fixed. What’s a party without wine?
Now, if living in the Middle East has taught me anything, it’s that hospitality was a way bigger value in Jesus’ culture than it ever has been for most Westerners. Middle Easterners know how to lavish their guests, and it’s actually very shameful to not be able to provide for those you’re hosting. Whoever was hosting this wedding would’ve been strapped in a predicament that no Middle Easterner wants to find themselves in. When Mary realized there wasn’t enough for the guests, she didn’t go to her son casually gossiping, “What an embarrassment, they’re out of wine.” She intentionally sought out the one Person there that day who would’ve been able to save them from their shame.
Interestingly, Jesus responds to her by saying, “What does that have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”[3] Jesus was simply a guest at this party. It wasn’t His job to provide for everyone—but “even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and give His life as a ransom for many.”[4] The “hour” He refers to is most likely this moment when He will give His life as a ransom for many—and He was right, it wasn’t quite that time yet.
What happens next is fascinating: Mary ignores her Son’s statement and, unfazed, immediately turns to the caterers and says, “Do whatever He tells you.”[5]
In this moment, Mary was not only a follower of the Messiah, she was His mother. I have to laugh thinking about the slightly sassy confidence she may have had looking at her Son, thinking “You may be the Savior of the world, but I’m still Your mom.” When Jesus says to Mary that the lack of wine has nothing to do with Him, she doesn’t skip a beat. She already knew He would turn water to wine, and instructed the servants accordingly. Why this confidence? It almost seems that Jesus Himself didn’t even know what He was about to do! But Mary was certain, and I want to examine where this kind of certainty could have come from.
Mary had an astonishingly beautiful and unique role in the coming of the Messiah that no other human being will ever have: physically delivering Him into the world. She was the only person who knew Jesus in this way from the time of His conception, literally carrying Him in her very body. Anyone who’s heard a mother speak about carrying her child has probably heard her try to explain the intimacy with the child she has that can’t quite be compared to any other relationship. It’s wild that all of us begin inside of a woman, including Jesus. I’ve always heard people joke about how mothers have a sixth sense when it comes to their children—no one knows how, but they just know things they weren’t told out of pure intuition. I even once heard an atheist say that his only experience with “the supernatural” was the freakish sense of intuition his mother had to know things about him without anyone telling her, no matter how far he was away from her. I believe this close connection that mothers often have to their children is designed by God. It’s not a human superpower, it’s a mark of the Divine. We sometimes forget about Jesus’ humanness, but He was physically dependent on Mary as a child—His very life sustained by her body. I believe it’s possible that Mary knew Jesus better than any other human to have lived.
Before Jesus was even conceived in her womb, the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her who Yeshua would be. No one else experienced this significant moment of history, when the Father first sent a message to the one He chose to carry His Word Incarnate. This powerful encounter would’ve been burned into her being, carrying her through the shaming days of pregnancy out of wedlock, being misunderstood and judged, a brutal labor and delivery process, watching her own Child be crucified, and so many other unique and nuanced hardships. When the Holy Spirit conceived Jesus, Mary knew Who was in her womb. She nursed Him, rocked Him to sleep, held Him when He cried. When she watched Jesus grow up, every hour of every day, her eyes were literally on the Messiah.
Scripture says that while Mary raised Jesus, she “treasured up all these things in her heart.”[6]
Fast-forward to when the King of the World was in His thirties, and He gets invited to a wedding. Having never performed a miracle before, the majority of people may not have known who He was yet. An issue of shame is brought to Him by this mother who has known Him since before He could speak. She knows that He is the Messiah, and somehow plays the role of both His worshipper and His parent. (Try working that out practically.) When He looks at her and asks what it has to do with Him, thirty years of memories must have come flooding back to her. I imagine her recalling the moment when she, as a young, unmarried girl, was suddenly met by an angel of the Lord and told she would carry the One who would save the whole world. I imagine the passion and love rushing through her veins as she thought about not only how precious her Child was to her, but how precious her Savior was to her. Not only how precious He was to her, but how precious He was to the world. And in that moment, I believe she knew something special that gave her this kind of assurance: His destiny. Imagine the confidence she would have had in His calling, having heard it straight from the Lord. Parents have a special sense of who their child is called to be, and they seldom let go of that. In this moment, Mary knew that her Son was about to perform a miracle because she had been storing up knowledge of the Messiah for thirty years.
How do you know and have confidence in what God is about to do even when everyone is panicking? How do you command the circumstances around you to come into alignment with His will before He even intervenes? How do trust that He will save you when doom is closing in and you need a miracle?
You watch Him, and you store up the treasures of who He is in your heart.
After years of watching Him, listening to Him, and learning His character and nature, we become familiar with His ways. When we treasure who He is in our hearts, we are not easily shaken by the problems in front of us. Then, when it comes time for there to be a storm that could swallow us up in shame, we instead turn to each other and lovingly remind one another, “do what He tells you to do.” And if we obey and bring Him our empty jars, He will turn water to the best wine we’ve ever tasted.
Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And He said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But You have kept the good wine until now.’ This, the first of His signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested His glory. And His disciples believed in Him.
Autumn Crew is the Managing Editor of FAI Publishing. She lives in the Middle East and serves a number of disciple-making initiatives. She can be reached at autumncrew@faimission.org.
[1] John 2:11
[2] Luke 2
[3] John 2:4
[4] Matthew 20:28
[5] John 2:5
[6] Luke 2:19
[7] John 2:6-11