Whatever He Tells You

Whatever He Tells You January 20, 2019     2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - C
by Dcn. Bob Bonomi   

Did you ever wonder how Mary knew that Jesus could do something about the wine running out at the wedding?  While there isn’t anything in the Bible about it, I had a priest-friend tell me that there is an old story about how, when Jesus was young, He and Mary went to another wedding party, this time with St. Joseph. It also was a typical Jewish wedding with a lot of celebrating, and the next day Joseph woke up with a very bad headache. Mary asked him if he would like a glass of water.  Joseph replied, “Yes please, but don’t let the boy touch it.”

In any case, this is where in John’s Gospel we see the beginning of Jesus’ ministry – and the first of the seven “signs”, or miracles, that Jesus performed to reveal His divinity as the Christ.  The seven are:

1.    Changing water into wine at Cana in John 2:1-11
2.    Healing the royal official's son in Capernaum in John 4:46-54
3.    Healing the paralytic at Bethesda in John 5:1-15
4.    Feeding the 5000 in John 6:5-14
5.    Jesus walking on water in John 6:16-24
6.    Healing the man blind from birth in John 9:1-7
7.    The raising of Lazarus in John 11:1-45

I always wondered, why change water into wine as your first “miracle”? I mean, Jesus could have just as easily raised someone from the dead, like Lazarus, which would have really gotten people’s attention. This particular miracle of water into wine is also unique to the Gospel of John – you won’t find it mentioned anywhere else in the Gospels.

I would venture to guess that, as the bishops said in the introduction to the Gospel of John in the latest revision of the New American Bible, this first sign “symbolizes the entire creative and transforming work of Jesus.”

While John only emphasizing seven “signs” instead of the collection of miracles that other Gospel evangelists list, he used each one to help his community to understand a particular aspect of the divine nature of Jesus, and to set the stage for John’s version of the Passion of Jesus and his subsequent resurrection.  It is important to note that scholars figure that John’s Gospel was written in the 90’s and so his need to portray the many “whats” of Jesus’ ministry – the many healing and other miracles which would have been fairly well known by Christian followers by then – would be of less importance to the people than the “whys” which revealed Jesus’ glory.

Let’s look at this story a little closer.  It begins with Mary, Jesus and some of his friends being invited to this wedding in Cana.  It’s about 4 miles from Nazareth to Cana, so the wedding must have been fairly important to Mary to travel that far to attend the wedding.  It is also reasonable to assume that this would be a fairly large celebration,.  Mary might have even been related to the couple.

As for Jesus and his disciples, in John’s Gospel they have recently begun traveling together – the previous chapter ends with the calling of Andrew, Simon Peter, Philip and Nathanial. So, while John the Baptist has identified Jesus as the Lamb of God and the Son of God, these new disciples have yet to fully experience the divinity of Jesus.

It also doesn’t say how long the party has been going on, but according to ancient Jewish wedding customs, a wedding celebration usually lasted for several days, so the fact that they ran out of wine isn’t necessarily surprising.

But we see some important symbolism in the conversion of water to wine.

•    Wine was significant to Jews – we see that wine was meant to “gladden men’s hearts” as in the Psalms (104), and Sirach (40:20)
•    Weddings were communal events meant for celebration
•    Wine production was a major industry for the Jewish people – blessings from God often were referred to as coming as wine.
•    At the Last Supper, Jesus uses wine to signify His Blood
Jesus’ creation of wine would have been seen by the Jews as a sign of the generosity of God and the amount would indicate the abundance of that gift.

Next in the story is Mary’s comment to the servers:  "Do whatever He tells you... "  The key points for this include:

•    Mary must have an understanding of what Jesus is capable of.
•    Her intercession on behalf of the wedding party without being asked is also a sign of her motherly concern for those around her. We recognize the same thing in her today, when we ask her for her intercession on our behalf.
•    Mary’s comment is to us just as it was to the servers – if you want to be a disciple of Jesus and serve at the banquet table where He is present, you must do whatever He tells you.

And what is he telling us to do?  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that he has come to fulfill the law, and then warns his followers with:

“Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 

And then he tells us what to do with “But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” and “Do to others as you would have them do to you” – the theme of the diocesan “Be Golden” campaign.

We receive many conflicting messages from our society today.  Some are good; many are not.  It is not easy to determine which are which. 

We have to ask ourselves two questions:
- What is it that the world is saying to us?
- What is Jesus saying to us?

If we will just look to Jesus’ words in the Gospels, we can learn what it is that he is saying to us, today: Love God and love our neighbor.  Our challenge: Do we have the faith and the courage to do whatever Jesus is telling us to do?