The Miracle of Jesus turning water into wine: Why John Concentrated on this story and yet Mark Ignored it.

By Moses Muwulya

 According to Tkach (n.d), the words and the actions that John proclaim in this story are not for the sake of advising future banquet organizers to always have enough wine nor they are merely showing that Jesus makes good wine, but he contends John proclaimed these words for their symbolic significance. These words, as Dei (2011) attests, carry Christological depth when explored.  With these assertions, I wish to account for John’s concentration on the story that Mark ignored by looking at the symbolic meaning of the words in the story of Jesus’ miracle turning water into wine. 

 

To start with are the very words that start the story, that is, “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee” The Bible has many instances that refer to events occurring on the third day with the most notable being the resurrection of Christ to life on the third day. According to Opeus Dei (2011), in the Old Testament, the third day is the time for theophany (Ex 19:16-18), which means that at the same time, what is in in this story is prefiguring of history's final and deci­sive theophany which is the resurrection of Christ on the third day, when God's former encounters with man become his defini­tive irruption upon earth, when the earth is torn open once and for all and drawn into God's own life. What John is hint­ing at here, then, is that at Cana, God first reveals himself in a way that carries forward the events of the Old Testament, all of which have the character of a promise and are now straining toward their definitive fulfillment.

 

For Ponder (2018), John’s deliberate mention of the day (third day) and the event (wedding) of  Jesus’ first miracle might point to Christ’s first miracle as an anticipation of the third day of the resurrection (Luke 24:46), the guarantee of that day when the ultimate wedding of Christ to His bride is consummated with His return (Revelation. 21:1–5). On that day, we will sing with the angels, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb!” (Revelation. 19:9). We will drink the fruit of the vine together with Jesus (Mathew 26:29). And we will discover that this wine, like the joy of the redeemed, will never run out (Pslams. 16:11).

 

On the other hand, Tkach (n.d) notes that the word ‘wedding’ is so powerful because on the wedding, a covenant between the bride and the groom is made. These two words carry huge Christological depths since the bride is equivalent to the church while the groom is comparable to Christ. Thus, Christ was to reveal himself through this first sign to the servants on the wedding. My conviction is that these assertions of from Opus and Tkach justify why this passage was important to John whose intention was to reveal Jesus as Christ in his gospel.

 

Another word is When Mary said,” they have no wine” in verse 3, it symbolized the fact that the Jews had no spiritual meaning left in their ceremonies and Jesus had bring something new and something better. For Donis (2015), the wine running out alludes to the animal sacrifices coming to an end and the new wine that Jesus made portrays the new covenant that the Church partakes in through the sacrifice of Christ. The inadequacy of wine symbolically meant that their rituals of cleaning with water was inadequate that to purify them a reason Jesus told them to fill the jars which carried this water with wine which represents his blood which was sufficient enough to purify them from their sins. It also meant that the water was the law that was withdrawn for its inadequacy and replaced with wine which is the grace that was adequate. This assertion also reveals the Christology of Jesus and could be another reason why John concentrated on this passage.

 The words in the response that Jesus gave Mary, that is “Why do you involve me?” “My time has not yet come.” (v. 4) And yet, even though it was not yet time, Jesus did something. John signals here that what Jesus is doing is somehow ahead of its time. The messianic banquet is not yet here, and yet Jesus did something. The messianic age was beginning, long before it would arrive in its fullness.

“The other word is wording, the six stone jars” According to Ponder (2018), these details are not for nothing. John would said jars alone but described the nature of the jars saying “stone jars” by describing the jar being stone jars, Ponder  explains that  Jesus’ miracle involves bringing forth wine from rock which he believes reveals Christ to be the true and better Moses, because  Moses brought forth only water from the rock (Exodus. 17:6; Numbers. 20:8) and this keeps the pattern with what John has already told revealed.  The water of the law was given through Moses, but the wine of grace came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17).

Lastly, are the words the master of the ceremony servant told the bride that he has even brough better wine than the one he served first also carries great means according Dei (n.d), wine of the old covenant was good, but the wine of the new is better. The old covenant, which Jews follow, is exhausted by its letter; the new covenant, which belongs to us, has the savor of life and is filled with grace.  This means it is a better one as compared to the previous one.

It is not the quality of wine that Jesus made contains Christological message but the quantity also alludes to a very important message as to why Jesus came and the nature of God who is a God of abundancy. The six stone jars holding 20 to 30 gallons which is 120 to 180 gallons of wine meant Jesus made wine in abundancy which also carries theological meaning that God desires to pour out His grace even more abundantly and this also brings out what Jesus said in John 10:10 that He came that the Church gets life and have it in abundance. Other accounts of why John concentrated on this story that are not pegged on the meaning of the words that John used in the miracle include the following.

 

According to Huntsman (n.d) the story of the miracle at Cana where Jesus turned water into wine carries the symbolic allusion to Jesus’s divine conception and miraculous birth. He contends that in one of only two scenes in John’s Gospel in which Jesus’s mother is present, water becomes wine, perhaps indicating that the Divine Word became the man Jesus through the intermediate agent of Mary just as water become wine with Mary being the agent as it was Mary who sent the servants to Jesus for help. This could also ground on the school thought that John had to concentrate on this passage because it was rich in portraying Jesus’ Christology in this sense.

 

According to Vickie Kraft (2013) the story shows that God on earth began His presence at a wedding, which Huntsman (n.d) also attests to when he contends that “Jesus’s incarnation was perhaps symbolized by the miracle at Cana”. When (Mukeshimana 2023) notes that the main person in John’s Gospel is the incarnate God, not the King, then this also gives and account of why John concentrated on this story and Mark ignored it as his intention was not on the incarnate God.

John purposed to show Jesus as a Saviour but not a King, and in this story, we see Jesus saving the groom from the disgrace of running shirt of wine.  According to Kraft, lavish hospitality in the east was a sacred duty thus the shortage of wine without regard to what it stemmed from, meant they were to face not just an embarrassment but rather a disgrace that was never to be forgotten. So, for Jesus to intervene means He saved them from the disgrace that the story now depicts Jesus as a Saviour. Spiritually, sin disgraces mankind (Judges 16:4-21 and Proverbs 14:34) and thus this escaped disgrace at the wedding may symbolically refer to the disgrace that Jesus did save us from such disgraces through His blood which is here represented as wine. Since John aimed at showing Jesus as a Saviour, he could not ignore this story as it brought this very well.

In conclusion, with such Christological and spiritual revelations hidden in this story, I think it was justifiable enough for John to concentrate on this story as it helped him richly bring out his purpose for writing the gospel which is show Jesus as Incarnate God, Jesus as a Saviour not a King, and the divinity of Jesus. In the various accounts, these elements have been revealed.