Decoding religious text into modernity and common sense.
I left my belief in a traditional God behind at 16 or 17 years old. Back then, I couldn’t really articulate why. Today, I still attend mass regularly at a Catholic Church with family in what I feel is devotion or respect to them (not Catholicism or any fealty to God or Jesus). I constantly reflect on and uncover my own understanding of that decision and its consequences.
I’ve chosen to start the first reflection on this blog with a pretty well-known story from the Bible. Jesus turning water into wine. Something we know through science, chemically, is not actually possible. Yet for over two thousand years, people of faith and without faith have come to accept that it was, in fact, a miracle.
Bible text from John 2:1-11
1 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there,
2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.
3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”
5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.
8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”They did so,
9 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
10 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.”
11 What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
My interpretation:
There was a wedding reception, and Jesus, his friends and his mother were invited to attend. The party was great, but eventually, the wine was running out. Jesus’ mother, Mary, definitely noticed because she loved wine. She really loved wine. She complained to Jesus, “they have no more wine.”
Jesus, who didn’t like or respect his mother very much, replied with, “Woman, why do you involve me? My time has not yet come.” Jesus thinks highly of himself at this time. He can’t possibly waste his talents or time on somehow procuring more wine for this wedding reception. Mary wants desperately to be accepted and loved by her child.
Mary, knowing her son very well, devises a plan and tells the servants, “do whatever he tells you.”
Six very fancy stone water jars are nearby, which couldn’t ever possibly hold just water, and Mary picks them as the centerpieces of her plan. She tells her son to order the servants to fill them with water. Mary suggests a solution to the party’s deficit while also appealing to her son’s intellect. Jesus, amused, plays along. There are some very fundamental questions to be asked at this point, however:
Why would Jesus order the servants? Why would they listen? One could assume Jesus was humoring his mother out of boredom or annoyance, or that he did have some infatuation with perceived power such that ordering servants to do anything at all would be very amusing. Maybe he simply believed it himself. Though—and maybe most human of all—he just wanted to have some fun. Or…maybe it was a way to connect to his mother on some imperceptible level.
Jesus tells the servants to fill the jars with water and they listen, because servants will do that when an outsider promising change comes in and says that it’s your best shot. Your only chance. This is what you were meant to do. He tells them to draw some water out and take it to the master of the banquet.
The master of the banquet, beside himself with worry that he has no more wine to fulfill the needs of the party, tastes the supposed “wine” he was just offered. It’s not wine at all. It’s water. He’s very confused. He wonders who would even try such a thing? The servants knew. They knew because they believed, and the master of the banquet saw the belief in their eyes. That’s when it clicked.
Armed with plenty of this new “wine,” the master of the banquet goes to the groom and delivers the final part of the happenstance scheme: “we give them the rest of the real wine and then we bring out the fake wine when they’re too drunk to notice. We will tell them that it is actually the best wine, saved for last. They will believe it just as the servants believe it, for the rich are too drunk to notice and the poor are too servile to care.”
The story grows from here. Word of mouth echoes that Jesus performed a miracle, when it was actually just an inconvenience among the rich and a desperate need for the poor to feel something. A scheme born not of pure intelligence or even illicit intent, but of a motherly desire to be more connected with her child in a way that he would appreciate.
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