John 2:1-11 describes for us the first miracle (or sign) that John includes from Jesus’s ministry. John seems to have carefully chosen what stories (and what signs) he would include in his account of the life of the Savior. After all, in chapter 20 John tells us that “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31, ESV).
John chose his stories for a reason. He considered these to be important to help people understand who Jesus was and what he was here to do, and to inspire belief and devotion to him. So it’s a bit disappointing, I think, that this text seems to receive rather limited attention. I believe I can say without much doubt—at least in my personal experience—that this sign is the least discussed of any in John, and quite possibly less frequently discussed than quite a few other miracles that are described in other gospels.
If we stop and think for a moment, perhaps that should surprise us: after all, not only is this one of only a few that John chooses to include at all, it seems to be the very first public miracle that Jesus performs. Unless we think of Jesus as some apprentice miracle-worker, who began with simple projects and worked his way up to more impressive acts of power, we might do well to ask why he chose this—of all signs he could have chosen—this to begin his public ministry.
I suspect, though I haven’t conducted any scientific research to verify this hypothesis, that part of the reason we let Cana fade into the background is a level of discomfort with its content. Perhaps because of the tendency in Restoration circles to teach total abstention from alcohol, we feel a little uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus not only drinking wine, but producing it and giving it to people who are already drunk. So, even when Cana is discussed, the conversation often includes excursions to discuss the alcohol concentration of Palestinian wine or to present the possibility that what Jesus created was not alcoholic at all (despite the reaction of the feast master at Cana suggesting that not only does Jesus know how to make real wine, he knows how to make really good wine).
There is a value and a weight to this sign that we must not overlook. To do that, and to lend our discussion some sort of structure, we’re going to consider three levels of interpretation to this story. We’ll begin with a superficial reading, with the most straightforward applications we might take from the story, and then dive a little deeper into what I hope will be more helpful meaning.
Level 1: Incidental Provision
On a quick reading, this story seems almost to be an example of an incidental miracle. There happens to be a wedding, they happen to run out of wine, and Jesus happens to be there. Knowing who he is, his mother comes to him to save the day. Despite some initial reluctance, Mary pushes the request and Jesus gives in.
We might consider the cultural context and the importance placed on hospitality, to the point that it would be enormously embarrassing for the host of a feast like this to run out of wine. This wasn’t just a minor hiccup, but a desperate need.
We could take several lessons from this reading of the story:
The story represents some core truths about Jesus’s ministry, that he helps those who come to him with needs. On a greater level, he comes to fill what is lacking, to meet what is needed by mankind. And what he brings, the feast master suggests, is even better than what they had before.
Perhaps we read this story as an example of Jesus’s humble submission to the request of his mother. He is respectful and obedient—and truly, we should avoid the temptation of reading his response of “woman” as something hostile or disrespectful. No, that is just how Jesus talks. See the scene at the cross, where he lovingly instructs a disciple to take in and care for Mary as his own mother. “Woman, behold your son.”
Perhaps—an interpretation that I have seen, though it is not mine—this story shows us an example of God’s grace, that he is willing to meet a need when it presents itself even though it doesn’t fit his previous plan. Even though it wasn’t the right time, Jesus seems to say, he graciously changes his plans and begins his visible ministry in order to help those who are in need at Cana.
And with that tidy outline and 3 applications to carry with us, we move right along to the more interesting and comfortable tale about Jesus punishing those who turn the temple into a place of business. That story fits right into our ecclesiastical comfort zones. However, I think there’s more to Cana than that.
Level 2: Signpost of the Messianic Age
Is this miracle really an example of reluctant provision? Is it really happenstance that Jesus is here, at this moment, and reluctantly allows his mother to pressure him into starting his visible earthly ministry ahead of schedule? In other words, does the God-Man who knows the hearts of men (2:23-25) really go to this wedding unaware of what will happen here and what will be asked of him? Of course not, and it is foolish to limit ourselves to an understanding of this narrative that might lead us in that direction of thought. This is no accidental first miracle, but a carefully chosen one.
Perhaps another question to ask: do we treat this story as though John tossed it into his narrative? Is it just an awkward speed bump as we head from chapter 1’s familiar language toward the theological wonder that is chapter 3? We just have to get through chapter 2, and then we’ll be back in comfortable territory. No, John is purposeful about what he places in his gospel. This sign was carefully chosen and placed. We’ll notice this if we pay heed to the themes that John has already been putting forward.
John has been emphasizing Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecy. He is the Messiah, the one of whom the law and prophets spoke (1:41, 45). He is the promised king, the promised suffering servant, and the prophesied connection between heaven and earth.
John has emphasized Jesus as one who provides something that is greater than what came before him. He brings the fullness of grace and truth (1:17-18). He brings a baptism not just of water, but of the Holy Spirit (1:26, 33).
Both these themes continue as points of emphasis in this narrative. It fits in thematically, which we’ll see, and even in its specific location: at the end of chapter 1, Jesus referenced back to the story of Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28. When we go back and read that story, we might notice that the dream story also leads directly into a story about a wedding (well, two weddings) and even includes details about drinking something that comes out of stone. I doubt that is an accident. Instead, that narrative connection should focus us as we read the Cana narrative. It should force us to ask, how does this fit in? What purpose does it play in Jesus’s ministry, and what does it reveal about him?
Like everything else, this story must be read with the knowledge of what came before it. Specifically, we should be thinking about the important motifs of wine and weddings in the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. Let’s take a quick trip to get a taste of this wine.
In Deuteronomy 28, abundance of wine and oil is connected to blessings and curses of the Law.
In Isaiah 1:6, 22, the spiritual state of the people is connected to their physical state, as promised in the Law: oil is unavailable, and their wine is mixed with water.
Isaiah 24 presents a picture of broad judgment, with earth under a curse, and an emphasis on lack (24:6, 7, 9, 11).
Isaiah 25 contrasts 24 with a beautiful picture of God’s salvation: a rich feast with good food and well-aged wine. The image here is combined with victory over death.
Jer. 31 presents a great prophecy of restoration after exile and the promise of a future new covenant. It describes the bounty of the land being restored and people rejoicing over the abundance of grain, oil, and wine (Deuteronomy language).
In Joel 2-3 the Messianic restoration is described in similar terms: abundant grain, wine and oil; vines giving full yield and wine vats overflowing; chapter 3 uses “sweet wine” as a marker of this age, saying “so you shall know that I am the LORD your God who dwells in Zion.”
Additionally, the wedding motif appears in multiple Messianic prophecies. See two for example:
Here, God through Hosea tells his unfaithful people that there will come a day when he once again betrotheds them to himself, this time in steadfast love, mercy, and faithfulness.
In a prophecy that Jesus explicitly connects himself (Luke 4), Isaiah describes God removing his people’s shame and clothing them in garments of salvation and righteousness, like a bride is adorned with jewels. In 62:4-5, Isaiah says that Israel’s name would be “My delight is in her” and her land called “Married,” for “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”
So, what does this context mean for our understanding of the wedding and wine at Cana in John 2? Well, the fundamental issue at the wedding is a lack of wine. And Jesus, who just happens (hah!) to be at the scene, provides an abundance of wine. 6 stone water jars that all together would make something like a full bathtub’s worth of wine. He makes oodles, more than they needed. And it was good wine.
Let’s beware of diving into hermeneutical gymnastics in order to twist the description of “good wine” into non-fermented/non-alcoholic wine. Not only does that make little sense in light of the feast master’s words in John 2, but it also ignores the prophetic background of this story. Remember Isaiah 25 and Joel 3, where the Messianic age is marked by an abundance of “sweet” and “well-aged” wine. When the feast master calls it “good” wine in John 2, he isn’t calling it “non-alcoholic.” Let’s be careful not to twist the meaning of scripture to make ourselves more comfortable. Part of the marvel of this miracle, in fact, is that Jesus not only produces grape juice from out of nowhere, he produces something old. This wine was aged from before the foundation of the world (cf. Eph. 1:4).
For those who are paying attention, then, Jesus provides a clear marker/signpost of the fact that he is ushering in the Messianic age. Like Joel 3, he has brought the sweet wine by which the people should know that the LORD their God is dwelling among them. Jesus is here to supply their needs, to restore what has been lacking, and to remove the curse.
Jesus also takes the role of the bridegroom in this story. Did you notice? It was the bridegroom’s responsibility to provide the wine; he is the one who has failed. Jesus steps in and provides the wine, effectively taking on that responsibility, though neither the bridegroom nor the feast master know who it is that really provided the wine.
Finally, we can see the theme of better things coming through Christ showing up in this narrative — I think in two ways. The more obvious suggestion is through the words of the feast master. He tastes the wine and praises the bridegroom for bringing out better wine than they had tasted before, unlike most people would have done.
It’s also interesting, though, that John chooses to mention what type of water Jesus turned into wine. It was water used for Jewish purification rituals. It was cleansing water. And if we think about that, it might remind us of the contrast already drawn in chapter 1 between the kind of ritual cleansing by water that John the Baptist was carrying out, but even he said that something greater was yet to come: he baptized with water, but a baptism of the Spirit was coming through Christ. Jesus brings—no, Jesus supplies—something better than water.
Those connections lend this story even greater power as we understand that it is not randomly chosen or randomly placed, but it is a powerful marker reflecting, for those who are paying attention, who Jesus is and what he has come to do. But we must go one step further, for the swirling cup of prophetic Messianic wine has a more complex color than we might notice at first.
Level 3: A Foretaste of Blood
The wine imagery in those prophecies is not always comforting, but sometimes frightening. Many of them use wine to describe violence and blood, just simply abundance and joy. Wine is not just an image of Messianic restoration, but also of Messianic judgment—sometimes within the very same prophecy! For example:
In Joel 2, the wine vats overflow, continuing the imagery of wine associated with joy and restoration; in Joel 3, however, the image shifts. There another mention of vats overflowing, but this time it is with blood! God is treading out judgment on the wicked in a winepress, an image which itself becomes important in prophecies of coming judgment. In Jeremiah 25, God’s wrath is depicted as a cup of wine that the nations are forced to drink and become drunk.
In Ezekiel 39, we find an incredibly important prophecy where the images of joy and judgment are mixed together in a grotesque picture. God speaks to the “son of man” (as Ezekiel is consistently called in that book, and a title which Jesus has already connected with himself in John 1), telling him to summon all the birds and beasts of the earth to a sacrificial feast that he is preparing for them. This sacrificial feast, though, is one of flesh and blood. They will be satisfied by the flesh and become drunk on the blood.
In the prophets, the concept of restoration is tied to the removal of sin. Salvation is inseparable from violence. Israel is restored after their sin has been punished. They are brought back from exile by way of God’s judgment on the nations that took them captive. As part of that picture, wine is an image of blessing and joy and restoration, but it is also (sometimes simultaneously) an image of judgment, violence, and wrath; because even as God’s people enjoy restoration and atonement and freedom from captivity, God reminds them that those things are impossible without the shedding of blood.
There’s one more prophecy I want you to think about with me a little more carefully, and it comes to us in Isaiah 63. Let’s set the stage, because this chapter doesn’t just appear in isolation any more than the wedding at Cana does.
In Isaiah 59, God sees the sin of his people and determines to bring about salvation by “his own arm” (59:16). He describes a Redeemer who will come to Zion and to those who turn away from sin (59:20). In the next few chapters, God describes the restoration of his people and the blessings that he will bring through the Redeemer.
We already mentioned in Isaiah 61 and 62 the Messianic imagery: God’s servant Redeemer has come with the Spirit of the Lord upon him to proclaim liberty to the captives. He will remove their shame and clothe them in garments of salvation that they may be married again to their God. But even in the midst of this prophecy of hope, there remains a hint of darkness: see 61:2, where the year of the Lord’s favor is also a day of vengeance. How can those contrasting concepts coincide?
In the second half of Isaiah 62, after God has told them what is going to happen, that his redeemer is coming to this marriage feast, he instructs them to set up watchmen (62:6) and prepare the way (62:10). We have this image in our minds of watchmen anticipating and preparing the way for Israel’s redeeming husband at the end of Isaiah 62.
Then, Isaiah 63 begins with the sight of someone coming. Initially, from afar off, his appearance is beautiful. He appears to wear these royal, crimson garments, splendid in his apparel (63:1). As he gets closer, though, the picture changes drastically from what we might be expecting. His garments are not dyed crimson like those of a king, nor are they what you might expect a bridegroom to wear to his wedding. Instead, they are stained: they are stained red like someone who has been treading out grapes in a winepress. And the Redeeming Husband responds: yes, I have tread in a winepress. There was no one with me, no one to help me carry out justice, so I went into the winepress alone and trampled the sinful until their blood (lit. “juice”) spattered my garments and stained all my clothes.
It is a shocking turn of imagery, as Isaiah quickly turns from messages of hope and comfort and beautiful clothes of salvation to this violent image of a Redeemer wearing a robe dipped in blood.
This is an example of prophecy in the OT where there is a more immediate fulfillment in God’s judgment upon the nations who have oppressed his physical nation, but there is clearly a greater fulfillment to be seen in Jesus Christ.
We could connect the red garments of the Redeemer in Isaiah 63 to the description of Jesus Christ in Revelation 19:13 wearing a robe splattered with blood.
We could see the similarity of language between chapter 63 and the description of the suffering servant in 53, who is smitten and crushed and trampled and poured out for the sins of many.
We should connect 63:4 with 61:2. Who is it in chapter 61 that ushers in this year of the Lord’s favor and the day of his vengeance? It is the bloodied Redeemer.
It is into this seemingly paradoxical mess of prophecy that the Word become Flesh descends: this grotesque picture where blood is mixed with wine, where violence is inseparable from salvation, and where his filthiness is placed alongside the redemption of his bride.
He is the wine-maker. He is the source of our salvation; but, as before, this salvation will not take the form we might expect. When Jesus’s hour comes and his glory is made manifest, it will be as he is trampled in the Press of Gethsemane and crushed on the hill of Golgotha. The paradox continues, as God is both presser and pressed, crusher and crushed. The Creator becomes mortal flesh. The Shepherd becomes the sacrificial lamb. The Wine-Maker becomes the wine. He arrives at his own wedding feast with bloody garments, holes in hands and side. There was no one else to help, so he has trodden the winepress alone (Isa 63: 3, 5).
How is it that the mountains drip sweet wine? How is it that the vats overflow? From whence does the abundance of Messianic wine come? It comes from a winepress where God treads upon his own Son. As the cask of his flesh is broached, blood and water mingle together to create sweet wine aged since before the foundation of the world (cf. John 19:34).
At the end of John 1, Jesus suggested to his new disciples that he is what they were looking for and more. They will see greater things than they expect. They will see him become a bridge between heaven and earth.
Here in the Cana narrative, there are two phrases that John uses which point us forward to future events in Jesus’s ministry. First of all, Jesus says to his mother in verse 4: “My hour has not yet come.” In John, this phrase is not used to describe the beginning of his ministry, but the time of his arrest, trial, and death: the passion. Jesus’s glorification, too, the idea of the Son of Man being “glorified” is consistently used by John to describe the time and manner of his death. That language may be a reference back to Isaiah 52:13, where Isaiah is describing the Suffering Servant and the Septuagint reads: “He shall be lifted up and glorified exceedingly.” And both those phrases are used here in this story.
Jesus tells his mother that his hour has not yet come, not that he’s reluctant to begin his ministry but that the knowledge and understanding of this miracle must be contained because it’s true meaning has something to do with an hour that is not yet here.
And John says to us after the miracle is performed that Jesus “manifested his glory” and the disciples believed in him. This is the only one of Jesus’s miracles where John says that. Does that mean that none of his other miracles were manifestations of glory? No, but it reminds us that John has something specific in mind when he talks about the glorification of Christ. This miracle, in some limited way, gave his disciples a taste of what was to come. They didn’t understand it, they didn’t see the full picture, but Jesus showed them a glimpse of the glory that was to come. The glory of a crucified Christ and the blood that he provides.
Jesus supplies physical wine to meet a temporary physical need, but in so doing he prefigures a future hour of greater glory where he will supply greater wine from a greater vessel to meet a greater need. From the very beginning of his ministry, his eye was on the end. This Flesh was waiting to be pierced, that his blood might bring restoration and joy to countless sinners.
We observe a weekly memorial that involves flesh and blood, bread and wine. The Eucharist represents the spiritual truth that those passages were foretelling: that our redemption would come at the price of blood, the blood of the Suffering Servant, God in Flesh. And because of his sacrifice, we enjoy every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (Eph. 1:3). Through him we have cleansing, through him our need is supplied, through him we have joy and restoration, through him we are clothed with garments of salvation and become part of his beloved bride, the Church.
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