PAMELA Nobbs, of Churches Together in Hexham, reflects on John 2 vs1-11.

THIS week we have the account of Jesus’ first recorded miracle and the context for this event was a wedding at Cana in Galilee.

Weddings then, as in many parts of the world today, spanned several days of celebration – with much eating and drinking! Hospitality lies at the heart of Middle Eastern culture, as much today as it did then, so it was a major faux pas to run out of wine.

Jesus’ mother, Mary, realises that the wine is running out and shares this problem with her son. The way Jesus answers her might seem somewhat terse, saying that ‘his time has not yet come’. Possibly Jesus was not quite ready to ‘go public’ with his miracles. However, Mary simply tells the servants to do whatever Jesus says.

He instructs them to fill six ceremonial water jars (20-30 gallons each) with water. When the servants draw from them they then find high quality wine.

Jesus’ miracles demonstrate God’s power over all the elements of our world. We are not talking about cheap magic tricks but a God, who through Jesus, was putting right things that had gone wrong, a sort of re-creation. His miracles involved healing the sick and/or demonstrated his power over the natural world – such as storms.

In this miracle we also learn about the humanity of Jesus Christ: someone who could socialise, enjoy a good party and empathise with the social disaster that running out of wine could have spelled. But the lasting effect of this, as other miracles, is the building of faith in his followers who ‘believed in him’.