John's gospel is replete with symbolism to the extent that, sometimes, I think we get so busy interpreting the 'symbols' that we forget the basics of the stories.
Last night I was reading the story of the Wedding at Cana in John’s Gospel:
On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
“Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”
His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.
Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”
They did so, 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 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.”
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. John 2:1-11
Leaving aside, at least for now, all the ‘stuff’ - about the symbolism of the wine and the links to the last supper, the significance of the number of jars, and so on, let’s just treat it as something John saw, or was told about, examine a few of the details, and see what they tell us about the character of Jesus.
The stone water jars, used for ceremonial washing… Cana was a village which was home to families of priests (probably amongst other people) - the presence of the jars in the house where the wedding was taking place probably signifies that the family were priests, and very concerned about ritual cleanliness. Stone was used, because, unlike pottery, it could be made ritually clean after it had been ‘defiled' - so the jars could be reused (unlike jars made from pottery). They were big - quite a number have been found by archaeologists in different places in Israel, and they seem to have held somewhere between 90 and 120 litres. Just one holds a lot of wine: if you think in today's terms, a bottle of wine holds 750ml - so one jar is equivalent to between, say, 120 and 160 bottles of wine - say 150 for a nice round number. Therefore six jars is equivalent to 900 bottles of wine. That’s a huge quantity at the best of times. And it’s not just any old wine - no - Jesus isn’t providing cheap plonk; this is the really good stuff. And yet the guests have already had plenty to drink!
What this says to me is that God is generous, no, profligate, with his blessings. Jesus says:
I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10
This story isn’t about ‘pie in the sky when you die’ - in fact, the idea of an ‘afterlife’ wasn’t really thought about much, if at all, in Jesus’ day - this full and abundant life was for living now. And that’s what the story is about - it's about God’s abundant, generous, profligate, blessing, now.
This is my experience of life with God. It’s not the so-called ‘prosperity gospel’ - which is based, erroneously, upon Luke 6:38:
Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Not least because this isn’t about me giving anything to anyone and expecting God to repay me generously - this is simply God being characteristically generous with his blessings. And, given that God is love, I believe he wants to bless all of us with such spontaneous, stupendous, generosity… If only we would let him! Stingy he definitely isn’t. You might even say that he’s embarrassingly generous…
His gifts are of the sort that make you think ‘No, he can’t - he can’t possibly…’ We - I - all of us - struggle with that sort of extravagant gesture. We feel as though we don’t deserve it - or, if we do think we deserve it, we feign a sort of false modesty, instead of just accepting, with good grace, such a bounteous outpouring of affection toward us.
Perhaps it’s that feeling of unworthiness which causes us to reject God’s generosity, in whatever form it’s offered, or try to deny that it’s true, or belittle it, or say that it’s only for a few specially chosen people. But, actually, God wants to bless the world… All of it. We just have to be willing to 'hold out our hands’ and receive it… And not let ‘naysayers’ try to tell us we can’t have it, or it’s not for now.