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On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. 3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." 4 And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come." 5 His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." - John 2:1-5 (ESV)
John 2 opens up about a month after Jesus' public ministry began in chapter one with His baptism by John. He has about half of His disciples now following Him. We find Him at a family wedding in Cana. Jewish tradition saw weddings lasting seven days, and running out of wine would be looked upon unfavorably for the hosts. When He says that His hour has not yet come, He is referring to His time of public miracles, which He knows will provoke resentment against Him from religious leaders that will lead to His crucifixion. Remember, God sees all time. I see a few lessons here in these early John 2 texts. The first is that the things that may seem common to us we can still submit to God. Sometimes, we act as if the more mundane things of life are somehow beneath God. Yet the bible shows time and again that He remains infinitely concerned about our lives. Even though His time for public miracles has yet to come, He still helps with the wine issue at this wedding. Now, what we ask needs to be aligned with God. Jesus is not a genie in a bottle doling out our wishes. The issue here is not wine per se but the condemnation that would befall the hosts if in the middle of the wedding week they ran out of wine. The second lesson here is we have to ask. Jesus was at the wedding. I am sure the fact that the wine was running out did not go unnoticed by Him. He is God after all. Still, He does nothing until Mary asks Him. James says that we do not have what we want because we fail to ask God for it and when we do, we do so with the wrong motives. This lesson from the wedding at Cana says that it is ok to ask God for things that are not exactly super-spiritual but still important to us and that He is faithful to answer us. The last lesson here is Mary's statement - do whatever He tells you. We should pray and ask in total ignorance for what God's solution might be for our problems. We usually come to God in prayer to petition not only for what we want, but how we want it done. Mary had a problem and she asked for Jesus to help. That's it. She did not prescribe how He should solve it. She did not read anything into it. She just instructed those around to do whatever He said. Why? Because she knew He could resolve the problem and that was all that mattered. This instruction is also relevant for us in our daily lives when it comes to His word. How much easier would our lives be if we just did whatever He tells us. I do not mean some esoteric still small voice theology that seeks to leverage what creeps into our deceitful hearts as God speaking to us but rather what we know He has already said in His word! God has already told us beloved so maybe we would be better served to actually do whatever He says. We continue in the text:
I want to continue here talking about do whatever He says because it is important to note that many today in the apostate church abuse scripture for their own ends. Finding loopholes or reasons to twist whatever He says is not the same thing as doing whatever He says. I have seen church leaders make cultural arguments to fundamentally change what the text simply says. I have seen them read into the text what they think the writer really meant, based upon coincidental or texts that have nothing to do with the issue at hand. I get it. Sometimes it is not easy to just "do whatever He says." He says to love our neighbor and our church leaders want to talk about hating immigrants based upon scripture fragments found in the law when God was setting up the boundaries for Israel. Galatians teaches us that if we yoke ourselves back to the law, any part of the law, then we render Christ useless, yet church leaders will cite Malachi as a pretense to demand tithing. Or they will present when Jesus said to the religious leaders that they should tithe and ignore the fact that this was before the resurrection, when tithing was still in effect and the law. Doing whatever He says is more than finding a verse snippet here or there that we think supports our warped theology. There is a wonderful section of scripture in Job that asks if we think we can deceive God as easily as we deceive man. Spoiler alert - we can't. Let me give you a concrete example from Romans 4:17
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