Can you imagine what it would be like to attend
a party where Jesus was an invited guest? If you saw him from across the room
would you think that He would be someone you would enjoy having a conversation with?
It is amazing to think about, what is even more amazing is that Jesus did
attend parties, in fact it was at a party that He chose to begin his ministry.
Who begins their ministry at a party? Think about it, if you or I were to launch a national ministry
with the goal of changing the world is a party the most effective forum? Why
not a church or synagogue or mosque, venues where people are actually thinking
about religion, or why not a college or university where the ideas and
philosophies of the day are debated and discussed, or perhaps the halls of
congress, the White House, or Supreme Court, or other government institutions,
where the direction of countries are forged. But a party is exactly where Jesus
chose to launch his ministry, but then again this was a King who was born in a
barn, so it is at least consistent with the way Jesus conducts His business.
Consider further that this was a party where no
one, with the exception of His mother and disciples, really knew who Jesus was;
to the majority attending the party, He was just another guest, another face in
the crowd. Jesus would have remained anonymous had it not been for a party
planning disaster. The wine ran dry. As anyone with any party going experience
knows a party with out wine is just another meeting. In the midst of this
crisis Jesus is confronted by his mother, which must have been slightly
awkward. Imagine; you’re there with your disciples, you are getting ready to
launch your national ministry, you are God, and your mother starts in on you
about something that isn’t even your problem, and before you can even respond
she turns to the waiters and says do whatever He tells you. Well at this point,
you’ve got to come up with something, you are the Messiah after all, and what
kind of Messiah would you be if you couldn’t provide wine for a wedding
celebration. So Jesus gives some instructions, “Fill the jars up with water”,
now this must have been an unusual request to the ears of the wait staff. Jars
and water is not the stuff of the spectacular. In fact they are two of the most
common, ordinary items ever. Where was Jesus’ sense of showmanship? After all
He is about to launch a national ministry, His disciples are watching, this is
a great opportunity to impress them with raining down wine from heaven with
just the wiggling of his pinky toe, but Jesus choose to use jars and water. As
unusual as it must have been, the servants did as Jesus asked and filled jars
with water, and then they poured it out and took it to the master of
ceremonies, and low and behold, out of the ordinary jars and water, Jesus
provided the best wine served at the banquet. This is how the Messiah, the God
of the universe chose to launch his ministry, with ordinary clay and water. The
way that Jesus chooses to continue his ministry is not so different than how it
started, He still chooses to work through the transformation of ordinary clay
and water. The Apostle Paul said it like this, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a
new creation; old things are past away and behold all thing are become new.”
Jesus is still transforming the ordinary clay and water of humanity. It is the
stuff of humanity to seek the spectacular, always looking for the best,
brightest, and biggest; apparently it is the stuff of divinity to seek the
ordinary.
Throughout His ministry Jesus did extraordinary
things in very ordinary fashion. He once healed a blind guy by spitting on the
ground and mixing the water of his spittle and the clay of ground together,
rubbing it on this man’s eyes, and then after washing it out the man could see
for the first time in his life. Jesus once waited for his friend to die and
remain dead for days, so he could then raise him from the dead by simply
calling his name, He told a lame guy to get off his bed and walk, a sick woman once
touched the border of his clothes immediately being healed, and a boy’s lunch
once provided food for five thousand.
In general Jesus did very ordinary things
like speaking, touching, praying, He never found it necessary to hang around
for his picture to be taken and He often told those he healed or delivered not
to tell any one. Not exactly the stuff of televangelism. Jesus did the
extraordinary in a very ordinary way. Even when He died, He breathed his last,
and three days later just got up. Now granted there was an earthquake, some
angelic visitors and other supernatural phenomena. But basically, He just got
up, and reveled Himself not to his critics or executioners but to those closest
to Him, and in the first instance to women, whose testimony would not even be
admitted in a court of law in their culture. Ordinary meets extraordinary; when
Jesus got up from death it forever changed the world. And in much the same way
as the governor of the wedding feast declared in John 2, “Everyone brings out
the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guest have had too
much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” Jesus declared that a new
and better covenant was launched with the advent of His death, burial and
resurrection. The point made by the master of the banquet is that the
intoxicated are in no position to appreciate the quality of the products served
them; the drunk doesn’t really care if he is drinking best value wine in a
purple box with a smiling grape on the front of it or the finest vintage chardonnay.
Amazingly, the finest wine came from ordinary
water pots. It seems the finest still comes from the ordinary. The sun rises
and sets every day, a baby breaths its first breath, a weary soul breaths their
last, these ordinary extraordinary events transpire every day. Every day Jesus
continues to transform me from the inside out. You, and me ordinary water pots
stacked against a forgotten wall of humanity are chosen to produce the sweet
wine of the extraordinary. “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show
the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” this is how the ancient
Apostle describes us in 2 Corinthians 4:7, notice that the reason we contain
such a great treasure in ordinary jars is to demonstrate the power of God and
not of ourselves. Everything that Jesus does in us serves to glorify His name,
the transformation serves to bring attention to Christ and his power to change
lives.
A trip to your local grocer will serve to illustrate this
point, the grocery store has “name brand” and “off brand” items. The off brand
items are often marketed under names like best value or always
save or my personal favorite best choice, because
after all anything else would be an inferior choice when you realize that the
items in the white or yellow cans, contain the same green beans as in the cans
with the oversized green guy who stole Santa’s catch phrase. Unfortunately, too
often I’m a brand whore, buying the green guy’s green beans or something
allegedly grown in a hidden valley to impress my friends and neighbors, like
they care what kind of green beans I have in my cabinet, but it’s important
that I portray something that I’m not, right? At least that is what television
has taught me. What we often spend our money on is the feeling we receive
buying the can of vegetables we’ve seen advertised on television, where the
product is portrayed to make men successful, children obedient, and women sexy,
young and beautiful. If you think that I’m exaggerating a bit, pay close
attention to the commercials during your favorite television program.
Advertising executives are counting on the cognitive dissonance, or that part
of our depravity that tends to measure our wellbeing and success against the
wellbeing and success of others, popularly referred to as “keeping up with the
Jones”.
There is something within us that seeks to turn what God desires into
something of our own creation, where we endeavor to change the inside by what
we do on the outside. We think the deficiency created by sin can be corrected
with a make over. The problem is that we are endeavoring to make over what God
says must be started over; this is why the language employed by Jesus and the
Apostles are terms such as “New Birth” and “Born Again”. Christianity was
radical in this respect, religion sought to transform the inside by the
discipline of the outside, as far as this aspect of religion goes, the popular
religion of the Jesus’ day had this covered. On one occasion the religious
leaders challenged Jesus because his disciples did not wash their hands. “Then
Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, why do your
disciples break tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when
they eat. He answered them, and why do you break the commandment of God for the
sake of your tradition?” (Matthew 15:1-3 ESV) Jesus then challenged their
tradition of circumventing the commandment of God by making a donation to the
religious institution of the day. In essence they had provided a loophole where
a financial contribution could cover their transgression. (See Matthew 15:4-6)
Jesus drives His point home by quoting the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, “This
people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do
they worship me teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” (Matthew
15:8-9; Isaiah 29:13).
Throughout his ministry Jesus challenged this whole idea
that the outside some how served as the means to justifying the inside, He sums
up his thoughts in Matthew 15:10, “Hear and understand, it is not what goes
into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this
defiles a person.” Jesus went on to explain that the problem with humanity is a
heart problem, it is a defect in our soul, the stain of sin that can’t be
washed away, “…But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and
this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder,
adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what
defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”
(Matthew 15:18-20 ESV) God spoke truthfully of our heart through the prophet
Jeremiah, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who
can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every
man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
Jesus served the best wine from the
ordinary water pots but some how my depravity turns that into decorative wine
bottles full of curdled milk. Jesus once again confronted the religious leaders
of his day with this problem, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but
within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you outwardly
appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and
lawlessness.” (Matthew 23:27-28 ESV) The bottom line is that there is nothing
you and I can do to transform or change who we are, because we are in a
disadvantaged position from the get go, everything that we do, even our
attempts at self-improvement are steeped in depravity. As Dr. Michael Horton
points out in his book, Putting Amazing back into Grace, “We have distorted and disfigured God’s
creation. We would have an excuse, perhaps, if we could say that there was a
lack or a defect in our nature; yet the problem is not our humanness but in
what we have done with our humanness. We have directed all of our gifts, our
religious, moral, creative, and intellectual abilities, toward a declaration of
independence from God. We have used the very assets with which he endowed us as
weapons against him. Clothed in his very image, we have shaken our fists at
God, and said with Adam and Eve, ‘How dare you!’”
Only Jesus can transform the human heart, only Christ can
take what is dark and depraved and make it new and full of light once again.
Jesus began his ministry at a marriage party and the Bible tells us that the
ministry of Christ will be concluded at a marriage party, but this time he is
bridegroom. The book of Revelation tells us that at some point in the future
Jesus will be united with his bride the church, “Then I heard what seemed to be
the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound
of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the
Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the
marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was
granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”-for the fine
linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, “Write
this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”
And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” (Revelation 19:6-9 ESV)
“For these men are not drunk as ye suppose…but this is what was uttered through
the prophet Joel: And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will
pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall
prophesy, and your young men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and
female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit…” (Acts 2:15-18 ESV)
The third sign Jesus performs is found in John chapter five.
It is the healing of the invalid man at the pool of Bethesda. It was believed
that an angel troubled the pool and the first to get into the water would be
made well. The Bible reports that this invalid man had been waiting by the side
of pool for thirty-eight years waiting for his opportunity to be healed. When
Jesus approached him, the man expressed his frustration to the Lord, “Sir, I
have no one to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I’m
going another steps down before me.” This invalid man had bought into this
local superstition that there was a healing element to the pool, and perhaps
there was some therapeutic value, but it was of no value to him because he
couldn’t get into the pool. 
