Jesus already had disciples, though he had done no mighty works yet; they followed him for himself and for his words. With his mother they went with him to a wedding feast. More human than anyone there, with no self-conscious reserve, he shared their rejoicing fully, for, whatever suffering might follow, none knew so well as he that—
Who makes the joy the last in every song."
The old legend that he was never known to smile I regard as utterly false, almost as incredible as a geometrical absurdity. A divine artist tracing the spiritual lines of that company would have settled on his face as the centre from which the gladness spread, as he sat, I seem to see, in the background beside his mother. But something is coming that will change his mood—and he would be no true man if his mood never changed. His holy will and tender, strong heart never changed, but his feeling did, for mood should often reflect changing circumstance. The change comes from his mother, who whispers that they have no more wine. The bridegroom’s means had run out; like his guests he was probably of humble calling, a craftsman or fisherman. It must have been a painful little trial to him if he knew, but I doubt he heard of the want before it was supplied.
Nothing in this by itself could change his mood: the failing of the wine was no catastrophe, at least to him, and his mother had merely told him a fact. But there is more than words in common speech, and what wrought the change was the tone and look woven through hers. She knew her son was no common man and believed in him with an unripe, unshaped faith, which, joined to her ignorance and fancy, led her to expect the great things of the world from him. Such a faith must fail so that it may grow, as imperfection must fail to make room for strength. It is well for the weak that their faith fail them, for it may be resting its wings on some brittle twig of fancy instead of a branch of the tree of life.
But what in her look and tone could change his mood? Her implied request could not offend him, for he granted it, and he would never do what he disapproved even at his mother’s asking. Her thoughts lay not in her words but in her expression, and it was to those thoughts he replied. His answer, so little to do with her spoken request, is therefore the key to her thoughts and to his. Misunderstand it and we may misunderstand the miracle, and certainly risk misunderstanding him, which is far worse. How many children are troubled that Jesus should speak to his mother as our translation makes them suppose: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.” His hour for the miracle had come, for he worked it; and if he had to do with any human soul, it was his mother. “Woman” sounds strange to us, but that is our fault: we let words fall from their rank and put them to degraded uses. To a true man what word is fuller of grace and tender imagery? He used it to his mother, and the good custom of the time was fulfilled in it as it came from lips that were the open gates of a heart of infinite meanings. Any word he used had more of the human in it than before.
What he actually said was: “Woman, what is there common to thee and me? My hour is not yet come.” What! was not their humanity common? Was she not fit, and therefore chosen, to bear him? But his words did not touch their relation; they referred to the present state of her mind and expectation. Her hope and his intent were at variance, and his words were addressed to her hope. Paraphrasing reverently, for the sake of the spirit above the word, I think I may say—
“Woman, what is there in your thoughts now that is in sympathy with mine? Also the hour that you are expecting is not come yet.”
What, then, was in his thoughts, and in hers? She thought the time had come to show his power and reveal how great he was, to begin the glory that in her notion would end in a righteous monarch—a second Solomon, forsooth, to put down the mighty and exalt the lowly. Here was a chance to work like a prophet of old and show whose mother she was.
And what did the glow of her face and the tone of “They have no wine” make Jesus think of? Perhaps the decease he must accomplish at Jerusalem; perhaps a throne of glory between two thieves; certainly a kingdom of heaven unlike the one in her imagination, though he was its king. A kingdom of exulting obedience, not acquiescence and still less compulsion, lay germed in his bosom, and he must be laid in the grave before it could send its first green leaves into the human world. No earthly throne for him, then, and no triumph for his mother such as she dreamed! Nothing was common in their visioned ends. Hence the change of mood, and the words that seem so strange and so little to do with hers.
But no change of mood could change his feeling toward mother or friends. She, though she could ill understand him, never fancied unkindness in his words; she read his face too, and found there such an answer to her prayer for her friends that she waited for nothing more and said at once to the servants, with a mother’s confidence, “Do whatever he tells you.”
If anyone objects that I imagine too much, I say first that the Gospel records are very brief; second, that the germs of true understanding lie in this small seed, and our hearts are the soil where it must unfold; third, that we are bound to understand the story, and these suppositions let me understand it in a way worthy of what I have learned of Him. I must refuse any interpretation unworthy of Him, for accepting one would sin against the Holy Ghost. If I am wrong about what I accept or reject, I must, when the fact is revealed, cast away the one and do justice to the other. Meanwhile this interpretation accounts for his words in a way he will not be displeased with, even if it misses the fact. That St John saw it in the story, bare as he tells it, becomes more probable when we remember how he and his brother James asked the Lord for the highest rank in his kingdom and received an answer evidently flowing from the same feeling I have attributed to his answer here.
The servants filled the water-pots to the brim, drew out, and took it to the governor of the feast, who said the good wine had been kept until now. That wine from our Lord would be the best is so much a matter of course it seems absurd to remark. What the Father makes, and is ever working toward, is the Best; so the wine our Lord made must be very good.
It is like his Father, too, not to withhold good wine because men abuse it. Enforced virtue is unworthy of the name; to rise above temptation men must have it, by the will of him who makes the grapes and the wine. Men will even call Jesus a wine-bibber; what matters it, so long as he lives as the Father wills?
I dare not be misunderstood. God chooses that men be tried, but let a man beware of tempting his neighbour. God knows how much, and where and when; man is his brother’s keeper and must keep him according to his knowledge. A man may do God’s will for others and be condemned in it because he sought his own will. That our Lord gave this company wine does not prove he would give any company wine; to some he refused even bread. Shall man dig a pit at every street corner for the poor to fall into, wasting their money on what is not bread, because he gave wine to wedding guests? Let the poor man be tempted as God wills, for God’s end is victory; let man not tempt him, for man’s end is his neighbour’s fall, or at best he ignores it for gain, and he shall receive according to his works.
For one who can thank God freely for his good wine, there is glad significance in our Lord’s first miracle being water turned into wine. It symbolizes what he has done for the world in glorifying all things: with his divine alchemy he turns water into wine, common things into radiant mysteries, every meal into a eucharist, and the jaws of the sepulchre into an outgoing gate. I do not mean that he changes God’s things or ways, but that he changes men’s hearts and eyes, so that God’s facts and meanings become their faiths and hopes. The destroying spirit who works in the commonplace is ever covering the deep and clouding the high; those who listen to him cannot have great things, for they do not themselves aspire. They believe, perhaps, in the truth and grace of their first child, and when they have spoiled him laugh at the praises of childhood. From all this low and fearful incapacity he who made water into wine delivers men, revealing heaven around them, God in all things, truth in every instinct, evil withering and hope springing even in the path of the destroyer.
That wine was his first miracle, and the feeding of the multitudes the only other creative one, also suggests thoughts about the symbol he left of his relation to his brethren. In the eucharistic wine and bread he reminds us how utterly he gives himself for the gladness and strength of his Father’s children. More, since he is the radiation of the Father’s glory, they symbolize how utterly the Father gives himself to his children and wants them to share his being. If Jesus was the Father’s son, is it hard to believe he would give men bread and wine?
It was not his power but his glory that Jesus showed in the miracle. His power could not be hidden, but it was a poor thing beside his glory.
Power in itself is a poor thing; if it could stand alone, which it cannot, it would be a horror. Lonely power could never create; only the love at the root of power, the power of power, can. What was his glory, then? That, like his Father, he ministered to men’s wants. Had they not needed the wine, he would not have made it for any show of power. Man’s need meeting his love let that glory shine out, and for it above all we worship him. Power is no object of adoration; those who worship it are slaves. Those who trembled at the thunder from the mountain went and worshipped a golden calf; Moses went into the thick darkness to find his God.
How far Mary’s expectation, that her son would impress the guests by majesty of might and rouse their enthusiasm, was from his thoughts is plain from the fact that even the ruler of the feast did not see the miracle, and many guests would give the report little credit. It was done so quietly, with so little warning, in two simple acts—filling the water-pots and drawing out—that it was plainly done to minister. He did it not even to show his goodness but to be good; only this could show his Father’s goodness. It was done because all circumstances met—the presence of the powerful, and his mother’s prayer—to make it fit that his heart’s love should go out in giving his merry-making brothers and sisters more and better wine.
In this too the miracle resembles his Father’s working. God ministers so gently and unobtrusively that men often drink his wine, as these guests did, without knowing whence it comes or thinking that the giver is beside them, even in their hearts. God will not compel adoration; that would bring only pagan worship to his altars. He rouses a sense of need that grows into longing, and makes men feel after him, until by their search they become able to see him and he can reveal the glory of their Father; meanwhile he keeps quiet behind his works. And when men find his wine good yet do not search for the giver, he plagues them with sore plagues, that the good wine of life may not become an evil thing to them, and so to him and the universe. It would seem that the correlative of creation is search: as God has made us, we must find him; thus our action reflects his, and he glorifies us with a share in the end of all things, which is that the Father and his children be one in thought, judgment, feeling and intent—that they mean the same thing. St John says Jesus thus “manifested forth his glory, and his disciples believed on him.” I doubt any but his disciples knew of the miracle, or that any others believed on him because of it. It is possible to see a miracle and not believe in it; many who saw our Lord’s miracles believed in the miracle and yet did not believe in him.
I wonder how many Christians so thoroughly believe God made them that they can laugh in God’s name, understanding that he invented laughter and gave it to his children. Such belief would sharpen their enjoyment and slay both the sneering laughter men grimace to the fiends and the feeble laughter with neither heart nor intellect in it. It would also help them see the depth of this miracle. The Lord of gladness delights in a merry heart’s laughter. These guests could surely have done without more and better wine, but the Father has no esteem for bare existence and works, even by suffering, to make life richer. His gifts go to the overflowing of the cup, and when it would overflow he deepens its hollow and widens its brim. Our Lord is profuse like his Father and will, at his own sternest cost, be lavish to his brethren. Yet even those who know where the good wine comes from, and joyously thank the giver, shall one day cry out, like the ruler of the feast to one who had not given it, “You have kept the good wine until now.”