Laughter and fun is always an important part of the relationship between the Voice, the Breath and the Flesh. They regularly share the pleasure of life together. This is one of the first things that the lie attacks. The lie sometimes will give a pretence of enjoyment but it’s always short lived.
One of the first things that Jesus did with his friends was to go to a wedding together. Weddings are times of fun so this event was chosen by Jesus to demonstrate how the Voice, the Breath and the Flesh related to each other.
Weddings celebrate community specifically the potential of a new community that is a emerges from a marriage. Family is the always feeling the brunt of the lie. Divorce is one of the main examples of how much the lie can influence human behaviour.
When Jesus arrived at the wedding there was clearly something wrong. People were gathered in small groups and talking in quiet voices. It wasn’t the boisterous laughter that you normally expected in this setting.
Jesus mother knew her son was special. I don’t think she expected what was about to happen when she told her son that they had run out of wine. But, she told the waiters to do whatever her son told them to do.
I could see Jesus’ reluctance to solve this problem. It was early days in his ministry and he knew the lie would seek to take anything he did and twist it to add confusion to his task.
But, Jesus responded with compassion to the plight of the parents and his mother’s request. He looked around for something that would be big enough to hold the amount of wine needed to get through the wedding celebrations.
He saw to one side a number of water jars normally reserved for religious ceremonies and he told the servants to fill them with water. They didn’t question him and did as they were told. Then they took a cup of the water to the master of ceremonies.
I could see the surprise on his face when he tasted it. He couldn’t believe that they had kept the best wine for this part of the wedding. Somehow the water had changed into wine. It was that point in the proceedings when everyone had drunk enough to be not too fussy but Jesus created the best quality of wine.
There were only a few people who knew what had happened. Everyone knew that there was a problem with the wine but only a select few knew that Jesus had solved the problem.
It was often said that this was the first indication of who Jesus really was. It was just a taste of what was to come. As the next few years of our story unfolded together we were to see this confirmed more and more clearly.
This secret was only shown to a few people this time. Later it would be retold so that others might be able to understand the way that Jesus went about defeating the lie. For now it was enough for those people to continue enjoying the wedding and their time with Jesus.