Wine

I just learned something very important. I learned that it is possible for me to be a follower of Jesus and not have my faith in Him. The idea is still hard for me to grasp but I do believe it is true.

You see, I was reading the story about Jesus changing the water into wine at a wedding. In John's account of this I noticed that Jesus's disciples were there with him. John specifically says that Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding. My guess is that it is a wedding for some annoying nephew or niece on Mary's side of the family. I say Mary's side of the family because she seems to me to be very involved in the preparations for this wedding.

Like I said earlier, the bible says that Jesus and his disciples were invited. Now, if I were one of the disciples I would think twice about going to a wedding of someone I did not know. That is probably because most of the people that I know that get married are Baptists, and we all know that their weddings are not nearly as much fun.

I suppose that the disciples were not Baptists because it looks like they were planning on having a good time at the wedding. The formula seems pretty simple to me. Meet an awesome, charismatic mentor type dude and follow him to a party with lots of wine and have a great time. It looks like that is what they did. In fact, it looks like they had such a great time that they exhausted the party's supply of wine.

This did not make Mary very happy. I mean she has invested a great deal of time to help this wedding turn out well and her son and his rowdy friends drink up all the wine. If it happened like this it would go a long way to explaining why she went to Jesus and said, "They are out of wine, take care of it." John does not tell us the tone of her voice like he should, so we are left wondering how she says this to Jesus. I think she said it with exasperation. She was exhausted and her son's friends were making her look foolish. What is really cool is that Jesus takes care of it. I know that most people talk about why he took care of this when His time had not yet come but I just think that it is cool that he took care of it.

Oh, I heard someone say that there is no way that people at this party could get drunk on this wine because it was biblical wine. Everyone knows that biblical wine has no alcohol, wink, wink.

Here is the thing. Jesus had not at this time done any of his miracles and yet he still had a respectable following. I guess that the disciples followed him at this time because he was cool, because he was radical, because he had wisdom. I guess that they just liked this guy.

The thing that is really interesting though is that apparently they did not have faith in him until this miracle. It seems a bit odd to me. These guys put their faith in Jesus not because of his teaching, or his insight, or his wisdom, but instead they put their faith in Jesus because he makes sure a party turns out well. Oh, I know that all of those things contributed, but still, this miracle helps the disciples go beyond being just followers of Jesus.

I think that the biggest question that I have is am I a follower or do I really have my faith in Him? Apparently there is a bigger difference than I thought.