John 2:4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”

My parents recently visited my wife and me. While they were here, my father shared a special insight into the story of the wedding at Cana (John 2:1–12) that I’d never run across before and would like to share with you.

Recall the story: at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, he and his first disciples are invited to a wedding. During the course of the wedding celebration, the party ran out of wine. Mary, Jesus’ mother, noticed this and brought it to Jesus’ attention, telling him “They have no wine.”

Jesus responds with the quote above: “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour is not yet come.”

Mary then turns to the servants and says “Do whatever he tells you.”

Jesus orders the servants to fill several large stone jars with water, draw some out, and offer it to the master of the feast. When they did so, the master of the feast went to the bridegroom and said “Everyone serves the best wine first, and when people have had quite a bit, then the poor wine. But you’ve saved the best wine until now!”

At the end of the story, we’re told: “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.” His disciples apparently heard where the wine had come from, but there’s no indication that the rest of the wedding party ever did.

After recalling the story for me, my dad asked this question: “So if it’s not Jesus’ time, whose time is it?”

I think my response went something like this: “Uhh ... the servants’ time?” I really wasn’t sure and was taking a stab in the dark. Then Dad recalled the context for me: Jesus is at a wedding. Imagine yourself at a wedding, asked this question: “Whose time is it?” The light dawns: it’s the bride and groom’s time. If Jesus publically does a miracle here, the spotlight and attention is going to move from them to him. It will then be His time, and everyone will remember it as Jesus’ first miracle (as we do now, and Jesus’ disciples probably did) rather than their wedding. By choosing a subtle method, where only the servants and his disciples knew what he had done, Jesus does a beautiful job of saving the groom from embarrassment and keeps the spotlight on the bride and groom and their happiness. He shows a fine sense of tact.

It is a pleasing thing, to see that Jesus not only cares about saving face for a friend, but is wise enough to find a way to do it without drawing attention to himself.

As one last note, in many of the miracles of the Bible, it’s worth asking the question: who is demonostrating faith? It seems to be God’s perferred mode of action: to move in response to prayer through people acting in faith that He’ll do something. God loves to be bet on. And the way I read it, my initial answer to my Dad’s question isn’t so far off after all: it is the servants who demonstrate faith. The story doesn’t say that they tasted the wine first before daring to offer it to the master of the feast. The master of the feast was not surprised that it was wine: he was surprised that it was good wine, so it’s not likely that the servants said to him “Sir, can you please try this water for us?” It appears to me that they had faith in Jesus, and did what he told them to.

May we do the same.

-Dan L.-