Do you know what oenology is? It’s the study of winemaking. You can earn a Bachelor of Science in the subject at many universities.
But no graduate could ever match the work of the Divine Oenologist. Jesus once turned water into wine at a wedding, and the banquet sommelier declared it the best he had ever tasted.
The whole of the Christian life is contained in those two actions
Jesus’s wine would have impressed Robert Parker’s palate, I’m sure. Until his retirement in 2019, Robert Parker was the most influential wine critic in the world. His opinion could cause the value of a bottle to rise or fall by hundreds of dollars. Over 50,000 subscribers read his bi-monthly newsletter, The Wine Advocate, where Parker would describe a wine in a few vivid sentences and then rank it on a 100-point system. He ranked poor wines in the 70s, adequate ones in the 80s, and really good ones in the 90s. For the 220,000 wines he reviewed, he awarded a perfect rating of 100 only 76 times. And yet the wine of the Divine Winemaker would have exceeded them all.
But why did Jesus launch his entire ministry with this particular miracle? After all, it wasn’t a healing or an exorcism or a raising of the dead to life. No, the first miracle Jesus performed was just to help a wedding party that had run out of libations.
Doesn’t that seem odd? I mean, leaders plan their first steps carefully. A teacher’s first day in front of her class, a writer’s debut novel, a president’s inaugural speech—these things establish expectations for what’s to come. Yet it seems that for Jesus’s first miracle, he just chose to fix a catering disaster.
Or is there more to the story?
Read John 2:1-11 and take a close look at his interaction with Mary. She entrusted her concerns to his heart, and she entrusted her heart to his concerns. The whole of the Christian life is contained in those two actions.
We’ll dig deeper into that story at Hillcrest this Sunday at 10am. Join us on campus or online.
--Tom
Sign up here to receive Tom Goodman’s weekly devotional in your email inbox. Tom serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast. He blogs at The Anchor Course website and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter.