John 2:
9-10
The
Message
When the host tasted the water that had become
wine (he didn’t know what had happened but the servants, of course, knew), he
called out to the bridegroom, “Everybody I know begins with their finest wines and
after the guests have had their fill brings in the cheap stuff. But you’ve
saved the best until now.”
Every time I read this verse it brings up not the fact that Christ’s first miracle
was simply to remove the embarrassment of running out of wine at a weeklong
feast, thus saving face for a family friend and honoring his mother but rather the Adventist controversy
over what happened.
When I was in college at Helderberg, a group of boys went
into the vineyard of “the Prince” and stole a pillow case full of grapes. We
carried this back into the dorm and placed the pillowcase in a tub. Vic took
his shoes off, washed his feet, and trod out the juice. Each of us took a
gallon glass jug and filled it with the juice. (Vic never got the stains out of
that pillow case.)
I screwed the lid down tight and put my jug up in the top of
my wardrobe. About five days later I took down the jug, and several of us
savored the wine. It was really good, had a nice kick to it. We drank about
half of the wine. I resealed the jug, put it back on the shelf, and forgot it
for a few days.
One day Ian, a floor prefect, said to me, “Clarke, your room
smells like a winery. You’d better do something about it before you get in
trouble.” All alcoholic drinks are banned by the church and, since Helderberg
is a parochial college, were banned on campus.
I opened the wardrobe door and looked at the jug. It was
empty, completely empty. I grabbed it by the ear of the bottle and took it
down. The bottom of the jug had broken out neatly in a perfect circle and
remained on the shelf. The wine had run down between the boards of the shelf
and soaked my one and only suit. I never did get the stains out of the suit
either.
At the time I was sorely disappointed over the loss of a good
drink. Since then, my friends and I have always had a good laugh at my
troubles.
Adventists have debated whether the wine Christ made at the
wedding feast and the Passover wine that was served at the Last Supper were unfermented
or fermented wine. Ever since I saw how quickly my grape juice turned into wine,
I have leaned towards thinking of the “finest wine” as being fermented. This
doesn’t mean that I keep wine in my house, however.
Lord, please keep us
from losing the magnificent blessings of Christ’s miracles by mundane debates
over particulars.
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