Water into wine

...here and now, amidst your daily  living,

Where you can taste and touch and feel and see,

The spring of love, the fount of all forgiving,

Flows when you need it, rich, abundant, free.

Better than waters of some outer weeping,

That leave you still with all your hidden sin,

Here is a vintage richer for the keeping

That works its transformation from within.

‘What price?’ you ask me, as we raise the glass,

‘It cost our Saviour everything he has.’

Malcolm Guite.Epiphany at Cana

...I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly John 10:10

This morning Mary and I were awoken bleary eyed by the alarm, Mary raised the blind to reveal a beautiful wonder; two planets between a sickle moon, shining resplendent against a sky of the clearest darkest blue.     

Such moments of revelation point us to the beauty and generosity of a God who not only created the world but enters into it, to bring an abundance of life and joy to all who want to enter into a loving relationship with a generous and all giving Saviour.

The first sign that John reveals in his gospel is the turning of water into wine at the wedding at Cana.

It is indeed a signpost to everything that follows in his gospel.

As Steve said in one of his recent sermons, if we think that Christianity is just about "going to heaven when we die" we have totally lost the plot of what living life as a Christian is all about.
Living the Christian life is entering into that wonderful, outrageously self-giving love that exists between the three persons of the Trinity. It is about living life on a totally new dimension in a love feast with an all giving, all loving Saviour.
The miracle of turning water into wine is a expression of the outrageous generosity of God's love, we are talking in the region of a thousand bottles of wine. This is all about a God who can never be out-given; there is no possibility of a reciprocal gift, only the humble acceptance of Grace given.

In the gospel of John there is no retelling of the final love feast that Jesus had with His disciples which we celebrate as the last supper, but the message is played out all through the gospel and is very present here at this first recorded celebration. A thousand bottles of wine do have a cost and it was the sacrificial love of the blood of Jesus, which was freely given for us, flowing freely, at the greatest price of all for Jesus.   

So how do enter into this wonderful life of abundance which Jesus freely offers? As we gaze in awe at what Jesus has done for us, our only response can be to fall into a reckless love affair with Him. A love affair which is life consuming but also totally life transforming, being a Christian is nothing about outward purification with the cold waters of religion but all about being totally intoxicated and transformed by a life lived in love with our beautiful Saviour.