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This story is one of my favorites from the Christian Holy Bible. I have always sensed there is something more to this story than turning water into wine, or revealing the “glory” of Jesus in that being done. Anyway, if this is a miracle, as many say, what significance does it have if speaking of something that happened back then that does not happen now? That cannot happen with you? Me?
I read this story in tune with the mystical, subtle nature of the Gospel of John, a treatise more like the Gnostic Gospels than the Synoptic Gospels in the Bible ~ Matthew, Mark, Luke. This Gospel appears to reinterpret the life of Jesus from decades after the other biblical Gospels and seeks, through symbol and sign, to point to the inner significance, even being, of Jesus, his works, and saying. Here, Jesus the man is not ignored, but the Word, or Christ, is the focus, Jesus being the sign of that Otherness that is, ironically, Intimacy Itself.
The story hinges, to me, on the “turning” of water to wine. The turning is an inner transformation, or formation beyond the prior formation. In this transformation water becomes wine, water does not unbecome water. Water is in wine, wine is in water. No one can point to where water ends and wine begins. There is no point one can locate. Yet, if one tasted the water when water, he could say “That is water,” and later, “That is wine.” After the turning, she would not say, “That is water.” So, in water is wine, in wine is water. Newness cannot arise independently of what has been; again, more accurately, due to the nature of reality, there is nothing we can point to as absolutely has been.
So, the mystery: We cannot become something that we are not already somehow now. And, also, we cannot locate an end to what was and the beginning of what is. Transformation, then, is a becoming. And we do not speak of spiritual reformation, but spiritual transformation.
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Hence, transformation is the life of Grace. Transformation happens, is a becoming, a fulfillment arising from what has been and is.
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