bridegroom

137:4.1By noon on Wednes­day al­most a thou­sand guests had ar­rived in Cana, more than four times the num­ber bid­den to the wed­ding feast. It was a Jew­ish cus­tom to cel­e­brate wed­dings on Wednes­day, and the in­vi­ta­tions had been sent abroad for the wed­ding one month pre­vi­ously. In the forenoon and early af­ter­noon it ap­peared more like a pub­lic re­cep­tion for Je­sus than a wed­ding. Ev­ery­body wanted to greet this near-fa­mous Galilean, and he was most cor­dial to all, young and old, Jew and gen­tile. And ev­ery­body re­joiced when Je­sus con­sented to lead the pre­lim­i­nary wed­ding pro­ces­sion.

137:4.2Je­sus was now thor­oughly self-con­scious re­gard­ing his hu­man ex­is­tence, his di­vine pre-ex­is­tence, and the sta­tus of his com­bined, or fused, hu­man and di­vine na­tures. With per­fect poise he could at one mo­ment en­act the hu­man role or im­me­di­ately as­sume the per­son­al­ity pre­rog­a­tives of the di­vine na­ture.

137:4.3As the day wore on, Je­sus be­came in­creas­ingly con­scious that the peo­ple were ex­pect­ing him to per­form some won­der; more es­pe­cially he rec­og­nized that his fam­ily and his six dis­ci­ple-apos­tles were look­ing for him ap­pro­pri­ately to an­nounce his forth­com­ing king­dom by some startling and super­nat­u­ral man­i­fes­ta­tion.

137:4.4Early in the af­ter­noon Mary sum­moned James, and to­gether they made bold to ap­proach Je­sus to in­quire if he would ad­mit them to his con­fi­dence to the ex­tent of in­form­ing them at what hour and at what point in con­nec­tion with the wed­ding cer­e­monies he had planned to man­i­fest him­self as the “super­nat­u­ral one.” No sooner had they spo­ken of these mat­ters to Je­sus than they saw they had aroused his char­ac­ter­is­tic in­dig­na­tion. He said only: “If you love me, then be will­ing to tarry with me while I wait upon the will of my Fa­ther who is in heaven.” But the elo­quence of his re­buke lay in the ex­pres­sion of his face.

137:4.5This move of his mother was a great dis­ap­point­ment to the hu­man Je­sus, and he was much sobered by his re­ac­tion to her sug­ges­tive pro­posal that he per­mit him­self to in­dulge in some out­ward dem­on­stra­tion of his di­vin­ity. That was one of the very things he had de­cided not to do when so re­cently iso­lated in the hills. For sev­eral hours Mary was much de­pressed. She said to James: “I can­not un­der­stand him; what can it all mean? Is there no end to his strange con­duct?” James and Jude tried to com­fort their mother, while Je­sus with­drew for an hour’s soli­tude. But he re­turned to the gath­er­ing and was once more light­hearted and joy­ous.

137:4.6The wed­ding pro­ceeded with a hush of ex­pectancy, but the en­tire cer­e­mony was fin­ished and not a move, not a word, from the hon­ored guest. Then it was whis­pered about that the car­pen­ter and boat­builder, an­nounced by John as “the De­liv­erer,” would show his hand dur­ing the evening fes­tiv­i­ties, per­haps at the wed­ding sup­per. But all ex­pectance of such a dem­on­stra­tion was ef­fec­tu­ally re­moved from the minds of his six dis­ci­ple-apos­tles when he called them to­gether just be­fore the wed­ding sup­per and, in great earnest­ness, said: “Think not that I have come to this place to work some won­der for the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of the cu­ri­ous or for the con­vic­tion of those who doubt. Rather are we here to wait upon the will of our Fa­ther who is in heaven.” But when Mary and the oth­ers saw him in con­sul­ta­tion with his as­so­ciates, they were fully per­suaded in their own minds that some­thing ex­traor­di­nary was about to hap­pen. And they all sat down to en­joy the wed­ding sup­per and the evening of fes­tive good fel­low­ship.

137:4.7The fa­ther of the bride­groom had pro­vided plenty of wine for all the guests bid­den to the mar­riage feast, but how was he to know that the mar­riage of his son was to be­come an event so closely as­so­ci­ated with the ex­pected man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus as the Mes­sianic de­liv­erer? He was de­lighted to have the honor of num­ber­ing the cel­e­brated Galilean among his guests, but be­fore the wed­ding sup­per was over, the ser­vants brought him the dis­con­cert­ing news that the wine was run­ning short. By the time the for­mal sup­per had ended and the guests were strolling about in the gar­den, the mother of the bride­groom con­fided to Mary that the sup­ply of wine was ex­hausted. And Mary con­fi­dently said: “Have no worry—I will speak to my son. He will help us.” And thus did she pre­sume to speak, not­with­stand­ing the re­buke of but a few hours be­fore.

137:4.8Through­out a pe­riod of many years, Mary had al­ways turned to Je­sus for help in ev­ery cri­sis of their home life at Naz­a­reth so that it was only nat­u­ral for her to think of him at this time. But this am­bi­tious mother had still other mo­tives for ap­peal­ing to her el­dest son on this oc­ca­sion. As Je­sus was stand­ing alone in a cor­ner of the gar­den, his mother ap­proached him, say­ing, “My son, they have no wine.” And Je­sus an­swered, “My good woman, what have I to do with that?” Said Mary, “But I be­lieve your hour has come; can­not you help us?” Je­sus replied: “Again I de­clare that I have not come to do things in this wise. Why do you trou­ble me again with these mat­ters?” And then, break­ing down in tears, Mary en­treated him, “But, my son, I prom­ised them that you would help us; won’t you please do some­thing for me?” And then spoke Je­sus: “Woman, what have you to do with mak­ing such promises? See that you do it not again. We must in all things wait upon the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.”

137:4.9Mary the mother of Je­sus was crushed; she was stunned! As she stood there be­fore him mo­tion­less, with the tears stream­ing down her face, the hu­man heart of Je­sus was over­come with com­pas­sion for the woman who had borne him in the flesh; and bend­ing for­ward, he laid his hand ten­derly upon her head, say­ing: “Now, now, Mother Mary, grieve not over my ap­par­ently hard say­ings, for have I not many times told you that I have come only to do the will of my heav­enly Fa­ther? Most gladly would I do what you ask of me if it were a part of the Fa­ther’s will—” and Je­sus stopped short, he hes­i­tated. Mary seemed to sense that some­thing was hap­pen­ing. Leap­ing up, she threw her arms around Je­sus’ neck, kissed him, and rushed off to the ser­vants’ quar­ters, say­ing, “What­ever my son says, that do.” But Je­sus said noth­ing. He now re­al­ized that he had al­ready said—or rather de­sire­fully thought—too much.

137:4.10Mary was danc­ing with glee. She did not know how the wine would be pro­duced, but she con­fi­dently be­lieved that she had fi­nally per­suaded her first-born son to as­sert his au­thor­ity, to dare to step forth and claim his po­si­tion and ex­hibit his Mes­sianic power. And, be­cause of the pres­ence and as­so­ci­a­tion of cer­tain uni­verse pow­ers and per­son­al­i­ties, of which all those pres­ent were wholly ig­no­rant, she was not to be dis­ap­pointed. The wine Mary de­sired and which Je­sus, the God-man, hu­manly and sym­pa­thet­i­cally wished for, was forth­com­ing.

137:4.11Near at hand stood six wa­ter­pots of stone, filled with wa­ter, hold­ing about twenty gal­lons apiece. This wa­ter was in­tended for sub­se­quent use in the fi­nal pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies of the wed­ding cel­e­bra­tion. The com­mo­tion of the ser­vants about these huge stone ves­sels, un­der the busy di­rec­tion of his mother, at­tracted Je­sus’ at­ten­tion, and go­ing over, he ob­served that they were draw­ing wine out of them by the pitcher­ful.

137:4.12It was grad­u­ally dawn­ing upon Je­sus what had hap­pened. Of all per­sons pres­ent at the mar­riage feast of Cana, Je­sus was the most sur­prised. Oth­ers had ex­pected him to work a won­der, but that was just what he had pur­posed not to do. And then the Son of Man re­called the ad­mo­ni­tion of his Per­son­al­ized Thought Ad­juster in the hills. He re­counted how the Ad­juster had warned him about the in­abil­ity of any power or per­son­al­ity to de­prive him of the cre­ator pre­rog­a­tive of in­de­pen­dence of time. On this oc­ca­sion power trans­form­ers, mid­way­ers, and all other re­quired per­son­al­i­ties were as­sem­bled near the wa­ter and other nec­es­sary el­e­ments, and in the face of the ex­pressed wish of the Uni­verse Cre­ator Sov­er­eign, there was no es­cap­ing the in­stan­ta­neous ap­pear­ance of wine. And this oc­cur­rence was made dou­bly cer­tain since the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster had sig­ni­fied that the ex­e­cu­tion of the Son’s de­sire was in no way a con­tra­ven­tion of the Fa­ther’s will.

137:4.13But this was in no sense a mir­a­cle. No law of na­ture was mod­i­fied, ab­ro­gated, or even tran­scended. Noth­ing hap­pened but the ab­ro­ga­tion of time in as­so­ci­a­tion with the ce­les­tial as­sem­bly of the chem­i­cal el­e­ments req­ui­site for the elab­o­ra­tion of the wine. At Cana on this oc­ca­sion the agents of the Cre­ator made wine just as they do by the or­di­nary nat­u­ral pro­cesses ex­cept that they did it in­de­pen­dently of time and with the in­ter­ven­tion of super­hu­man agen­cies in the mat­ter of the space as­sem­bly of the nec­es­sary chem­i­cal in­gre­di­ents.

137:4.14Fur­ther­more it was ev­i­dent that the en­act­ment of this so-called mir­a­cle was not con­trary to the will of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, else it would not have tran­spired, since Je­sus had al­ready sub­jected him­self in all things to the Fa­ther’s will.

137:4.15When the ser­vants drew this new wine and car­ried it to the best man, the “ruler of the feast,” and when he had tasted it, he called to the bride­groom, say­ing: “It is the cus­tom to set out first the good wine and, when the guests have well drunk, to bring forth the in­fe­rior fruit of the vine; but you have kept the best of the wine un­til the last of the feast.”

137:4.16Mary and the dis­ci­ples of Je­sus were greatly re­joiced at the sup­posed mir­a­cle which they thought Je­sus had in­ten­tion­ally per­formed, but Je­sus with­drew to a shel­tered nook of the gar­den and en­gaged in se­ri­ous thought for a few brief mo­ments. He fi­nally de­cided that the episode was be­yond his per­sonal con­trol un­der the cir­cum­stances and, not be­ing ad­verse to his Fa­ther’s will, was in­ev­i­ta­ble. When he re­turned to the peo­ple, they re­garded him with awe; they all be­lieved in him as the Mes­siah. But Je­sus was sorely per­plexed, know­ing that they be­lieved in him only be­cause of the un­usual oc­cur­rence which they had just in­ad­ver­tently be­held. Again Je­sus re­tired for a sea­son to the house­top that he might think it all over.

137:4.17Je­sus now fully com­pre­hended that he must con­stantly be on guard lest his in­dul­gence of sym­pa­thy and pity be­come re­spon­si­ble for re­peated episodes of this sort. Nev­er­the­less, many sim­i­lar events oc­curred be­fore the Son of Man took fi­nal leave of his mor­tal life in the flesh.

147:7.2On Tues­day evening Je­sus was con­duct­ing one of his cus­tom­ary classes of ques­tions and an­swers when the leader of the six spies said to him: “I was to­day talk­ing with one of John’s dis­ci­ples who is here at­tend­ing upon your teach­ing, and we were at a loss to un­der­stand why you never com­mand your dis­ci­ples to fast and pray as we Phar­isees fast and as John bade his fol­low­ers.” And Je­sus, re­fer­ring to a state­ment by John, an­swered this ques­tioner: “Do the sons of the bridecham­ber fast while the bride­groom is with them? As long as the bride­groom re­mains with them, they can hardly fast. But the time is com­ing when the bride­groom shall be taken away, and dur­ing those times the chil­dren of the bridecham­ber un­doubt­edly will fast and pray. To pray is nat­u­ral for the chil­dren of light, but fast­ing is not a part of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. Be re­minded that a wise tai­lor does not sew a piece of new and un­shrunk cloth upon an old gar­ment, lest, when it is wet, it shrink and pro­duce a worse rent. Nei­ther do men put new wine into old wine skins, lest the new wine burst the skins so that both the wine and the skins per­ish. The wise man puts the new wine into fresh wine skins. There­fore do my dis­ci­ples show wis­dom in that they do not bring too much of the old or­der over into the new teach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom. You who have lost your teacher may be jus­ti­fied in fast­ing for a time. Fast­ing may be an ap­pro­pri­ate part of the law of Moses, but in the com­ing king­dom the sons of God shall ex­pe­ri­ence free­dom from fear and joy in the di­vine spirit.” And when they heard these words, the dis­ci­ples of John were com­forted while the Phar­isees them­selves were the more con­founded.