PT #1

A Practice Talk - Water Into Wine

As part of my trainee year we have training to give talks once a week. Every so often we get given a randomly assinged passage from one of the books of the Bible that we're studying, and have to come up with a talk for the rest of the people there. A few weeks ago (before I started this blog) I gave a practice talk on when Jesus turned water into wine in John's gospel. It was designed to be evangelistic (to non-Christians), but not necessarily a youth talk. Here are my notes, they're not particularly impressive, I'm not a seasoned talk giver by any means, so make of them what you will!

Introduction

- I hope you're all having a good evening.

- I'm going to talk for about 10 or 12 minutes.

- And my hope for this talk is to show you three things.

- The first is that this book, the Bible, is true. It's not made up, and it contains evidence to say so.

- The second is that it has something important and interesting to say.

- And finally, the third is that it really is readable, you don't need to be a scholar or a theologian to make sense of it. Though that's not to say that it's not difficult, but anyone who's prepared to think about it, can get what they need to know from it.

- So how's this going to work? Well, I'm just going to go through the passage we just read, bit by bit, having a look at what it has to say, and that's it. I'm not going to force anything on you, you can decide for yourself what you want to make of it.

- Let's take a look at the first sentences then.

1 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

- The scene is set, it's at a wedding, the perfect place for a good bit of drama.

- But this is more than a good story, the book we're reading from is an eye-witness testimony about Jesus, a person with big claims, and the writer wants us to know that what he's telling us is true, so he's taken the time to tell us exactly when and where what he saw happened.

- Let's read on

3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

- It might be a short and blunt sentence, but this is a really big deal, it's a complete disaster. Imagine you're at a wedding reception and they run out wine half way through. Now imagine that reception lasts a week, involves an entire village and has nothing else to drink but wine, not even tap water, not even shloer. The guy who organised this is in big trouble, to say the least. It's awkward.

- Now Jesus' mum, has obviously found out about this and is trying to do something about it. The only trouble is, there's not much she can really do.

- Except she knows Jesus. She knows he can fix this.

- How does she know this though? Jesus didn't have loads of money, he didn't own a vineyard, there's nothing it seems he can do either. Unless she has some kind of evidence that tells her that this Jesus is not just your average bloke.

- Well, as it happens, she did have her own evidence, and that's written in another of the eyewitness accounts about Jesus, but we don't have time for that now. It's free to look up for yourself if you like, though.

- So she goes to Jesus with the problem. But... what's his response?

4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

- It seems rather confusing, almost funny.

- Something to point out is the little note which says that the word woman does not infer any disrespect in the language this was written in.

- So what's he saying? Well, I could suggest an answer, but just sticking to what it says in this passage alone, it seems that Jesus has got some task, some mission that he's waiting for, and that anything aside from that is outside his “job description”, so to speak.

- I guess as weird as this may seem, it's actually pretty important. Jesus is saying that he's not the quick fix man that Mary may think he is. He's not here to do a party trick.

- But he's NOT saying that he doesn't care about what's going on, or that he won't do anything to help.

- That's clear because only two verses later, after asserting his authority, he is in fact helping. He obviously wants to help, even though he doesn't have to.

- I think that's something worth dwelling on. The person this account is about is important and has authority, but unlike normal people who've got power, he wants to take the time to help everyday people like you and me.

- Let's read on.

5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

They did so,

- Woah! Hold on. This is crazy!

- Jesus has told the servants to fill some dirty washing pots with water and give it to their master, who's expecting wine, to drink.

- And here's the craziest thing, they actually did it.

- Why would you do that if you didn't trust the person who told you to do it? And why would you trust them if you didn't have some kind of evidence? And we're talking about some serious evidence here, because I'm guessing if someone told you to take a bowl of dirty water and feed it to your boss, pretending it was wine, you'd be pretty reluctant, even though they can't have you flogged and beaten.

- Whatever the case, they did it, and people reading this at the time it was written could well have found them and asked them about it. Which is another bit of evidence that what we're reading is true.

- Are you seeing what's happening here? All the right bits of evidence are been put forward, it's the kind of stuff you'd want for a court case. You've got the place, time, witnesses. And there's still more to come!

- So what happens?

9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10 and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

- I love how matter of fact this is, someone's just turned water into wine and they just spend three sentences on it. But that's the thing, nothing is sensationalised, it's all just laid out as it happened, not to bore you, but so that you can trust it.

- But let's think how big a deal this is,

- At some point between the washing pots and this guy's taste-buds, Jesus has managed to turn this horrible, disgusting water into seriously good wine. It's pretty impressive.

- I don't know about you, but I'd want to get to know this person, and more than just for the sake of being able to do a really good party trick, he's someone with power, who cares about people and who wants to help them even when he really doesn't have to.

- My response was to find out more, and I was impressed with what I saw. The same goes for Jesus' disciple's, which is the name given to the group of people who had been following him around since the previous day, check out verse 11.

11 What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

- These guys figured the same thing.

- This Jesus person is worth getting to know. It says they believed in him, be careful not to misread this as saying that from that point they were 100% sold, they were 100% there and 100% got everything. If you read the rest of this account you'll see it took a lot more than just this one chunk of evidence to get them all the way there, but this was enough to get them to stick with it until they got what they needed.

- I would love to encourage you to find out more too.

- I hope that you've seen that I haven't done anything fancy with this text, I've not said anything that you can't work out for yourselves by reading it or by reading the rest of the book.

- And that's the way it should be. This account is meant for everyone, so that everyone can check out the evidence for themselves.

- And again, like I said at the start, I hope you've seen this isn't fairytale stuff, it's evidence based, and we've seen quite a lot considering we've just checked out eight short paragraphs.

- If you are interested, feel free to talk to me, or any Christian you know. Or to take a copy of this account. I've left a few piles by the exists, they're free to take, it's why they're there.

- Have a read for yourself, decide what you think.