John 2:1-25

At first glance it seems that the two stories in this chapter are unrelated.  Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding in Cana, and then over turns the tables in the Temple at Jerusalem. Yet when one considers that the miracles in John often function as parables do in the other gospels, we may find more unity between these two stories than first meets the eye.

One of the key verses in this chapter is verse 6: "Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification". It is not simply that Jesus turned water into wine, but that Jesus drew this wine out of the jars which represented the traditional religion. The miracle seems to echo the parable Jesus spoke of in Luke 5:36ff:

“No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. 

Jesus is proclaiming that the old religious order of things is passing for it is not able to contain the new wine which represents Christ himself and his way. The disciples were the only ones that really understood what really happened at the wedding.

The parable of the water and the wine is replayed in the scene at the Temple. No other place or thing symbolized the old wineskin more than the Temple - it literally was the container of God. Yet in Jesus' day the Temple was filled more with commerce and coin than holiness and justice. Jesus cleansed the temple, for zeal even for the old consumed him - it was, after all, that place where God had placed his name.  Yet even here he pointed to the new. "Destroy the Temple, and in three days I will raise it up again!" - for he knew that only in his death, burial, resurrection and ascension would the new wine flow.