Grace

John 2:1-11

Grace, what does it mean? If you look it up in the dictionary the first meaning is elegance or refinement of movement. The second is the gift of salvation to Christians. The third is a period of time you don't have to pay a loan. The last is a prayer said before supper. 

John gives a glimpse of God's abundant grace in the first thing Jesus does. John is so different from any other gospel writer. In Matthew Jesus starts with the sermon on the mount, teaching. In Mark he heals a man with an unclean spirit. In Luke he proclaims to the synagogue a jubilee year. 

This wedding feast is just that a feast. His mother believes he'll do something about the lack of wine and he does. Jesus changes water into the best wine of the feast. Wine you normally wouldn't serve because everyone's so drunk they don't care. Yet he does it and not just a little wine, over 1000 bottles of wine, both commentators state. Grace:  free, generous, extravagant, beautiful, unashamedly displayed to a wedding couple we don't even know the names of. 

John does this for us again and again:  feeding 5000, not walking on water but immediately transporting a boat, talking with a Samaritan woman at a well, not stoning a woman, healing a blind man, a cripple, and praying for us all in 2-3 chapters at the end. Extravagant grace freely given. No requirements, no bars of its a woman, she won't get it, no one who is not important enough to talk with, no things you have to do to prove yourself, to join the throng, believe. 

We do badly at being grace filled. We make requirements, ask people to behave in certain ways, measure up, change who they are. Yet Gods grace doesn't require any of this. No measurement, just the scandal of being freely given. Maybe this is why the religious leaders didn't like him so much. No hoops, no measuring, no rules, just God greatly displayed at a wedding in Cana. In enemy territory, in a trivial event, for drunk guests who wouldn't know or remember. 

Grace, can we hope to display it to the world? Can we give it freely? Can we accept it into our lives?