Whenever Jesus wasn't preaching or teaching you'd find Him at a party. It might be at a tax collector's or at a Pharisee's home (religious leader). The guests might include power men in the community or the riffraff. What seemed to bother the stuffy, "religious" types wasn't that Jesus went to parties, but that He seemed to enjoy Himself too much. That, I believe, is why they called Him a glutton and winebibber.

It was at just such a party that Jesus performed His first miracle. The occasion was a wedding banquet. Tradition tells us it was the disciple John's wedding and that makes sense since Mary (who was the cousin of John's mother) seems to feel some sort of responsibility to the guests and since John has inside knowledge of events that took place at the party, which no one else seems to be aware of. The miracle was the turning of water into wine, some four hundred gallons of it!

I've heard many theological explanations about that first miracle. "Jesus simply speeded up a natural process because, of course, in nature grapevines take water and turn them into wine," some say. "All miracles are really just nature speeded up." Such explanations miss the point, I think. The point is that running out of wine is the surest way of bringing a party to a grinding halt, and Jesus' provision allowed the party to go on.

From Michael Card's, "Immanuel, Reflections of the Life of Christ." Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN. Copyright 1990.