"Quid est mihi et tibi..."

Today's Gospel is, I don't mind saying, one of my favourites. "They have no wine". Oh dear!

It's a funny thing, since God Knows All That Is, that He asks questions. Jesus does it, in person: when he was Twelve and went with Joseph and Mary to the festival (as was their custom), and then stayed behind... The doctors, it is said, were astonished at his wisdom and his questions... The punch-line is that God asks us Questions to reveal something unto us.

(Socrates, famously, tried a trick along similar lines, and got several archistrategoi and other poloi thoroughly annoyed with him...)

Today, we read that Jesus asked: what is that, to me and thee? As it is written elsewhere, "it is a trifle, for God, to make a poor man suddenly rich". What does Jesus' question reveal to us? Replacing the Wine is not the difficulty: that were a trifle; and He adds (indicative, now!) "My hour is not yet come". Or, to put it another way: This is that couple's Wedding Feast, it won't do to up-stage them in front of Their Whole Family.

Jesus tells us he came to serve, not to be served, and so it is the servants to whom Mary speaks next; rather than stepping in for the groom, Jesus supplements the Steward's office; and so even the Steward, never mind the Feasting Family, knows not whence comes the Good Wine. Everyone continues feasting, still more joyfully than before. Indeed, they have so much of such wine that the newlyweds may well be accounted Suddenly Rich. But the servants know, because Jesus spoke to them, and Jesus' disciples, because they were with him; and from that time they believed.

Good wine: proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy; it's an old joke, and it's in John's Gospel, too!