The First Believer
The story of Jesus turning water into wine is in the gospel of John. It is commonly characterized as a story which shows that Jesus has power over everything; that Jesus can provide for our needs; even that drinking wine is OK for Christians. [It is, but that is a different issue.]
The event takes place at a wedding in the town of Cana in Galilee, close to Nazareth. Jesus, along with his disciples, is invited to the wedding. During the celebration, they ran out of wine, which was a significant social embarrassment in that cultural context. Mary, the mother of Jesus, informs him of the situation, and Jesus responds by performing his first public miracle.
In response to his mother’s request, Jesus instructs the servants to fill six stone water jars with water. Each jar holds between 20 to 30 gallons. After the jars are filled, Jesus tells the servants to draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet. When the master tastes the water that has now become wine, he remarks that it is of the finest quality and wonders why the good wine was saved for later in the celebration.
What is important about this story in not just that it is his “first” miracle. Or that it was a quiet behind-the-scenes miracle because only the servants, disciples and Mary know about it. But that it is a story of faith.
Mary simply asks Jesus to do something for this wedding couple, because she knows he can. She has been part of this since the Annunciation and Bethlehem. She knows and believes that he is divine.
The disciples that were there, (we don’t know how many there were at this point) were picked up from John the Baptist’s group of disciples. So, they were just watching this “new guy” that John said was the Messiah. They were looking for confirmation of John’s assertion of Jesus being the one spoken of by the prophets. Then the first miracle happens, “and his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11b).
But Mary already did. The woman was the first believer. She knew He would do something if she asked him to. Her request can be characterized as prayer. She asked God for something. And God replied; in a way that she could not have predicted, but she got a reply. Her faith was rewarded. The first true believer was a woman.
Random Thoughts 