September 14, 2023 - John 2-4

“On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples” (2:1,2). Just so ordinary. Jesus attended a wedding. Imagine that! The wedding taking place and Jesus sitting there on the fourth pew in the middle. Of course, there was also the extraordinary when Jesus turned the water to wine. But the fact that the Son of God participates in the everyday events of life is just such a heartening thing. He understands our lives. He has participated in our lives.

Traveling from Judea to Galilee, Jesus had to pass through Samaria: “Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well” (4:6). Jesus, walking along a dusty road, becomes thirsty, and he stops at a well. I can imagine Jesus, in our day, having driven many miles on the interstate, stopping at a McDonald's and picking up a McD’s sweet iced tea with a lemon thrown in. Jesus grew weary and became thirsty. He knows what it is like to be human.

But Jesus goes so far beyond our merely human existence! He says to the Samaritan woman at the well: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (4:13,14). Oh, the wonder of it all!

I cannot tell why He, whom angels worship,

Should set His love upon the sons of men,

Or why, as Shepherd, He should seek the wanderers,

To bring them back they know not how or when.

But this I know, that He was born of Mary,

When Bethlehem’s manger was His only home,

And that He lived at Nazareth and laboured,

And so the Saviour, Saviour of the world, is come. --W. Y. Fullerton (c. 1920)