Wedding At Cana (Maria Hearl)

That’s what she says to us. I can’t put my finger on what it is that makes us take note of her. Something about the way she is. She has a sort of (?) serene presence. She can see what’s going on; she’s part of it, but not part of it, this wedding feast, going on for several days, with people from miles around. She can see what we servants can see but the guests can’t – yet – that we’re running out of wine. You can’t run out of wine at a wedding, it’s the most important ingredient – well apart from the couple.

The master of the feast – heaven knows why they gave the job to him, a real waste of space he is – he doesn’t seem to know what’s going on at all – he’s had quite a bit to drink himself, I reckon. But she seems to see it all, and  she seems to care. You can’t run out of wine; they’d never live down the disgrace – probably call it a bad omen.

‘Do whatever he tells you’, she says. No-one else is going to tell us, so we wait. And he tells us.

‘Fill the jars with water’, he says. The big ones we use for carrying water to wash feet and so on. Great big ones. 20 or 30 gallons they hold, each one. That’s a lot of water, heavy to carry when they’re full. Never mind. Just do it. We’re only servants. No need to know the reason.

‘Do whatever he tells you’, she’d said.

‘Draw some out and take it to the master of the feast’.

What! Why? OK I know this is good fresh, spring water, living water we call it around these parts, I know he looks as if he could do with water in place of all that wine he’s been drinking. But you don’t drink water from these water jars. Never mind. Let’s just do it. We’re only servants and no else is going to tell us what to do.

Now who’d have thought it. Seems like what’s come out of those water pots is pretty good wine – the best, someone is saying.

Then you get the complaints – why didn’t we serve this first? as if it was our fault.

Looking back it makes me think:

What did we do? Nothing really. We did what she told us – did what he told us. We got the water pots, went and drew some water from the well, staggered back with them, drew some off and gave it to the guy who should have organised all this. Nothing unusual, getting water. It’s just that they used this water for drinking not washing. That’s all. So how come it tasted like the best wine?

I dunno. 

Perhaps if you do something different, something out of the ordinary, sometimes you’ll get something better (?), more refreshing(?), less ‘stale’ I suppose you could say.

Perhaps you only have to use ordinary things – water pots, water, your hands, your heart, your gifts - I know, your heart, your soul, your mind and your strength as it says somewhere.

Perhaps if you do what he tells you…..

What was going on there? On that third day of the week, the day we always hold weddings because it was on the third day of creation that God twice said that what God had created that day was good, so the rabbis tell us that the wedding is twice blessed. The third day of the week, the day when the Lord came down from Sinai in the sight of all the people, as it says in the Torah (Ex 19), the third day of the week when they finished re-building the temple, as Ezra says (Ezra 6:15), the third day on which the prophet Hosea says that ‘he will raise us up that we may live before him’. Was this the ‘third day’ Hosea was talking about, or will there be another? How should I know. I’m only a servant.

That master of the feast couldn’t organise a…. Then ‘he’ came along and changed things. Completely.

‘Do whatever he tells you’, she said. We did AND WE HELPED HIM CHANGE THINGS. Even though we are only servants.

‘Do whatever he tells you’.