I find that Scriptures most grow my faith when I struggle with an unspoken problem in the Bible story. For example, the Gospel lesson many of us will hear this Sunday recounts Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana, John 2:1-11. The evangelist tells us the point of the story. “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.” The problem to me is that the whole story is past tense. The disciples believed in their time; do we in our time?
Old theologians said saving faith has three parts: knowledge, assent, and confidence. In our time we can know the story of wedding at Cana and we can agree about believing in Jesus, but it’s a far different thing to have confidence in Jesus when our own “wine” is running out, when health, bills, relationships, you name it, fill our thoughts. “Why, we often ask in our prayers, hast Thou made it so difficult to find Thee? Why must we encounter so much anguish and travail before we can catch a glance of Thy presence?” (Abraham Heschel, “God in Search of Man,” 155). “Please, sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us?” (Judges 6:13). “Lord, where is your steadfast love of old?” (Psalm 89:49).
When Mary told Jesus that the wine had run out, He answered cryptically, “My hour has not yet come.” I doubt Mary knew what Jesus was really saying at the time, but in our time we know. Jesus’ “hour” was His death and exaltation. “When Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1; see also John 7:30, 12:23, and 17:1 about Jesus’ “hour”). Where’s our sign? The crucifix on the wall of your home. Where’s our hope when we’re running out of “wine”? The marriage feast that will have no end.