Turning Wine Into Water

Yesterday I was musing on the story of Jesus turning water into the best wine. Jesus takes the ordinary and mundane and transforms it miraculously into something extra-ordinary…

Oscar Wilde said: ‘The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water.’ We can turn the extra-ordinary back into something mundane.

We visited a garden centre for our lunch.

We went past the plants, pots and garden ornaments, into the shop… There was a Halloween display – masks, decorations, costumes, plastic bats and pumpkins – the full works! We’re still in August and we’re already thinking about November!

The ancient pagan celebration of ‘All-Hallows-Eve’ that became the Christian ‘All Hallows’ festival, reflects on our mortality and considers eternity. Many Christians celebrate ‘All Saints Day’, remembering with gratitude the ‘saints’ that have blessed them…

But we’ve a commercialised it. At best it’s an excuse for a party, a harmless bit of fun. At worst it’s a scary imposition that’s deeply offensive. We’ve turned wine into water.  

We enjoyed our coffee and toasted sandwich and returned through the shop.

There was a new addition to the display. Two members of staff were putting up a huge Christmas Tree! We didn’t wait to see if Christmas cards, flashing Santas, tastefully displayed reindeer and fluffy snowmen followed.  

There’s much about Christmas that’s good and wholesome – remembering old friends, focusing on the family, giving and receiving gifts… apart from the timeless message of the Christ child. Yet we turn this life-giving wine into consumerist water.

Richard Coles describes the Christmas story: ‘…a stranger travelling with a pregnant teenager to whom he isn’t married, with no suitable accommodation, and a highly implausible story about hallucinating shepherds, royal visitors, and a chest of gold in their saddlebags which somebody ‘gave’ them.’

It’s an event that could happen today.

Yet as I muse on this ordinary and mundane story it’s transformed into something extra-ordinary. I rediscover light in the darkness, hope for the hope-less, tidings of great joy. My water becomes wine again.