The Very First Miracle

A man who went by the name of John wrote the following story about Jesus around thirty years after it took place.

Jesus had been a wedding guest at a marriage in Cana, near Lake Galilee.  During the feast the host ran out of wine, not a happy circumstance for the bride’s father. Jesus called the waiters over and told them “Fill the jars with water.” So they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.” So they took it. And when the headwaiter tasted the water, he was flabbergasted. The water had become wine!

According to John’s account, this was Jesus’ first miracle.  Since John hadn’t been around when it happened, perhaps had not yet been born,  he probably heard it from a friend of a friend of someone who had been there.  By the time he wrote it down, there were hundreds and hundreds of stories about the rabbi from Nazareth, so he could have heard it anywhere.

If indeed, the story is true, the wedding guests would indeed have been astounded. No wonder the story began to circulate, along with other stories about Jesus’ extra-ordinary miracles. Blind beginning to see, lame people walking, even a dead man who walked out of his tomb. In all these cases, “miracle” points to something which doesn’t occur in natural human life.

Which is why I want to share this poem today. Because there are miracles which are not extra-ordinary that occur not simply every day, but every few seconds in this our natural, earth-bound world.

First Miracle.   by A.E. Stallings

Her body like a pomegranate torn

Wide open, somehow bears what must be born,

The irony where a stranger small enough  / To bed down in the ox-tongue-polished trough

Erupts into the world and breaks the spell  / Of the ancient, numbered hours with his yell.

Now her breasts ache and weep and soak her shirt / Whenever she hears his hunger or his hurt;

She can’t change water into wine; instead 

She fashions sweet milk out of her own blood.