WINE IN CANA

 by Adam Harbinson

You've often heard it said that you can twist the Bible to make it mean whatever you want, and you can – if you don’t know the author. I remember one old boy who was a few slices short of a loaf. On a Sunday morning when the communal cup of ‘wine’ was being circulated, he would sometimes stand up and quote aloud from Matthew 26; ‘(Jesus) took the cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it,’ and then he’d drink all of it. That was his private interpretation, and I used to wonder would he ever have made it home in time for lunch if he’d been in an Anglican Church where they drink the real McCoy, the way Jesus did.  

And that’s another thing I‘ll never understand. When Jesus was at that wedding in Cana and changed the water in six big stone jars into wine, did you know that he produced nearly 400 bottles of the stuff? And it wasn’t Shloer, you know the non-alcoholic alternative that’s as near as some religious folk get to consuming the real wine that King Solomon ordered us to drink when he said; ‘Go ahead. Eat your food and drink your wine with a happy heart, for God approves of this!’

My query is this. If Jesus went to all that trouble to change a sad wedding into a happy wedding by turning 60 gallons of soapy water for ceremonial hand-washing into 400 bottles quality plonk, why do ministers pray over a bottle of wine so it becomes Ribena? It’s a mystery.

And then there was the lady who couldn’t be bothered reading the Bible at any length. She would open it randomly with closed eyes, jab her finger on the page and read the first verse her finger landed on. She did it one day and read, ‘Judas threw the money onto the floor of the Temple and went out and hanged himself.’ She didn’t like that one very much so she repeated the exercise. This time her finger landed on the verse, ‘Jesus said, “Now go and do the same”.’

However, one of the most absurd examples I’ve ever come across is the distortion of the scripture, ‘Go and make disciples of all the nations.’  

It’s obvious that he was instructing his followers to lead people to become disciples of Jesus, but there’s a growing tendency among many of the new churches for more mature Christians to ‘disciple’ new Christians. They are in effect saying, ‘You’re a new convert, I’m an old hand. Be like me.’ How arrogant can you get! Clearly, people who believe this garbage, and specifically those who teach it, know little of the humility of Jesus. It’s a dangerous practice that leads to gross error with many babies being thrown out with much bathwater.

I have that T-shirt too.