John now focusses on the deeds of Jesus, starting with His first miracle and John emphasises through Jesus' early miracles the declaration that Christ makes everything new. Here Jesus replaces water with new wine, further in this chapter Jesus talks about a new Temple and then the famous passage about new birth; meeting with the Samaritan woman He discusses a new well of water and then new worship. Jesus has come and He sweeps away the old to make everything new. The declaration at the end of time in Revelation 21 v 5: (God declared): ''I am making everything new!'' It is quite likely that the sudden presence of Jesus and His disciples at a village wedding caused the wine shortage and possibly they had not brought any wine which was the custom in those days. When Mary tells Jesus about the urgent situation He replies with two strangely abstract and cryptic statements (verse 4). What it appears in hindsight is that He is stating that everything He does and says is now to be understood only under the shadow of the cross. Mary quite reasonably doesn't understand Him and gives the initiative to Him. There has been lots of thoughts and conversations had over this enigmatic passage, but what we can say for sure is that Jesus' first miracle demonstrated the great generosity of God and revealed that He was greater than the Old Testament Prophets such as Elijah (read 1 Kings 17 v 7-16) and Elisha (2 Kings 4 v 1-7) and fulfilled many prophecies, such as Isaiah 25 v 6: 'In Jerusalem, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will spread a wonderful feast for all the people of the world. It will be a delicious banquet with clear, well-aged wine and choice meat'. I love the fact that only the servants knew of the miracle and in verse 12 we discover that His entourage consists of His disciples AND also His mother and brothers!