I conducted an extensive half-hour interview with one extraordinary person every week on my radio program under the title “Ordinary People With Extra-ordinary Stories”. I did that every week for over twenty-five years. At the same time, many of these people have shared their stories on my weekly TV program, “Turn Round Australia”, with others on our television specials from the Opera House, and many in our church services in Wesley Theatre. I guess I have interviewed over 2000 such people whose lives have been remarkably changed by Jesus Christ.

Some stories of transformation were so significant as to be unbelievable so a while ago I decided to follow up a dozen people whose stories we had heard the previous year. One guy was at Wesley Mission’s Turnaround Program. He had had an impressive turnaround in his own life. Carl said, “The program is called Turnaround, and that’s exactly what it has done – it has turned my life around.” Carl lived with us for nine months. Carl is honest about the mistakes he has made: a life of alcohol abuse, violence, jail and broken relationships.

It took the love and support of the staff at Wesley Rehabilitation Services to help Carl get his life back on track. Carl said: “Alcohol addiction caused my downfall and took part of my life away. Others could see it, but I couldn’t.” Carl started drinking heavily when he was 16. Later his drinking led to his marriage falling apart and losing his children. Moving from one broken relationship to another, Carl kept turning to alcohol to escape the pain of his life. “I chose a relationship with a woman over a relationship with my children. That day really tore at my heart, and so I drank more heavily to deal with the pain.”

Drunk one night, angry and confused, Carl decided to kill himself. He chose to drive off the freeway at high speed, his car crashing down a deep ravine. As he regained consciousness, Carl was surrounded by fire. His car was in flames. He was rescued from death. Afterwards, Carl said, “I wanted to be put in jail. My life was out of control, and I was screaming out for help.” He was sentenced to three months in prison. Carl had hit rock bottom. He knew he needed help.

But the day he was released, his partner took him straight to the pub to celebrate. Continuing along a path of violence and drunkenness, Carl found himself threatening a police officer – a move that triggered a judge to order Carl into the care of Wesley Rehabilitation Services. “I had left everyone, all my friends and family, and was totally alone. I came to understand that I had a problem, an addiction to alcohol.” In-depth counselling sessions and practical support from our staff enabled Carl to look at his life and see how alcohol had wreaked havoc on his family, relationships and his children. “I had no self confidence, no faith in my own recovery. Wesley has taught me to trust again, and to look to other people for support,” Carl said.

Wesley Rehabilitation Services provides assistance from alcohol, drug, gambling and other addictions. “Eight months ago, I would not have believed that I could be helped. A lifeline has been passed out to me so that I don’t drift out to sea again,” said Carl. What has happened since? He has been able to reunite with some family members, but his children do not want to see him yet. Carl hopes with time and healing they will want to meet their father. He went to church at Mt Annan, where he met a very strong Christian woman who laid down some very firm guidelines for their friendship. That blossomed into love. They have married and moved into a house at Narellan. Carl is doing a TAFE course in business management, and his talent for painting, which he discovered while with us, is also being improved. Carl says: “I am a stronger person today, and am so thankful for the support I have been given to believe in myself and to have a future. If my story helps one person, that touches me. It’s my opportunity to pay something back.”

To help people turn around their lives and to create new quality in all their relationships – with God, others and themselves – was part of the whole purpose of Jesus Christ. John’s gospel reveals how Jesus did that in the lives of so many people. That is why John puts at the beginning of his Gospel a sign of the transforming power of Jesus Christ. It would show what Jesus can do, and it illustrates all that is to follow. That sign occurred at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.

Cana is on the West Bank of Israel six kilometres north of Nazareth. A wedding is always a gala occasion. In a village like Cana it would be a community celebration. A few years ago, I joined with more than a thousand Jews in a kibbutz Nof Ginnosar, near Cana, in a wedding celebration.

The kibbutz (Hebrew word for “communal settlement”) is a unique rural community; a society dedicated to mutual aid and social justice; a socioeconomic system based on the principle of joint ownership of property, equality and cooperation of production, consumption and education; the fulfillment of the idea “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”; a home for those who have chosen it.

The first kibbutzim (plural of “kibbutz”) were founded at the beginning of the 20th Century in 1909 by a group of pioneers on land acquired by the Jewish National Fund. Their founders were young Jewish pioneers from Eastern Europe. They were idealists seeking to establish again a Jewish presence in Palestine. They lacked agricultural know-how, were on desolate land neglected for centuries, with a scarcity of water and a shortage of funds.

Today some 270 kibbutzim, with memberships ranging from 40 to more than 1,000, are scattered throughout the country.

Most kibbutzim have a residential area of members’ homes, children’s houses and playgrounds for every age group, and communal facilities such as a dining hall, auditorium, library, swimming pool, tennis court, medical clinic, laundry, grocery and the like. Most also have a dairy farm, an orange grove, poultry sheds, and depending on the area a fishing fleet. Some have industrial factories in metal work, plastics and processed foods, others organic agriculture and increasingly, tourist hotels.

The kibbutz functions as a direct democracy. The general assembly of all its members formulates policy, elects officers, authorizes the kibbutz budget and approves new members. It serves not only as a decision-making body but also as a forum where members may express their opinions and views. Day-to-day affairs are handled by elected committees, which deal with areas such as housing, finance, production planning, health, and culture.

Work is seen as a value in itself, and members are assigned to positions for varying lengths of time, while routine functions such as kitchen and dining hall duty are performed on a rotation basis. Women are equal participants in the labor force, with jobs in all parts of the kibbutz open to them. Each kibbutz is self-reliant in labor. Many kibbutzim host young volunteers from Israel and abroad for periods of one month or longer in exchange for work, thus partially solving the dilemma of obtaining outside labor. These young adults work extremely hard under a daily discipline of hours and behaviour.

In earlier times the whole village brought up the children in communal children’s houses. Today children in the majority of kibbutzim sleep at their parents’ homes until they reach high school age for the family unit is gaining more importance in the structure of the kibbutz community. Young children perform regular age-appropriate tasks, older children assume certain jobs in the kibbutz and, at high school level, they devote one full day each week to work in a branch of the kibbutz economy.

The kibbutz is a communal society which assumes responsibility for its members’ needs throughout their lives. No money changes hands, but members allot themselves a predetermined amount of credit each year to spend as they wish.

Over the years, the kibbutzim have evolved unique ways of celebrating traditional Jewish festivals and national holidays, as well as personal milestones such as weddings, bar/bat mitzvahs and anniversaries. Seasonal and agricultural events, which were commemorated in biblical times, have been revitalized through song, dance and the arts.

The kibbutz movement sponsors a number of professional groups, including a symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, modern and folk dance troupes, choirs and a theater company, which perform regularly in Israel and abroad.

The kibbutz where I stayed was still very primitive when I went there, but today is extremely tourist orientated with a wonderful hotel and a unique archaeological feature found nowhere else in Israel. At Kibbutz Nof Ginnosar, you can also see the “Ancient Boat”, a rare example of the kind of boat in which Jesus would have sailed.

There was a drought in Israel in 1985. The drought, plus the pumping out of water for irrigation, lowered the level of the Sea of Galilee to a point lower than it had ever been before. The ruins of a sunken boat appeared, and it was excavated. The timbers had survived, sunk in the mud beneath the water for centuries. They were black and waterlogged, but still kept their shape. It was 8.2 metres long and 2.35 metres wide. Its planks butt against each other, as did boats from the Roman era. Mortise and tenon joints hold the planks of cedar and oak together nailed by wooden pegs.

“But how to raise it?” – the Israeli government archaeologist, Shelley Wachsmann, pondered. He gathered a team of volunteers. The boat’s timber was in good shape. Its long immersion saturated it to the consistency of wet cardboard, so it was too soft to move. Yet if it were allowed to dry out its entire cellular structure would collapse.

They sprayed polyurethane over the exposed inner portions of the vessel, and let this harden to the boat’s exact shape. Protected by an impromptu ‘dry dock’ of sandbags the volunteers then dug below the boat and fibreglassed it. More polyurethane created a strong, protective cocoon. It has now been restored at Kibbutz Nof Ginnosar and is in a special glass house.

Its style, and a cooking pot and a lamp found in it, point to an age of about 2,000 years. Radiocarbon 14 testing of the wood gave its date range as 40BC to 40AD. Journalists named it the ‘Jesus boat’ or ‘Peter’s boat’. It came from their period but there is no way to prove any connection between it and Jesus and Peter. There was no name like ‘Jonah and Sons’ painted on the side! It would have needed a crew of five. Jesus called Zebedee’s sons, James and John, to leave their father ‘in the boat with the men he employed’ to follow Him. Mark 1: 20. These boats worked in pairs with long nets catching shoals of Musht fish. Musht are large, edible and shoal-loving fish that have remained plentiful in the Sea of Galilee from Jesus’ time to today. Often called ‘St Peter’s fish’, they were almost certainly the particular fish netted in the ‘miraculous’ catch described in Luke 5:1-7. Today they remain a favourite with Galilean fishermen. I cooked some of those fish at dawn on a fire by the side of Lake Galilee and thought of Jesus cooking breakfast and calling the disciples to come and eat with him.

This kibbutz is now a wonderful site for tourists. From here they can watch the sun rise over the Sea of Galilee where fishermen work the waters with nets much as in the time of Jesus. They can from here sail around to explore Capernaum, the centre of Jesus’ ministry, visit the synagogue which stands on the site where Jesus taught and recall his teaching and preaching the gospel of the kingdom (Matt.4:13, 23). It is only a few minutes to visit the peaceful Mount of Beatitudes, which overlooks the Sea of Galilee where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. Not far away is Bethsaida where Jesus chose five of his disciples (Matt. 4: 18-21; John 1: 39-51) and Chorazim, the town cursed by Jesus because He did mighty works there and they “repented not” (Matt. 11: 21). On the far shore of the sea is Gadara where Jesus cast out evil spirits from a demon-possessed man and cast them into a group of swine which ran violently down a steep hill and drowned in the sea (Mark 5: 1-13). But I had one further privilege. I was an invited guest at a community wedding! This was a rare celebration, a Cana style privilege.

The thing that stands out about the Cana wedding was that it was a total community celebration and before all the people Jesus introduced the Cana Principle. That is, we can live a successful life in our city if we realize that ordinary lives may be transformed into extraordinary when Jesus is allowed to exercise his power.

I look back on the films our film crew made of that wedding service and feast, of the singing of Hebrew folk songs and traditional dancing, and at all the bottles of Coca Cola, orange juice, and wine on the tables set for one thousand guests. I could only imagine the embarrassment of the bridal couple, their parents and organizers if the drink supply had been inadequate. Yet that is what happened in the community wedding at Cana, when Jesus, his family and disciples attended.

Failure to provide adequately for the guests would involve social disgrace, for at this wedding the supply of wine ran out. In the close-knit communities of Jesus’ day, such an error would never be forgotten and would haunt the newly married couple all their lives. The situation prompted Mary to inform Jesus of the emergency. The miracle of the water being turned into wine has a number of deep meanings and John put it at the beginning of his Gospel for that reason.

1. Why A Sign?

John’s Gospel starts with this event to give an indication of what the rest of the Gospel will show. The wedding of Cana in Galilee was the first recorded miracle of Jesus. Some scholars reject anything looking like a miracle. John says that this miracle was a “sign” that pointed to something beyond itself, that there was a deeper meaning. John 2:11 “This, the first of His miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed His glory, and His disciples put their faith in Him.”

Note when it happened. A wedding feast typically lasted for up to six days of open house celebration involving the whole village as I witnessed.

Note where it happened. “On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee” John 2:1. Cana was a small village, although today it is the site of an aircraft electrics factory. “Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and His disciples had also been invited to the wedding.” Mary was possibly a relative of the couple hence Jesus and his disciples were invited.

Note what happened. Mary asked Jesus to help because, to the family’s embarrassment, the supply of wine ran out. Jesus said nothing but simply went to the water jars.

“Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. Then He told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realise where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” The toastmaster in charge of the distribution of food and drink was astounded by the high quality of the wine since generally a poorer quality was served once the taste of the guests became dulled.

2. What Does This Sign Mean?

Many have spoken of this sign indicating the interests of Jesus. Jesus is interested in ordinary people and everyday events: weddings, funerals, work, fishing, harvesting, drawing water from a well, farming, sewing patches on garments and so on. All of His teaching is illustrated from the activities of ordinary people whom He understood and loved. This sign was a quiet affair. Neither the bridegroom nor the toastmaster knew what had happened. Only the servants filling the water-pots and drawing the wine knew.

Others have used this sign to indicate the methods that Jesus uses. He works with humans in solving people’s problems. He used the hands of people to fill the water pots, to draw from them, and to give to others. He takes whatever we already possess and uses that, multiplies that, and satisfies our needs abundantly. He fills our emptiness with a quality never before realised.

Others have used this sign to indicate the mission of Jesus. His purpose was to reveal to His disciples who He was. “This, the first of His miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed His glory, and His disciples put their faith in Him.” People who put their faith in Jesus see His glory. They understand exactly who He is. Put your faith in Jesus and you know!

Others have seen in this miracle an example of the abundance of God’s grace. One characteristic of John’s writing is that beneath John’s simple stories “there is a deeper meaning which is only open to those who have eyes to see.” (William Barclay). One detail was the six stone water-pots containing the water which turned to wine. Jesus turned all that water into wine. That was anything up to one hundred and eighty gallons of wine! Not 180 bottles of wine, but 180 gallons of wine! These weddings involved the whole village, family and friends, and that can be a large number like the wedding I attended just down the road at Nof Ginnosar. Some preachers have said the wine supply ran out because the disciples had turned up uninvited! But that kind of suggestion would never be made by anyone who has attended a whole village celebration. Having a thousand people present is not exceptional. When the grace of Jesus comes to us there is enough!

A further meaning is that Jesus Christ can fill your inner emptiness. Is Jesus filling your emptiness? Where, on a scale of one to ten, would you rate your life now? What number will you record? One poll revealed Australians average 6.7. That seems to me to be pitifully low! Australians should be living life to the full, enjoying it to the uttermost, living with confidence in the future. We live in a land of peace, with bountiful natural resources, with the highest rate of home ownership in the world. We have more people employed than at any time in our history. But too many people rate their satisfaction with life low. They are empty within. But there is always a super-abundance of God’s grace to meet our every need. Beyond all our dreaming, His grace is abundant!

To others, the miracle is about Jesus who brings about conversion: water to wine, sinners to saints. This is a miracle of transformation.

Note it occurred in almost complete obscurity. Few know when or how it happened, but they know that it did happen. That is the same with many transformed lives I see. Quietly, in their own home, or on a bus, or at work, the changing friendship of Jesus overwhelms them and they are born again as brand new creatures, now made children of God. The effect of this miracle is noteworthy. It marked the beginning of a ministry accompanied by supernatural power; and it proved so convincing to the new disciples that they “put their faith in him.” The deed helped confirm the conclusion they had drawn from their previous interviews with him: Jesus is the Messiah.

The disciples knew that was the difference they saw in the lives of those whom Jesus touched. Whoever came to Jesus found their lives transformed. The early Christians saw the difference in their lives, not just once, but every day. They quoted from the Old Testament: “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lam 3:22

We will live our lives successfully in the city when we exercise the Cana Principle, helping others discover the transforming touch of Jesus in their lives.

Give your life into His hands now! He who can change water into wine can change your life also. When you belong to the family of God you can have a new beginning when Jesus Christ remakes your life.

Rev the Hon Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC

Thursday, 9th July, 2009, 4:25 pm | Bible Studies