The Sign in the Wine

Signs, signs everywhere signs. We are inundated with signs.  Signs point the way, give direction, tell us where we are, where we aren’t.  Signs welcome us or tell us to keep out.  Signs bear messages, some favorable, some unfavorable.  Signs are visual cues, reminders, and attention- grabbers.  Signs advertise and entice.  They provoke or they seek to console.  They convey a public message.  We see so many signs, we ignore them.  Sometimes with consequence.   Signs organize us, give order to things.  Keep us moving along.  People say, “it’s a sign” when they mean that something means something else—that an occurrence is pointing to another reality altogether. People sometimes look for signs—signs of change in the seasons of life.  Signs signal when something is about to happen or when something has happened to which we ought to pay attention. 

When Jesus Came to the Jordan River

When Jesus came to the Jordan river to be baptized by John he did not follow the crowds.  They came for a show.  They came to be aroused from their spiritual slumber.  They came for a sign of hope that God had not abandoned them in their plight.  They came for healing, for forgiveness, for cleansing from the sin that separated them from the salvation of their God.  They came because John cried out and they heard his voice crying and they heard their prophets’ voices in his voice and they believed that in His baptism they would find faith and the promise of God for God’s people.  They came because they needed to come.  They came because of a longing---a longing that escapes us in this culture of immediacy and access and now and comfortable living.  They longed because they lacked, they longed because they tasted hunger and thirst and death.  They longed because they were weary from oppression and abuse.  They longed because that’s all they could do.

When Jesus came to the Jordan river to be baptized by John he did not follow the crowds.  He did not come to join the community in the wilderness.  He did not come to make amends, get his life right with the LORD, if you will.  Jesus came to reveal Himself to the world.