If You Bring Your Best Wine to the Wedding . . .

. . . everyone will have a good time!

Brian Patrick Leatherman, the director of the Cherry Creek Chorale, said this, or something very like this, at our rehearsal this week, in the context of the necessity for each of us to bring the best that we can to the music.  I was so struck by the comment that I asked him for the source, and he said it was a sideways reference to the wedding at Cana.  I had to think about that for a bit, but I think I get his drift. You’ll remember, I’m sure, that the wine Jesus made was much better than anything that had been served up till then.   “Thou has saved the best till now,” the governor of the feast says.  I guess I always just figured that the wine was better because it was miraculous, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t have just been more of the same stuff they’d already been serving.  No one would have ever known.  Jesus did more than He had to, and so should we.  So I gained a whole new facet of meaning for a story I’ve been hearing since childhood.

By the way, my favorite part is a little phrase tucked in near the end:  “But the servants that drew the water knew.”  The ones eating and drinking at the feast had no idea that there had been a miracle performed, but those who were actually doing the work got to be in on it.  (Read the full story in the Gospel of John 2:1-11.)