The Plan

John 2: 1-12
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So, they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers and his disciples; and they remained there for a few days.


For many years this gospel story was a bit jarring to me. I found it hard to reconcile how I had been taught to understand Jesus’ role as the Son of God, walking tightly with God’s plan of salvation, with how he is portrayed in this story. He indicates that his hour had not yet come to reveal himself but when his mother ignores his protest, expects him to act and doesn’t even discuss the issue with him, he disregards his stated time line and performs a beautifully loving miracle. The whole story, in my mind, just didn’t fit with the idea that God has an agenda with every second planned and orchestrated from A to Z. Jesus, of all people, should have been much more aware of the importance of staying with the program.

There were so many times when I’ve been in a situation where I was trying to discern God’s plan for my life, intensely frustrated because if I knew what his will was I would absolutely do it - but God wasn’t giving me any clues at all. It felt like I was out there hanging in the wind and sometimes I felt that I must be spiritually dense - otherwise I would have known exactly what he wanted me to do.

We do feel a kind of security in believing that God has a detailed moment by moment plan for our lives but then we wonder about and agonize over how much power we have to derail his plans by making a wrong choice. When Jesus said, “Oh, what the heck. I might as well change their water into wine and make my mother happy,” did he knock God’s plan and timeline completely out of whack? When we are faced with a few different options for our lives and we have tried to make sure each option is moral, just and true to our faith but we’re not getting any leads as to which path we should choose, can we really make a choice that totally screws up The Plan?  This is a key question that everyone struggles with. We really don’t want to make a wrong decision.  Everybody probably has this mental image of God sitting in heaven slapping his forehead and going, “Oh shoot! Wrong guess. BZZZZZZ! Game over!”

Perhaps God doesn’t have an A to Z plan. Maybe he just has destination points and there are many ways we can arrive at those destinations without in any way upsetting The Plan. We need to stop and ask ourselves what God wants for each of us. He wants us to experience forgiveness and he wants us to have life and have it abundantly. He wants us to love him and be loved by him and to share that love with everyone we encounter. He wants us to act with justice and mercy. He wants us to be willing to change, grow, take risks and learn who we really are. I think the reason he doesn’t immediately show us The Plan every time we try to discern a direction is because we humans are too prone to rigidity. We can get so carried away with plans and directions that we forget about living in the moment and responding to him in the fullness of each moment, which is where he lives acts and has his being. When we become rigid, we fear the future and we become scared of taking risks. And when we really think about it, walking with the Lord of the Universe is a huge risk. We might find ourselves on an unfamiliar and maybe uncharted course. We might be challenged to let go and grow. We might have to (shudder) change our minds. We might be faced with things we’d rather not face. We might feel lost. 

My husband and I, like most people,  have a GPS (Global Positioning System). What an awesome tool it is. You just enter in an address and a voice tells you exactly what direction to head, which roads to take, what turns are coming up and then when it’s time to turn, it tells you. Usually we have no problem following the GPS's verbal directions but occasionally we get confused, such as when there is more than one exit or there’s a lot of traffic or we were mentally drifting and the turn came before we expected it so we make a completely wrong turn. Before we had GPS this would have been a tense situation because we would be on a wrong road heading in the wrong direction with no idea how to get back to where we should be. But now our GPS just says, “Recalculating.” Then it immediately guides us along a route that gets us back to where we should be.

GPS makes the journey more enjoyable. We aren’t afraid of making mistakes and losing our way. We are no longer afraid of those wrong turns and missed exits. We relax. We see more. We can also make a spontaneous decision to take an interesting road because we know the GPS will always get us back on track.

In the spiritual life, we also have GPS. God’s Positioning System. If you make an unexpected turn, like Jesus did when he changed water into wine, God says, “Recalculating. Enjoy the detour. Learn something. There’s some good stuff on this road too. Go ahead and change the water to wine. It’s a merciful and loving thing to do and you’ll learn more about your gifts and the powers I have anointed you with. Good call. I love you!”  The appropriate response to our Spiritual GPS is to trust that God actually has the power to get us to where we need to go and that he will do it in his own good time. Knowing we have a Spiritual GPS allows us the freedom to focus on what the Lord is really asking of us. Micah 6:8 puts it very well:

  He has showed you, O people, what is good.
       And what does the Lord require of you?
       To act justly and to love mercy
       and to walk humbly with your God.

Jesus had a destination. The cross. But everyday Jesus had to make choices as to what road he would walk down, what group he would teach, what wedding he would attend, what town he would stay in for a few days and with whom. Those details weren’t the important parts of Jesus ministry. The important and life changing parts were how he acted with justice with each person he met, how deeply he loved mercy and poured it out on all the people he encountered and how he was so humble that he walked moment by moment with his Father, not demanding a preview of the whole detailed plan but watching and listening each moment to what his Father was asking of him, fully trusting that the Father would lead him to where he needed to be when he needed to be there and would provide the power and grace necessary for each moment on the way.

"I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” (John 5:19)

It would seem that after he spoke to his mother at the wedding in Cana, Jesus turned to his Father and saw water being turned into wedding wine. Perhaps he also saw a body bleeding on a cross. Then maybe he felt the explosive joy of the heavenly Bridegroom at a wedding feast to end all wedding feasts.

 He started to say no. He started to say it wasn’t in “The Plan”. He could have kept rigidly to the schedule, as he understood it

But apparently, in the Father’s eyes, Love trumps Plan.