Johann Quisumbing

An Adventure Story of Yeshua bar Yosef by JQuisumbing

His mother was a real taskmaster. For a whole day, she commanded the hands of all the relatives and even his disciples. As the women prepared the food for that night’s important supper, Yeshua and the men spent that whole time setting up the enclosed courtyard of a family friend’s house. There was much for them to do. The courtyard was cluttered with all sorts of paraphernalia to extract oil from olives, bundles of wool, piles of wood and other things. Yeshua was just coming back into the busy courtyard nursing his sore shoulders from carrying multiple times a stack of short logs to the back of the house. 

Shimon emerged from a hidden alcove just off to the side of the front entry port. He was scratching his head. Then, to no one in particular, he asked out loud, “What shall we do with these things?” He was pointing at the direction of the hidden niche.

“What is in there?” asked Yeshua as he walked toward where Shimon was pointing. When he entered, he found a narrow alcove that went the length of the house on one side and the perimeter wall on the other. Then lining against the wall were six massive stone jars about four feet tall and 3 feet wide. 

“Ah, these are ceremonial jars for purification. They are old, really old.” He peered closely at a chiseled engraving. “Here it is! These jars were once in Jerusalem… mmm… maybe used in a palace or even at the Temple of Solomon.”

Shimon lifted one of the lids. “Mmm… they are clean. Someone must have been maintaining them. You think your mother would want them moved?” 

“Shimon, I am afraid, even with your girth, it will take you and five others to move them in the three hours left before the party. Let’s leave it and cover the entryway into this alcove. Come on. We still have to whitewash the walls.”

---

The night’s final wedding celebration had reached its first hour. What was left on the food tables were mostly crumbs. Dining was over. Music and dancing, however, was in full swing. Yeshua was dancing with a ring of twenty men dizzyingly orbiting the groom, Amoz. His new wife, Chava, had her own set of peers dazzlingly circling her clapping their hands up in the air. A few of them were rhythmically pounding on ribboned timbrels¹. 

When the dancing finally stopped, Yeshua was laughing and panting heavily; and was also thinking that maybe he was getting too old for dancing. (Of course, that was just wishful thinking.) As he was walking to an inviting bench with Yohanen, he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was his sister’s husband, Eiran, who arrived in the afternoon with the wine. He whispered into his ear that his Imma needed him right away. 

Yeshua, followed by his brother-in-law and Yohanen, found her inside the antechamber talking to waiters with frantic faces. His mother turned to him looking panicky. 

“They have no more wine!” 

He was surprised by what he knew what his mother desired for him to do. Growing up, it was her that pleaded with him to be wary of revealing himself. Understandably, since the time when she heard the disturbing words of that old prophet who held him when he was still a baby. The words that moved her to overprotectiveness was, ‘this Child is appointed and destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign that is to be opposed; and a sword of deep sorrow will pierce her very soul’.²   

Yeshua guided her to the far side of the room where they could not be overheard. 

“Eiran was a little careless with driving the wagon here. Several vessels cracked and much wine leaked out on the road from Sepphoris to here. The family will be shamed,” she said. 

“Issah,”³ he emphasized gently, “what is that to you and to me? My time has not yet come.” 

Mariam looked him in the eyes and her head bowed in acknowledgement. Yeshua leaned into her and whispered, “The things I do for my Imma.”

Her head came up to see his mischievous smile. She turned and went to the waiters and said, “Whatever He says to you, do it.” Then she went outside.

The waiters as well as Yohanen and Eiran were all looking at him. Then he signaled them to follow. He led them out to the alcove at the side of the house. He went straight to the first stone jar. He lifted up the lid and turned to them and said, “Go and fill these six jars with water.”

They looked at him questionably for a long while. Yohanen broke the stillness by telling the servers to get all the empty urns they could find for the task. “Yohanen, get all the boys to give a hand.”

After an hour or so, all six jars were filled to the brim. He then instructed Shimon and Yohanen to keep everyone outside the alcove. He again went to the first stone jar. He dipped his hand into the clear liquid and stared at it. To turn water into wine, he thought to himself. He repeated it again and for a brief moment, he didn’t know where to start. In the production of wine, you start with harvested grapes that must be crushed usually by the stomping feet of women to extract the juice. Grape juice transforms into wine during the fermentation and aging process. All in all, a good wine would take months. But he did not have months. Already, he could hear the clamor out in the courtyard for more wine.

Then, from the very depths of his mind came a distant echo of his Heavenly Father’s commanding voice saying ‘LET THERE BE LIGHT.’⁴ And there was light! So, Yeshua felt the very power of creation build up in him. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, what was dripping from his hand was not the clear liquid of water but the deep burgundy color wine. 

He walked out of the alcove and said to the waiters, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.”

They looked at him like he was mad but two of them shrugged their shoulders and entered. From inside, there were some exclaimed reactions which attracted the other waiters with questions. 

As they were coming out serving jars filled with wine, Yeshua said to Yohanen, “Ask my mother to meet me at the village square.” Then he left the celebration.

The square was about half a block from the party. As he sat on a bench by the central well, there were only a few folks out and about.

“My son?” inquired his mother, who was accompanied by Yohanen and Mare.

“Imma, I am leaving for Capernaum tomorrow, as early as possible. I suggest you, Yude and Iacob, if he can be convinced, should not return to Nazareth for two weeks, at least. But instead, you stay with me.”

“But why?”

“What happened tonight will be told to others by the servants, hence the reason why I’m leaving early. And by the time the story reaches Nazareth, it will be no more than rumor. So, if you are not there for a long while, you may be spared some inquiring questions to fan it back to life. People will still wonder but in a few months it would not matter much who knew what.”

“Very well, son. We will join you there after we settle things here. How about Mare and her husband?”

Turning to Mare. “Well, you and Eiran will be returning to Carmel by the coast anyway, so I don’t think you need to come. In fact, I would not mind that story spreading over there. It will serve me well when I go there in the Spring.”

Then they were joined by Nethanel and Philippos. “Rabbi, people are buzzing away about the wine,” Philippos reported.

“What have you heard?” asked Yohanen.

“Well, I overheard the master of the feast talking to the bridegroom. He said that usually the best wine was served at the beginning of the banquet and the ordinary wine was served much later. But then he praised him for keeping the best of all wines for the end.”

“I have to agree,” said Nethanel. “I have tasted good wine before, especially from Rome, Greece and other places that my father had been to. But this wine was beyond any wine I have tasted before. I told a waiter to reserve a jar for my father. When I asked him about it, he whispered that there was a magician here who changed water into wine. I’ve assumed that you’re the mysterious magician, Master. So, we came to tell you right away.”

“I am afraid, dear dear brother, that maybe you should not have made such an excellent drink,” Mare said, smiling teasingly.

“You are right, sister,” he said, chuckling. “Well, tomorrow we leave.”

The next day, they were on the road to Capernaum, when they heard a whistle behind them. When Yeshua turned around, it was a horse drawn canopied wagon usually ridden by the gentry. Trailing it were two armed riders, one of whom was trailing a packed mule. The driver halted the wagon about ten feet behind them. He then jumped down and drew back the curtain. It was Ioanna. Yeshua approached.

“Rabbi, I am so glad to catch up with you.”

“I am pleased to see you again, Ioanna.”

“Cana is filled with rumors. My husband is praising the quality of the wine we tasted last night. This morning he was still demanding which vineyard it came from. He had already discounted the tale that it was magically transformed. I have been encouraging that notion.” Then she whispered, “But I believe it was you who did this, Rabbi. I do not know where you will go from here, but…”, she gestured to the rider holding the pack mule to hand it over to one of the followers, “I truly want to support your ministry starting with this.”

“My thanks, Ioanna. We will make good use of it.”

“Rabbi, I did not impart this news to you before, but Herod Antipas had shown too much interest in your cousin. I believe it is Heroditus that is driving this because she is not happy with the Baptist’s vocal truthfulness. I fear for him and more importantly, I fear for you.”

“I again thank you for your concern. Know this. All that is to happen had been foretold and written long long ago. Fret not. It is as it should be.”

“How may I know where you’ll be? For I do have this desire to learn more.”

“I will communicate with you. Shalom.”

As her vehicle was heading back toward Cana, he faced his followers and said, “The work begins.”

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The miracle of the changing of water into wine can be read in John 2:1-11.

Footnotes: [1] Timbrels are percussion instruments of the ancient Israelites, more like the modern tambourines; [2] Luke 2:34-35; [3] Issah: Hebrew for woman; [4] Genesis 1:3   

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