Jesus and social life.
Public men are sometimes anxious with regard to a first appearance, that it should be upon a scene, in society, and with accompaniments worthy of themselves or of their own conceptions of themselves. Jesus proved his superiority to human vanity and weakness in performing his first "sign" in a lowly home at a villager's wedding. His conduct in this was just like himself.
I. THE LORD JESUS WAS OPPOSED TO ASCETICISM. Religion and asceticism are often in the popular mind associated; and pretenders have often taken advantage of the association. Even true prophets, like Elijah and John the Baptist, have had a strain of asceticism in their nature, a vein of asceticism in their life. And vigorous sects, like the Essenes, have sometimes gained a reputation and an influence by a self-denying life led for self-denial's sake. In Christian times again and again this principle has sprung into prominence, and has exercised immense power over society. One thing is clear, that Jesus had no sympathy with isolation, unsociableness, austerity.
II. THE LORD JESUS FREQUENTED ALL KINDS OF HUMAN SOCIETY. He dined with Pharisees and with publicans with an impartial sociability. He does not seem to have refused invitations to partake hospitality, from whatever quarter they might come. It was a complaint brought against him by the formalists, that he was "gluttonous, a wine bibber, and a friend of publicans and sinners." This was untrue; but it points to a truth, viz. that our Lord had no aversion to social gatherings. He frequented the society of men, in order to diffuse his influence and his doctrine; and chiefly that men might see and hear and know him, and through him the grace of God.
III. THE LORD JESUS ENCOURAGED HIS DISCIPLES TO MIX FREELY WITH THEIR FELLOW MEN. There were at this period but few of them—perhaps five; and this was an early stage of their discipleship. But there was something for them to learn at the marriage feast; and, as the narrative tells us, the experience was most profitable to themselves. At the same time, there was a lesson regarding their own misson and the methods of its fulfilment, which more or less they acquired by participating in suck social gatherings as these. They were to learn that those who would be spiritual helpers of men must first be, and prove themselves to be, their friends.
IV. THE LORD JESUS SANCTIONED LOVE AND MARRIAGE. Society is not possible apart from family life; and it is not a good sign of the morals of a community when men's social enjoyments are disconnected from virtuous women and from holy homes. It is universally acknowledged that Christ has exalted woman to her rightful and intended position; and it has not generally been considered how largely this effect has been owing to our Lord's treatment, first of his own mother, and secondly of the bride of Cana, on this occasion. The domestic relations should form the nucleus, so to speak, of the social life of humanity. They are the true and Divine antidote to man's selfishness and passions. And Christ teaches us that pleasure is to be found, not only in the world, in the society of the profligate, but in that home life, those sacred relations, which are too generally regarded as associated with disappointment, cheerlessness, and misery.
V. THE LORD JESUS APPROVED AND PROMOTED INNOCENT FESTIVITY. In his provision of wine for the wedding feast, we observe that Jesus did two things.
1. He gave his friends what was not an absolute necessity, but an enjoyment, a luxury. The guests might have drunk water, but the Divine Friend did not choose that they should be compelled to do so. He gives us better gifts than we deserve, if not better than we desire.
2. He gave his friends abundance, more than enough for the occasion. There was a supply for future need. It is thus that he reveals the liberality of his heart and the munificence of his provision.—T.