Dear Friends,
I enjoyed the story this week of diners in Manchester who had the happy experience of being served a bottle of wine worth 17 times as much as the one they had ordered. They had ordered a £260 bottle of Bordeaux and received instead a bottle of Chateau le Pin Pomerol 2001 costing £4500. The restaurant’s founder Will Beckett said: ”At that kind of level you’re into a rarity, a flavour profile you won’t find anywhere else.” I should think so too!
It makes you wonder what the guests were thinking at another dinner when they too were served an unusually good wine. I’m thinking, of course, of the wedding party in Cana, where Jesus didn’t simply pick up the wrong bottle but actually changed water into wine, and not just one bottle either but the equivalent of something like 800! As the master of the banquet said, “You have saved the best till now” (John 2:10).
What Jesus brings is so much better than anything that came before him. All that was promise; he brings the fulfilment of the promises, nothing less than eternal life – life with God who is eternal. And if that’s what the master of the banquet said then, what will we be saying at the great banquet at the end of time? “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived – [these are] the things God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Enjoy!
Yours warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister/Vicar)