Service on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/100064617886792/videos/1224792799568340 and YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY-MBsPOiWM
AITA for Being Mad at My Husband’s Weird Family Member for Turning Water into Wine at Our Wedding?
by Samantha Cheh
Posted by u/KarenInCana 2,100 years ago
(Throwaway account so my husband’s cousin’s weird followers don’t pile on me later.)
So I (23f) planned this really gorgeous wedding in Cana, Galilee at a hall that’s usually impossible to book (the waitlist is longer than the last census of Quirinius!), but I got the local centurions to do me a favor so we not only got the place but at half price! I was kind of down because of Herod’s recent massacres, so I just wanted everyone to have a great time — you know, dancing, drinking, maybe a little sacrificial lamb to the gods.
I told my husband (25m) that he could really invite anyone but I forgot that would include his weird cousin Jesus (30ish m) and his mother, Mary (40s-50s-ish f and who arguably started this whole thing, but I’ll get to that later). Jesus has always been kind of a show-off — dude has a little cult of personality or something. I don’t really pay attention to it because I’m working on myself — but I let it go because for some reason my husband really thinks his cousin is the best thing since unleavened bread and I just wanted to make him happy.
So the wedding’s going great and Jesus is (typically) late (his dad made our chuppah tho, he’s cool), which is fine because I was already pretty tipsy and doing the hora my bridesmaid started. Then the caterers came up to me saying I had violated our contract by bringing outside drinks and was liable for a penalty four times the initial cost.
I was shocked because I DEFINITELY didn’t violate our contract, but then some idiot brings me this stone jar filled with wine. Now those things are supposed to be for water so we have fewer people puking in the barn out back, so of course I get suspicious. I go to investigate, and Jesus and his mother Mary are presiding over a crowd of people claiming he performed a “miracle” by turning water into wine. I don’t believe this for a second, but Mary told everyone there wasn’t any wine left (which was untrue) and Jesus was ordering the staff to bring out more jars so he could work on them.
Excuse me!?! This was my wedding!! Not a space for you to promote your weird cult!! When I said this to Jesus, he had the nerve to tell me that his “miracle wine” was better than anything we were serving. I was so angry and offended, I told them to leave but everyone kept whispering as if I was the crazy person.
Some guests were like, Hey, you should be so proud! Your wedding was the site of a major event whose historical, political, and spiritual ramifications we have yet to understand — let this one slide! Isn’t it great that you didn’t even have to pay for the booze??
But am I wrong to think that’s complete bullshit? Because the caterers definitely didn’t care about the historical, political, and spiritual ramifications of this when they invoiced me, not to mention all the drunkards who cost me my deposit when they puked everywhere!! If I remember correctly, God said plenty of things about drunks and I don’t see Jesus doing anything about them. As I mentioned, this was supposed to be my special day, a day all of Cana should have remembered for one hell of a party. Now it’s all about this “miracle” that Jesus did and my wedding is relegated to a footnote in history.
I told my husband that we’re making Jesus and his mother pay for half the cost since it was their fault this all happened in the first place, but he won’t stand up for us. He thinks Jesus did us a favor and I’m being “unreasonable” and “inhospitable” to his family members. I feel so unsupported, I moved back home into my dad’s house until he apologizes and makes his family pay the tab, but am I the asshole because Jesus and his mom made my wedding day all about them?
EDIT: In response to all the comments, yes the miracle wine was actually pretty good, but that’s not the point!!
EDIT 2: I’m going to stop answering comments because so many of you think I’m “missing the bigger picture.” Do you know what I had planned for the money I now have to pay? I was going to stash a little away so our future son could get a temple education, like the one Jesus just walked right into. Not all of us are lucky enough to be proclaimed the Son of God and get a full-ride with the Pharisees.
KarenInCana: UPDATE I moved back in with my husband — our first kid is on the way!! — but we heard something was “going down” with Jesus out in Jerusalem so I decided to let it go. Anyway, Jesus promised to do us a solid and get us an in with his “Father Who Art in Heaven,” which sounds useful for the future, but not sure. Sounds sketchy. IDK, we’ll see.
It is fun to wonder how everyone else reacted to Mary, Jesus, and this whole wine situation. I’m certain that whatever the servants knew about how there become more wine… everyone knew by the end of the celebration, which could last days! Imagine running out of beverages and there are still several days of celebrating left. Imagine when everyone would have found out… how they would walk home and not come back tomorrow… how this would be the wedding that everyone would talk about for years to come. Oh did you hear so and so are getting married, hopefully it’s not like “that” wedding. You remember that wedding… that ended early, when they ran out of wine?
Because weddings were big deals, the whole community would be invited. Maybe it would set the expectations for the couple, for their life together, for how others would think about them. In the real world of Reddit where folks write about their own weddings or weddings they are somehow part of, family members have been cut off, friendships ruined, and reputations destroyed. You don’t want to be “that” wedding.
We can decide that maybe this was Mary’s family and that is why she felt responsibility for their honor of the couple and family who hosted. But I here is a thing that I think is supposed to be true about weddings–those who gather to witness a the wedding, those who gather in celebration of the marriage, are tasked with supporting the couple and their marriage. They are invited to participate in the life of the couple to support their success. Maybe it’s teaching them how to fight and resolve a fight. Maybe it’s telling her what to expect when she’s expecting because there was no book to give her and baby sitting when the couple needed some time to themselves. Maybe it was helping one grieve when their spouse was not longer there. Maybe it was ushering them through the milestones so they would know what to expect and how to navigate life in all it’s complications.
The role of the wedding guest was more than just eating the food and drinking the wine, it was presence and participation, support and encouragement. And maybe that is why it was important to Mary that this marriage not start as “that” wedding.
Weddings are both a very ordinary part of what it means to be human, the bringing together of families, celebration, hopes and promises and covenant. And, many of us are reminded of weddings and such covenants every day when we wake up next to someone or missing them. They are meant to be joyous days, with the hope of many many more joyfilled ones.
Jesus would know this. I don’t think that his response to Mary, whom this gospel writer never actually names, I don’t think it was meant to be rude. When I read it, it’s playful. It’s good humored bantering. And in it, Mary gave Jesus a look… the look, before she told the servants to do whatever he said.
In this Gospel, the miracles are more than miracles, they are signs that point to who Jesus is, the Word become flesh who lived among us. And the hour is almost always about the inbreaking of the kin-dom of God at the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Many things will happen between now and that hour. But it kind of seems like there is a timeline. And when the beginning of John begins with this cosmic poem, it makes me think that the timeline is something cosmic, some cosmic time of the coming of the Kin-dom of God and this wedding, this ordinary, extra-ordinary event, in the catering tent was not it.
And yet, it turns out it was.
In the ordinary, extra-ordinary moment of this young couple’s life, Jesus was willing to change the timeline, intercede with grace upon grace, with abundance, and the best. Jesus spared their shame, kept the party going, acted to continue the joy and celebration. It was a quiet sign, one that might go unnoticed, that doesn’t really fit into our understanding of why Jesus came–to heal, cloth, feed those who need it most. This crowd probably did not need to drink more. And yet, into this very ordinary moment, Jesus shows up, he cares, he helps.
I really wanted to day to be about abundance and celebration and best-ness. And then this week happened. And some of the week before. A friend posted asking to cancel her free trial of 2026. Reality sometimes breaks into what we hope for. But, Christ cares about our ordinary human lives. Care enough to change the plans of the cosmos. To bring compassion and presence and what is needed to what seems like even the most low stakes problem.
And it’s hard because it doesn’t always seem like Christ is there. But we are reminded with every healing Jesus does, the one whose body is healed will grow older, will begin to fail them. Even Lazarus who will be raised from the dead, will die. We weren’t ever promised pain free lives, we weren’t promised lives without grief. But Christ shows up even in the ordinary.
And Christ didn’t do it alone. Back a bit ago, we talked about Ezekiel and when God took him to a field of dry bones. God could have told Ezekiel to watch as he brought the bones back together into bodies, instead God told Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones and to the wind. There was some part of what was about to happen that Ezekiel needed to be part of, maybe to show he was part of if.
Jesus could have just made the, presumably empty jugs, be filled with wine, like magic. Instead, he invited the servants to be part of the sign. The sign points to the Word made flesh and the one who brings grace upon grace, abundant and amazing. And sometimes, we, those who are followers, in service to the Kin-dom of God, are part of it. We are part of the sign, we are part of pointing, we are part of the hope, we are part of supporting, we are part of showing up, of caring for the ordinary, extraordinary task of being human.
because it is easy to get bogged down in the messiness, in the struggle and the suffering. It is easy to get lost in all that seems terrible. In the problems of the wedding with the cousin Jesus and miss the miraculous.
I’m reminded of the Cajun Navy, a group of people with boats and desire to care for people, who, during floods are out on the water rescuing people and animals, and bringing resources to those in need. And Adventures with a Purpose which is a group of scuba divers who wanted to get vehicles out of bodies of water. And then they started finding people in the vehicles. Now their mission is to find people lost in the waters, to answers and their bodies to their loved ones. It is gruesome, and sad, and beautiful. I think of them because they take what they already have, what they already know, the gifts and training and passions, and have found a way to care for the lives of others.
And I think that is what we are called to do, to take what we have and do what we can and point to Christ.
I wish there were some easy words for weeks like these, days like these. I wish Mary would give Jesus a look and Jesus would fix everything as easy as making wine. I can hope and pray, weep and scream. And then I’m going to fill some jars, or write a letter, or show up and point to the Christ who cares about our lives, our ordinary, extraordinary lives, and know that we are part of the work of the Kin-dom come.