Thanks for your reply, metmom. And thanks for not catching me up on that bear-bare typo :-)
I understand what you say: “this is my speculation by my own admission”.
It’s true that weddings were “family affairs” in those days. But it helps a lot to be familiar with the wedding customs of that time and culture. In the village setting, the groom would leave his house and pass by all the houses of the village, gathering the wedding party as he went to his final destination, the house of his bride. Everyone was invited. It was a village event. The people joining in the party’s journey from the house of the groom to the house of the bride had to carry their lanterns—or torches. That’s the point of the parable about the bridesmaids and the oil for their lamps.
The Bridegroom Jesus left his Father’s house to come among us. He gathers his followers along his earthly pilgrimage among us—and those of his eternal wedding party are cautioned to keep their lamps filled with oil (oil in Biblical language is also for healing and honor and and blessing)
So actually everyone in the village was included in the party— the measure of their participation was the measure of their joy.
So—I don’t see the wedding feast as something that was a party of Jesus’ family—in fact, I read that passage as Jesus and his mother and the disciples being invited guests.
It won’t come to you as a surprise that I don’t believe that Jesus was the “oldest son”. I believe that He was the only Son. But that’s already been discussed too often on these threads, and I don’t want to start that topic up again.
I didn’t really notice your typo.... But I don’t see that making an issue of them is productive anyway. I’ve made my share of them and it happens. I always notice mine just as I hit the *Post* button and you can’t take it back at that point.
I was just thinking family affair not that only the family was invited. That didn’t come across right.
Anyway, it’s typically the family who provides the food and I suspect that Mary was involved with that some how. Since she told the servants to do whatever He told them, she obviously expected Him to fix the problem and I don’t see that as a job of just any old guest, which is why I think it was a wedding somewhere in Jesus’ family. I think that Joseph would have done it had he been around, and whether Jesus was the oldest son or the only son, the fact that she went to Him indicates that Joseph was out of the picture by that time.
And I still don’t think she expected Him to do a miracle to fix it.