John 2
Water becomes wine at a village wedding — the first of seven signs — and then Jesus drives traders from the Jerusalem temple, the first conflict of the gospel.
Summary
The wedding at Cana is the first of John's seven signs, and John frames it carefully. Mary's intervention — she notices the wine has run out and tells Jesus — receives a sharp answer: woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. She ignores the formality and tells the servants do whatever he tells you. Six stone jars, each holding twenty to thirty gallons, are filled with water that becomes wine. The steward, unaware of the source, tells the bridegroom that most hosts serve the good wine first and save the inferior for when the guests are drunk, but you have kept the good wine until now. The disciples see the sign and believe in him.
The scene shifts to Jerusalem for the Passover, and Jesus enters the temple to find it occupied by cattle, sheep, and dove sellers and the tables of money-changers. He makes a whip of cords and drives them all out, overturning the tables and scattering the coins. Zeal for your house will consume me — a quotation from Psalm 69 that the disciples remember as the scene unfolds. The religious authorities ask for a sign authorizing this action. Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. They point out that the temple has been under construction for forty-six years. John adds an explanatory note: he was speaking of the temple of his body. After the resurrection, the disciples remembered this and believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
- John 1Chapter 1 falls into two distinct movements.
- John 2Chapter 2 contains the first two incidents of the public ministry, set in very different registers.
- John 3Chapter 3 divides into a dialogue and a testimony.
- John 4Chapter 4 is built around the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in any of the four gospels.
- John 5Chapter 5 turns on a Sabbath healing that provokes the first sustained conflict with the religious authorities and generates a major theological discourse.
- John 6Chapter 6 is the longest in the gospel and the most demanding.
- John 7Chapter 7 is one of the most dramatic scenes of the public ministry, set during the week-long Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem.
- John 8Chapter 8 opens with the pericope of the woman taken in adultery (verses 1–11), absent from the earliest manuscripts and widely understood as a later addition, but narratively powerful: whoever is without sin may cast the first stone.
- John 9Chapter 9 is the most novelistic chapter in John and a sustained piece of dramatic irony.
- John 10Chapter 10 follows directly from the expulsion of the man born blind in chapter 9 and develops two sustained metaphors.
- John 11Chapter 11 is the dramatic climax of the Book of Signs and the most fully narrated miracle in John.
- John 12Chapter 12 is the bridge between the two halves of the gospel.
- John 13Chapter 13 opens the Book of Glory and sets the scene for the Farewell Discourse that occupies chapters 14–17.
- John 14Chapter 14 is the opening movement of the Farewell Discourse and contains several of the most quoted passages in the gospel.
- John 15Chapter 15 moves through two large movements: the vine and branches discourse (verses 1–17) and the warning about the world's hostility (verses 18–27).
- John 16Chapter 16 continues the Farewell Discourse and moves through three phases.
- John 17Chapter 17 is the high-priestly prayer, unique in the New Testament: Jesus prays at length in the hearing of his disciples on the night of his arrest.
- John 18Chapter 18 covers the arrest, the hearings before Annas and Caiaphas, Peter's three denials, and the first half of the Roman trial before Pilate.
- John 19Chapter 19 covers the final stages of the trial and the crucifixion.
- John 20Chapter 20 narrates the resurrection in two stages across two distinct scenes.
- John 21Chapter 21 is often discussed as a possible appendix, since chapter 20 closes with a purpose statement that reads like an ending.