What Would Jesus Do When the Alcohol Runs Out

It was my sophomore year in college. I was living in a mostly freshman dorm, leading a Bible discussion group, and wandering through the hallways handing out invites to our first meeting. I knocked on a hallmate's door, heard him holler "come in," and opened the door. I did not catch him "in flagrante," but he was in bed with a young coed who was dabbing his feverish forehead with a wet towel. For all of the times our Christian fellowship practiced different ways to invite our friends to Bible studies, curiously we had not yet covered this scenario. My mind and body froze.

The only thing I could do was blurt out, "Here!" I handed him a little quarter-sheet invite I had prepared as a leave-behind to people I had invited. It was a silhouette of the unmistakable "Absolut" bottle, with the title "Absolut Miracle" and the question, "What would Jesus do if he was at a party that ran out of alcohol?"

The young woman blushed, realizing I was a Christian and thinking I would think ill of her for being draped all over my hallmate. My hallmate was intrigued by the invite, also assuming Christian condemnation: "Well, he would probably squash that party!"

Ice sufficiently broken, I replied, "Well, not to give away the ending, but actually what happens is he makes more alcohol, and it's the best stuff anyone at the party had ever had." With a teaser like that, who could resist our Bible group? Indeed, my hallmate did show up for the first meeting, and actually came from a Christian background so was easily able to follow the story (the wedding at Cana, in the second chapter of the gospel according to John) and participate in the discussion.

Alas, the room was stacked with too many strait-laced Christians for him to feel entirely comfortable, and so that first meeting was also his last meeting. Still, it was nice to see him take a chance on a potentially weirdo Christian gathering and even have fun participating in discussion over a passage in the Bible. And, my lasting impression of this whole story is of a Savior whose first miracle while on earth was to do something so contrary to most college kids' image of Jesus that it piqued enough interest in one young man to go from being intertwined with a young woman in his bed to talking Bible with a bunch of Christians.