Metaphor is an image that suggests something else.For instance if i said you are a nut.I am not suggesting that I think that person is literally a nut.Nut is a metaphor.

The Reference of the metaphor in religious tradition is to something transcendent that is not literally any thing.
when you call your friend by the name lion.
It doesn’t mean he is a lion.

If you think that metaphors is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu,seeing beefsteak written there,and starting to eat the menu.

Do Jesus turn water into wine.
means.
Life is not worthy for you, Jesus makes it worthy for you by correction of perspective.

another one example

As you know all,Jesus ascended to heaven.That is a metaphorical way of saying something that is transcendent.

If we read it with its literal meaning. We lose its true meaning.

“Jesus ascended to heaven”
it seems that Jesus ascended to the sky.
Now we practically go to the galaxy even the speed of light,a million year takes to reach there .there is no such place in the universe.
It is not a denotation ,it’s a connotation.
Jesus has gone inward not into outer space.but you can’t say something which is not available physically in space time.
The metaphor performed their function of speaking to those deep levels of human beings when they arise freshly from the contemporary of experience .

“All things are metaphors.”_Goethe

Everything that’s transitory is but a metaphorical reference.That is what we all are.