My husband and I are Messianic Christians who have no group locally with which to worship. So I search books and Christian internet sites for the best answers to questions that arise from our personal bible studies. I am searching for the answer to a specific question and, since your article “Water into Wine” is the most intelligently thought-out, Jewish culture-based approach I have yet found, I am hoping you can answer this:
When Yeshua asked his mother, Miryam, “Why do you involve me? My time has not yet come,” why did Miryam pursue the issue? (Almost as if she were forcing Him to do something He was not yet ready to do.)
This phrase appears 5 times in John’s Gospel. Three of them involve His family urging Him to “go public” as his mother did here. The other two describe the authorities not being able to grab Him after He said something they didn’t like.
From comparing Daniel 9:25 and Luke 19:41-44, we can see that there was a specific day in time for Jesus to unmistakably reveal Himself to Israel as their Messiah. Until that day, which we now call Palm Sunday, He did not encourage such thinking, and his enemies could not act pre-emptively.
As my commentary on John 2 shows, by changing the water into wine Jesus was, in fact, disclosing His identity, and the disciples understood that.
I believe that the Lord’s mother was pushing the matter, she was only human after all and had every right to be a proud mother, in a kind but untimely way.
The Lord’s brothers, on the other hand, taunted Him about it in John 7:1-8 in fulfillment of Psalm 69:7-8. None of them became believers until after the Resurrection.