This week, I have been wrapping my schedule and my heart around all the amazing creatures that God has made (John 1:3), so thankful for the opportunity. They come in different colors, heights, voices, sexes, and temperaments, but each one is clearly made in His image.

Do they all know about their Creator, the perfect balance of truth and love in John’s Gospel? The question troubles me, haunts me, motivates me, and burns within me with blazing passion.
Southeastern Idahoans can look just around the corner and see awe-inspiring mountain peaks. But when have they last gazed upon the all glorious One, the Lord Jesus Christ?

The nice thing is that you don’t have to travel far . . . no need for a visa . . . just open up the pages of John’s Gospel. Tentatively explore and then scrutinize with all your intellectual might. Joyfully leap through its pages. Discover for yourself the multi-faceted riches of Christ’s deity. And take sober and sweet comfort, that He like you is fully human. He wore sandals, ate bread, and embraced little children. But never forget, that he unlike you is fully God, accomplishing a work for us in sore need that only God can do.

Since Monday, I have met people in 34 households (15-LDS, 6-no religion, 5-Catholics, 2-Jehovah Witnesses, 1-Methodist, 1-Nondenominational, 1-Episcopalian, 1-Christian, 1-Lutheran, and 1-Baptist).

With each household, I longed to ask questions. Four LDS turned me down for lack of time. The two JW’s didn’t want to talk about John’s Gospel—ditto for the Methodist and a couple of Catholics, flatly refusing to even look at the verses! And the Baptist was tied up for the moment, talking on the phone. And another Catholic rather than wanting to talk about the Bible, excitedly related to me about the upcoming celebration on December 12 in commemoration of the Virgin Mary who appeared in Mexico City. But the rest listened in thought and posited both confident and unsure responses.

I asked three questions:

I. What is Jesus referring to when he says “mine hour” in John 2:4?

Thirteen households answered, “I don’t know.”

 

The nondenominational mother, puzzled, quickly commented after reading John 2:4, “If I were to talk that way to my mother, I would have soon found all my teeth on the floor.” Upon hearing her, I could have fallen down the apartment stairs, tumbling over from laughter.

 

Six of the LDS homes gave various ideas; and if I may, let me save one young mom’s stellar LDS response to the questions till the end of this blog entry. The other five answered:

“Crucifixion”

“He hasn’t come yet.”

“Didn’t need to worry”

“Certain time to do something, not yet to that point”

“How can I help you?” (Summarizing the whole of Jesus’ response to Mary in John 2:4)

II. What does the miracle about turning water into wine show about Jesus?

Four households answered, “I don’t know.”

Non-LDS shared,

“Something definitely special”

“When I was once attending a Southern Baptist Church (SBC), they said the wine was grape juice.”

 

[This sounds like what LDS profs, Ogden and Skinner said in their book, The Four Gospels, 2006: “Was the wine Jesus created really the intoxicating kind? A woman wrote to the editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review (September/October, 1985, 24), making the following interesting point: ‘Jesus turned water into wine for the wedding guests in John 2:1-11. But the word ‘wine’ in the Bible can refer to non-alcoholic as well as alcoholic beverages—as can our word ‘drink,’ today. Had Jesus turned water into an intoxicant for the wedding guests, God would not have included Proverbs 20:1 in the Bible: ‘Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.’ In Proverbs we have a definite reference to an intoxicant. God, being consistent with His own laws and principles—remember that He changes not . . . –would hardly write the foregoing line from Proverbs and then miraculously create an alcoholic wine at a wedding!’

The wine Jesus created for the wedding guests was likely new, fresh wine rather than something strong that would cause drunkenness, which was contrary to the Jews’ own laws of physical health” (pp. 110-111). Personally, I believe Ogden and Skinner are stretching things a bit here.]

 

“There are so many different meanings, I can’t say.”

“He can do whatever he wants.”

“He tries to take care of people.”

“Anything is possible”

“Listen (as she is smirking), I can tell you some of my stories about wine.”

“He is Creator.”

“He can pretty much do anything.”

 

LDS answered,

“Even the little things are possible”

“God is over the earth”

“His love for the people”

“Atonement for all of us”

“That is a good question”

“He is manifesting Himself to the children of men.”

III. What does John 2:17 mean?

Almost all said, “I don’t know.”

 

One said that it has the idea of protecting the animals.

 

Three different LDS said respectively,

“It is talking about sin.”

“I am not for sure but isn’t this connected to the old law?”

“The disciples didn’t fully understand. People were having problems understanding the spirit of the law. It is not the law that saves you.”

 

In concluding the manifold responses, let me share the answer of the one LDS mother mentioned earlier. Academically, she stated, (#1) “In John 2:4, Jesus is not being disrespectful. He is elevating his mother by basically addressing her as ‘Woman of all women, it is not my time to go, so what can I do for you now?’ (#2) The fact that Jesus turned the water into wine significantly communicates how he turned something impure to pure—pure in the sense that the people couldn’t get drunk off it. And notice that the water was taken from stone pots used for washing. The water was filthy and dirty from hands and feet, but the Lord could create something pure from all that. He could turn our hearts, filthy with sin, into something pure. (#3) I would have to look at the context. But it seems to imply that they were full of zeal but forgetting the reason—caught up in the act but missing the reason.”

My answers

Question #1 – Trace the expression “mine hour (hora)” through John’s Gospel (Jn. 7:30, 8:20, 12:23, 13:1, 17:1). Doesn’t it include the time of his arrest by the soldiers all the way to when he ascended back up to heaven? (In regards to the first half of his response to his mother, Mary, in this verse, let me save that discussion for a future blog entry entitled “JST on John 2.”)

 

Question #2 – This event is the “beginning of miracles” (John 2:11), the inauguration of the signs (semeion). The miracle manifested his glory by showing that he is the Creator (John 1:3). But here is a serious question. Do you believe that he is able to create ex nihilo? Because Ogden and Skinner in The Four Gospels write, “Though it may be the first recorded miracle of his mortal ministry, it is certainly not Jesus’ first miracle—the first was the creation of Earth. (And even that was not his first miracle, for he created worlds without number before he created this sphere; Moses 1:33.) . . . Having created or organized all the elements in the beginning of the creation of this world, Jesus could understandably reorganize and transform the chemical constituency of a few elements in some water pots in Cana of Galilee” (pp. 111-112).

Question #3 – Read Psalm 69:9. These disciples were seeing Jesus fulfill the Messianic Psalm. Amen. Compare Mt. 27:34 (Ps. 69:21); Lk. 23:36 (Ps. 69:21); Jn. 15:25 (Ps. 69:4); Jn. 19:28 (Ps. 69:21); Rom. 15:3 (Ps. 69:9b). I didn’t have time to tell my church family this past Sunday, but notice the verb tense of John 2:17 in both the NU-Text and M-Text. There you would find “will eat.”