If perceptive Organs vary; Objects of Perception seem to vary; If the Perceptive Organs close: their Objects seem to close also.50
In the face of inevitable resistance, the expectations and preconceptions on which all seeing depends and which I bring to this narrative have to do with Christ’s lordship over creation, readily admitting the story’s judgment on that much vaunted “objectivity,” its challenge to any current or prevailing world-view, and its announcement of the new over against what has given thousands comfort and ease: the impenetrable and unassailable continuum of cause and effect.
In Matthew 17:24–27, after the disciples have reached Capernaum, Peter is met by temple tax collectors who ask whether or not his teacher pays the tax (Greek: didrachma). Peter acknowledges that he does. At home, Jesus asks him from whom the kings of the earth receive tribute, from their children or from others. Peter answers, “from others.” “Then,” Jesus responds, “the children are free,” but adds that to avoid offence Peter should go to the sea, and in the mouth of the first fish he catches find a stater, enough to satisfy the payment for the two of them. The text raises questions. First, the English versions wrongly translate Peter’s interrogators as “collectors of the temple tax.” The original simply refers to tax collectors, either to those who collect the poll tax required of everyone, Jew or Gentile, or to collectors of the temple tax. But if the latter, the analogy to the “others” from whom the “kings of the earth take toll or tribute” breaks down, since the temple tax was required only of Jews. Second, the didrachma was a foreign, Greek silver coin. The stater, equal to two didrachmas, and which Peter was to retrieve from the fish’s mouth, had to be exchanged for the equivalent silver half shekel since foreign coin was tabu in the temple. Taken alone, the narrative seems haphazard, that is, until linked to the passion prediction which immediately precedes. There, Jesus predicts that the Son of Man will be betrayed, killed, and rise again on the third day. Thus, interpreted in the light of what precedes, our narrative reads that Jesus, Son of Man (the self-reference is obvious), is free of legal obligation but nevertheless takes it on to prevent giving offense.51
Initiators and followers of the School of the History of Religions have rushed to accent the similarity between pagan myuthology and the Cana miracle in John 2:1–11; seen it as a “parade example of the penetration of hellenistic miracle tradition into the Jesus tradition.”52 One recalls the temple of Dionysus the wine-god, located not too far distant from Cana, at which the priests on the eve of the god’s yearly festival, roughly corresponding to Christian celebration of Epiphany, locked three empty crocks in a sealed building and presented them on the next day full of wine. Another comments that in Judaism wine serves as metaphor for the joys of the time of salvation. Still another suggests that Jesus’ participation in a wedding at Cana developed into the narrative of a miracle, in this case, outdoing the feat of Dionysus, or Bacchus, his Roman counterpart, with twice as many crocks, each holding twenty to thirty gallons. But all this may be missing the subtelties for tripping on the obvious. Why, for example, does the evangelist first note Jesus’ mother’s invitation to the wedding, and that of Jesus and the disciples as if an afterthought: “Jesus and his disciples had also been invited” (John 2:2)? What to make of Jesus’ seemingly coarse rebuff to his mother’s announcement that the supply of wine is exhausted: “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?” (John 2:4) , together with the remark that his “hour” has not yet come? Incidentally or no, this is the first of seven instances in which I reference is made to Jesus’ “hour.” In 7:30 the Evangelist writes of Jesus’ enemies inability to lay hands on him because “his hour had not yet come.” In 8:20, following Jesus’ teaching in the temple, the Evangelist writes again that no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.” In 12:23, Greeks who have come to Jerusalem for the festival, approach Philip and ask to see Jesus, who after being informed of it, says “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” In 12:27 Jesus is recorded as saving, “Now is my soul troubled. And what should I say—Father, save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” In 13:1 the evangelist records that at the festival of Passover Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Finally, in 17:1, following his high priestly prayer, Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that yo ur Son may glorify you.” This “hour,” described as an hour of glorification, and identified with an event Jesus might pray to avoid (“What should I say—Father, save me from this hour?”) , or, as per the evangelist, with “going to the Father,” can only mean his death. It is an “hour,” the coming of which Jesus is aware, as for example at the arrival of the Greeks, and for which he prays (“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son”) but which he does not own or bring about. Reference to it as “his” simply describes him as its subject. More, since this “hour,” this “glorification” will be the glorification of the Father, the death of Jesus is an event initiated by the Father. It will be”an”hour,” a death he takes on himself.
To return to the Cana miracle, what to make of his mother’s reposte that the servants do whatever he commands? Doesen’t she hear, or understand what he said, or does she pay no mind to it? And what of Jesus’ reversal of his earlier demurrer in favor of his mother’s plea with the order to fill with water six stone jars designated for purification, jars, as it turned out, about to be defiled? Had his “hour” come in that moment, and if so, why is that term later reserved for his crucifixion? (cf. John 8:20; 12:23, 27; 13:1; 17:1). And, prior to the servants’ drawing it out and bringing it to the steward, why not a simple statement to the effect that the water had been changed to wine, the servants cognizant of the entire affair but the steward totally unaware? Finally, what to make of the evangelist’s conclusion that at Cana Jesus “revealed his glory” (shades of the Prologue, 1:17), ”and his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11)? If we agree that the evangelist is pursuing a specific goal with his work, what provokes our questions may not be due to lapses, or a haphazard “go” at the event. Then, beneath the servant’s knowledge of the source of the miracle, or the disciples’ belief in the revelation of his “glory,” and beneath the order of Jesus’ mother in face of her son’s rebuff, or the steward’s surprise at the water’s being changed to wine, may lie the intent to distinguish a faith dependent on the “sign” as sheer fact, and a faith that grasps what it is to which that “sign” is meant to point. In either case what is “signed” is the same: Jesus’ power over nature, a power to leave an Olympian god leagues behind, though the one faith is given superiority over the other, as at the end of the Gospel in Jesus’ word to Thomas: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20:28). Then, by way of parallel, there may be two “hours,” and two revelations of his