SR: The miracle of the wine at Cana was designed to show Jesus' authority to perform miracles on the natural order, in proof of His messianic claims. It is not designed to showcase that Jesus responded differently to Mary than to any other believer. If anything, the focus seems quite the opposite, that it demonstrates 1) Jesus was willing to mildly rebuke her for drawing Him into a public display of His power before the official beginning of His public ministry,
AF: No, this explanation is a common error. The assumption of a rebuke does not, apparently, give proper consideration to the Hebrew behind the Greek, nor the Hebrew family relationship, nor the fact that she knew He would do the miracle, nor the fact that He did the miracle. It does fit the anti Mary/Miriam tradition though and is quite common in some circles. The Catholics have this right.
Convince me. I agree there is an underlying Hebrew idiom. It occurs in a number of places. But I don't think it means what you appear to think it means:
Judges 11:12 And Jephthah sent messengers unto the king of the children of Ammon, saying, What hast thou to do with me, that thou art come against me to fight in my land?
1 Kings 17:18 And she said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?
2 Kings 3:13 And Elisha said unto the king of Israel, What have I to do with thee? get thee to the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother. And the king of Israel said unto him, Nay: for the LORD hath called these three kings together, to deliver them into the hand of Moab.
2 Chronicles 35:21 But he sent ambassadors to him, saying, What have I to do with thee, thou king of Judah? I come not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith I have war: for God commanded me to make haste: forbear thee from meddling with God, who is with me, that he destroy thee not.
The Hebrew phrase of interest in each of these cases is
מַה־לִּ֥י וָלָ֖ךְ
Part of the problem is taking the vav that occurs between "to you" and "to me" as always purely conjunctive, as would be the case if we consistently rendered it as the English "and." But this isn't English. The speaker isn't putting the "you" and the "me" on the same side of the negotiating table. This is evident from the context of the passages above. The key is in that first component, mah, which sets the table for how to process the you/me component. The basic meaning of mah is "what?" an interrogatory, and the speaker in this idiom is setting up a contrast of interests between himself and the other person, as if to say "what [is] to you [that is also] to me?" Or put another way, what common interest exists between you and I?
The Greek equivalent is: Τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί
Which transliterates to "ti emoi kai soi."
The Louw-Nida Semantic Range Lexicon renders this as "for what reason are you saying or doing this to me?" If you plug that back into each of the above OT passages, it works perfectly to capture the sense.
In sum then, either way we approach it, we see the phrase is definitely a challenge to the relevancy of Mary's inquiry, especially when seen in light of it's OT usage. As rebukes go, it was quite mild, as friendly and loving as it gets, but still a challenge. He never said He wouldn't do it. Only that based on His mission, she had no basis for expecting such a thing. And yet she trusted that He would do something and He did. So I don't see the problem here. I understand that Rome promotes such a view of Mary that challenging her special pull with Jesus seems wrong to those who have accepted that unfounded tradition. But that is a subjective impression. In reality, Mary is not flawless. No human but Jesus ever was. Nor does she have any greater access to or influence over Jesus that any other believer. Jesus said so explicitly. It is no disrespect to her to be honest.
PS: metmon, I never considered that she might not even have been thinking of a miracle. You could be right. But just off the top of my head, I'm inclined to think she was thinking miracle, because of the general way she instructed the servants to respond, i.e., she left it wide open, not "he'll give you some money so you go get the wine," but "whatever he tells you." No, that doesn't lock it down, but I think it exposes her complete confidence He was going to do something special.
Peace,
SR
I definitely never read John 2 as Jesus being irritated with Mary - God is Love. It reminds me somewhat of other incidents in his ministry, the Syrophoenician woman comes to mind.
Mary first brought the problem to her son. But what she needed to do was release her faith to her Lord. When she told the servants to do what Jesus says, that was an expression of faith, a confidence that Jesus would act, an assurance of things hoped for (Hebrews 11:1). When Mary changed her tune, Jesus acted, in spite of saying it wasn’t yet his time. When the Syrophoenician woman stopped begging, and expressed determined confidence in Jesus, she got her miracle.
Hebrews 11:6 (KJV)
6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Mark 11:22-23 (KJV)
22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.
23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.