JOHN100 - That Time Kevin Costner Waved Off Superman

John 2:1-4

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Music by Jeff Foote

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast, and I've got a probing, important, deeply personal question for you that we need to discuss on the front end of our conversation today. Who's your favorite Superman? I've liked a lot of different iterations of Superman. I think the old school TV Superman was played by a guy named George Reeve. And then the Superman of when I was a little kid, was that Richard Donner who made those movies? I think that's right. That was Christopher Reeves. Those guys aren't related. I think it's Reeve and Reeves. Again, correct me if I'm wrong on this. I don't, I'm not like a Superman expert or anything. And then you had Dean Kane of the Lois and Clark version. There was some guy from the Smallville version. I don't know his name. I didn't watch any of that. I'm sure it was lovely. And then you had Brandon Routh? Brandon Ruth? Brandon Ruth? I don't remember that guy's name exactly. He was one of Chuck's enemies in the TV show Chuck. He was the bassist in Clash at Demon Head from Scott Pilgrim. I kind of liked the Brandon Ruth, Brandon Routh version of Superman. But then after that, you got Henry Cavill in the 20 teens. And I think that's my favorite Superman still. And then you got the new guy whose name is escaping me, John something, Sorts of the C, maybe. I don't remember. I don't remember his name. I thought he did a nice job too. But I like that Henry Cavill version of Superman. And I especially liked Clark Kent's dad. I don't remember his name as a character, but he was played by Kevin Costner in the Henry Cavill Superman's. And I like the way they imagined that relationship in that particular story because I mean, look, obviously, the whole Superman thing has got a lot of layers of meaning, but one of them is the idea of kind of a savior of the world. There's a little bit of a Jesus thing going on with Superman. It's very imperfect. I mean, some directors really put it right on the nose and it's a little over the top, maybe. But you know, it's it's there. It's not crazy. It's meant to be part of the subtext. Obviously, themes of incarnation and hiding glory and revealing glory and it's not yet my time kind of stuff do come up in Superman. There's a flashback to how Clark Kent's dad intervenes for him in one moment. Back in Kansas, there's a tornado in that old movie. Young Clark Kent Superman goes to save his dad, who's like, you know, stuck with this tornado bearing down or something. But the dad is like, no, no, no, and like waves him off. Why? Because he knows that his kid's time has not yet come. So he he waves them off like he can't do it. And some people think it's a really cheesy scene, and maybe it is. I haven't seen that in a long time. But I remember very much being struck by that scene when I saw it in theaters, and it kind of reminded me, even back then, of this moment that we're looking at in John chapter two with the wedding at Cana. Now, here a lot of things are different because it's not Kevin Costner, it's not a dad here. It's Jesus and his relationship with his mom. Also, Jesus is not Superman, so that's quite a bit different. But that theme of a parent of a very special child being like, uh, I know who you are, and what that means comes through here. Now, in the Superman sequence, the dad is like, No, your time hasn't come, hold off. In the John 2 sequence, the parent, Mary, mother of Jesus, is like, I'm not really thinking about whether it's your time or not, but I know you can solve this problem because I know what you are. They I like she clearly knew that he could do something about this problem, and that in itself is fascinating. But here it's Jesus who kind of holds up the hand and is like, Yeah, it's not yet my time. So much to unpack here. Let's get into this a little bit more. Okay, on the third day, a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. I think maybe I said this the other day, but to the best of my knowledge, John never actually names Jesus' mother. I don't think he ever says Mary, which is it's interesting. I don't know what to make of that, but of all the gospel authors, John is the one who surely knew Mary the best. I mean, I don't think it's close, right? Would Mark have known Mary? Uh yeah. They were at a lot of the same things. They would have overlapped some. Would Matthew have known Mary? Yes, surely. They would have been around each other a lot, but we don't get any meaningful look at the relationship between Matthew and Jesus' mother, Mary. Would Luke have known Mary? Hmm. Maybe. I mean, Luke goes out of his way at the beginning of both Luke and Acts to say, paraphrases mine. I went around and I interviewed people to get firsthand accounts of what was going on with all of this. And we know Luke frequented both of the two places geographically that Mary's associated with, that being Jerusalem and Galilee, but then also around Ephesus, where every tradition says that she lived her later years there, with the fourth gospel author, John, who surely knew her far and away the best. Because in John, where was it? It's got to be uh now 19, right? Hang on. In John 19, I was reading this to you the other day, but you know, Jesus is right at the very end, and it says, near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clopus, and Mary Magdalene. So many Mary's man, I mean, just Mary's and Herods, they're just everywhere in these gospels. It gets confusing. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, Dear woman, here is your son, and to the disciple, here is your mother. From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. Again, we don't know for sure, for sure, per our conversation last week, that the disciple who Jesus loved is John, but all signs point to it. And as we work through the gospel more, you'll see that all these little hints appear. And so John takes her into his home. John, the evangelist who wrote this book, is the only disciple who doesn't meet a violent early death. Somebody tried, according to tradition, to poison him in a chalice, which is why John's symbol is a cup with a snake coming out of it, which is kind of rad. John, by all accounts, lived out his days in and around Ephesus, and Mary did the same. There are a couple of competing tombs of Mary in that part of the world. So it's just an interesting note that John, who was at this wedding and wrote this thing, just doesn't use her name. Why would he do that? I got theories, maybe we'll think about it more some other time. I certainly don't think it is because John holds Mary in low esteem. Not at all. There's a reason that Jesus paired them up. I think he knew that there was a unique mother-son dynamic and affection there between John and Mary, and he trusted John would take care of her properly. Jesus, in his foreknowledge, also surely knew what would happen to James, his half-brother. He was martyred savagely. Jude appears to be a relative of Jesus or a brother, half-brother of Jesus as well, but he doesn't pick Jude, he picks John. Let that sit there in the background, because I think it's a very important detail to understanding this miracle and what's going on. When John wrote this, Mary had long been under his care, was probably deceased by the time he wrote this. People were probably fascinated already with Mary by the time that he wrote this, and he doesn't use her name, and he was a firsthand witness to what we're reading about. Very, very interesting. Okay, so they're all there. And when the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, they have no more wine. Now, if we just put on our mountain west, upper Midwestern lenses for interpreting social stuff, maybe you have different lenses. This might sound a little passive aggressive on her part. We had to teach all of our kids not to just make announcements, right? I'm hungry. Okay, well, you're 12 and you know where the kitchen is, which we keep stocked with all kinds of food. Like, what are you doing? Like, would you like to propose solutions? Do you have a specific request? And maybe some of you are like, You guys are mean parents. What are you doing? Well, I don't know. For me and my values and where I'm from, it's more tasteful to say, uh, could you help me with this? Or what shall we have for dinner or something like that, rather than to make announcements at people, and that's just your way without a question mark of telling them to do things. So that's one way to read it. She's just like, they have no more wine. Son, I say again, they have no more wine. But another way to read it is that it's very humble and it's very respectful, and that she's just pointing out a thing that Jesus probably already knows. Maybe she just sidles up alongside him at a wedding and leans over. Maybe she was the first one to notice, and she saw people bustling about in the background, and she was just very socially attentive, and she's like, Oh, look at that. They have no more wine, and just sort of leaned over and kind of dropped that in Jesus' ear at a table or something like that. I don't know. That's kind of an interesting way to imagine it as well. Maybe she came up and tapped him on the shoulder and pulled him aside. It was like, hey, they have no more wine. This is just the beginning of workshopping a solution. Maybe there's a lot more to this conversation that isn't recorded. The Bible isn't obligated to record every single phrase and back and forth of every single conversation. That would get incredibly boring. The Bible's a pretty tight book. Jesus replies in a way that depends on what translation of the Bible you are reading. In this translation, right now, today in front of me, and it does vary from day to day, I have a 2011 New International version. It reads, Dear woman, why do you involve me? Jesus replied. But I got some other versions sitting around here where it just says, Woman. And tomorrow we'll talk a little bit more about the dynamic there because it sounds pretty harsh to be like, woman, why do you involve me? I don't think that was probably Jesus' tone here. I think the important part of this little tete tete between Mary and Jesus is the next thing Jesus says, My time has not yet come. Picture Kevin Costner holding up his hand when there's an obvious opportunity for showing off your powers, but it's like, no, your time hasn't yet come. Now just flip it and imagine Jesus holding up his hand to his mother and being like, eh, my time hasn't yet come. So tomorrow we gotta explore this dynamic between the two a little bit, because I I'm uncomfortable. I don't want to just leave it out there like Jesus is barking at his mom in weird ways, and John is recording it. Like, I don't think John thinks this makes Mary or Jesus look bad, or I don't think he would have written it down, but there is a dynamic here, and it is very interesting. And I do think it all revolves around Mary and frankly, so many others wanting to constantly accelerate the Jesus thing. Everybody who'd seen a glimpse of his glory or what he actually was, they kind of want to go down there to the little settings button, the lower right, and they want to click it and they want to go up to the speed adjustment. It's like speed of how things unfold with Jesus, and they want to take it from 1x to like 5x. Super, super fast. Let's go, let's just get to the thing. The disciples, they want reckonings all the time. Like, is now the time that you're gonna reveal yourself to Israel and prove that we were right. You know, another time. These Samaritans were bad. Like, show them who you are, do the thing, do the thing. I think Mary here is probably really enthusiastic. And my guess is that part of the dynamic for her, at least, is I'm proud of my son. I know who he is. I even wrote a great song about him with a whole bunch of Old Testament references in it. And now is finally the time that people will get to see what I see because this is right up his alley. Son, they have no more wine. It's hard to blame these people who've seen a glimpse of what Jesus actually is for wanting to accelerate the timeline. However, as we go through the rest of the book of John, we'll see why Jesus did the Clark Kensad style, hold up his hand, big uh, my time has not yet come. Yet still, he is going to perform the miracle. So how does that all fit together? If he says, My time has not yet come, and then he goes ahead and does it anyway, well, what is it that he felt he was being asked to do, but that he didn't do in keeping with my time has not yet come? The theology around it and the relational dynamics around it are really interesting. And it all adds up into one very important hole that sets the stage for all the miraculous stuff in the book of John. Obviously, we have miles to go before we sleep. That's not true. We're going to sleep, and then we're going to keep going with this next time around. All right, that's good. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.