2018 12.30 Luke 2:41-52 41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44 Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety. 49 He said to them, Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father s house? 50 But they did not understand what he said to them. 51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor. 1
It Doesn t Take a Genius to Be a Christian Korea has a TV show that profiles child prodigies [SLIDE], young children with an advanced level of achievement in various fields like music, mathematics, and foreign languages. Those are all very marketable fields. Watching a child play a Mozart sonata, solve an advanced math equation, or speak fluently in a foreign tongue makes for good television. But genius comes in many forms. Not every child prodigy plays the piano, solves algebra equations, or recites Shakespeare. Some display advanced talent in more pedestrian fields [VIDEO]. I don t know that it warrants the label genius, but my oldest brother Donnie, when he was in kindergarten, showed a talent for reading and writing that was ahead of his years. What I m about to tell you is one of my favorite family stories. I wasn t yet born when it happened (Donnie and I were fourteen years apart), but I have a vivid picture of it in my mind, so much so that I feel as if I were there to witness it. From a very young age, before he even entered kindergarten, Donnie was interested in dinosaurs. He had dinosaur toys and dinosaur books. He learned the names of many dinosaurs on his own. If you ve ever noticed, dinosaur names are long: [SLIDE] Triceratops, [SLIDE] Tyrannosaurus Rex, [SLIDE] Pachycephalosaurus. No matter. Somehow Donnie had figured out on his own how to read. Most American children learn to read in kindergarten, but Donnie entered school already reading books about dinosaurs. It was early in the school year when the teacher gave the students an assignment in class. They were each given a piece of blank paper and told to draw a picture of an animal and to write its name. This being kindergarten, the teacher saw lots of pictures of three-letter animals: cat, dog, cow, pig. But Donnie drew a picture of a dinosaur [SLIDE]. Underneath it he wrote Brontosaurus. Spelled correctly. 2
The next morning my mother got a phone call from Donnie s teacher who said, Mrs. Schneider, I think that Donnie is ready for first grade. And that s how my brother skipped kindergarten and moved straight to first grade. I doubt whether he knew anything about dinosaurs, but in today s reading from Luke, the twelve-year-old Jesus shows an advanced understanding of the Hebrew scriptures. He lingers in the temple in Jerusalem, unbeknownst to his parents who have already left to head back home to Nazareth. There he sits among, and listens to, the teachers. In the questions he asks and in the answers he gives he displays a knowledge and a wisdom that is well beyond his years. Today s reading from Luke 2 is the only passage in all of the Bible that gives us a glimpse of Jesus childhood. These twelve verses are the only instance in which we learn anything that Jesus said or did before he began his ministry. The passage is set in Jerusalem. Jesus and his parents have traveled from their hometown of Nazareth to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover holiday [SLIDE]. Like Thanksgiving in the United States or Chuseok or Seollal here in Korea, Passover in first-century Judea was a major travel holiday. Jewish families from all throughout Judea traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate the festival. Ah, family road trips. I can remember family trips as a child, my four older siblings and I, along with my parents [SLIDE], piling into our station wagon that was only slightly smaller than a naval battleship. Parents in the front seat, three eldest siblings in the back seat, my brother Mike and I, the youngest, flying around on the floor of the way back, along with all the luggage and without any seatbelts. Why was it called the way back? When you ran out of seats, you shoved the remaining kids way back there in the cargo area, next to the suitcases and the cooler. When I think about it, it s amazing that any children survived the 1970s. 3
Jesus and his family would not have traveled by car, of course, but by caravan. With multiple families traveling together, a caravan offered safety in numbers. That may explain why Mary and Joseph lose track of their not-yet-teenage son. They assume that he is somewhere in the caravan, either running ahead or dallying behind. Surely he s with relatives or friends. They go a full day s journey before they realize that he is not anywhere to be found in the caravan. If you re a parent and you ve ever lost your child momentarily while out in public, you know that panic sets in immediately. You drop whatever you re doing. Your only thought is to find your child. Now, Jesus wasn t a small child; he was twelve years old. But a twelve-year-old boy from a rural village by himself in the big city is enough to put the panic into any parent. This was the first century. There were no mobile phones. His parents couldn t call him. Their only course of action was to travel all the way back to Jerusalem, a full day s journey, with each step worrying what might have happened to him. It takes Jesus parents one day to reach Jerusalem [SLIDE], but they search for him for three days. He s not here, he s not there. They look everywhere. At last they decide to check the temple. But why would he be there? Passover has ended. Of course, that is precisely where he is. He has been in the temple the whole time, sitting among the teachers there, listening but also asking questions and sharing his own insights into the scriptures [SLIDE]. Everyone who hears him is amazed at his profound level of wisdom for someone so young. Once, in an English literature class in college, after I made a comment about a book or a poem, the professor told me that I was perspicacious. He could tell by the puzzled look on my face that I didn t know what the word meant. Perspicacious is a fancy way of saying insightful. I was not so perspicacious as to know the meaning of the word. 4
The young Jesus is perspicacious. He possesses a level of insight into the scriptures that is astonishing for his age. Everyone is surprised...even his parents. When they enter the temple and at last find him, sitting among the teachers grown men who have studied the scriptures all their lives and not only proving their equal but even surpassing them, Jesus parents momentarily forget the anxiety his disappearance had caused them. They, for a moment, put aside their anger. There will be time for that soon enough. Rather than being angry [SLIDE], they are astonished, no less so than the teachers, at their son s understanding of the scriptures. And although the text doesn t say so explicitly, they are probably more than a little proud as well. The carpenter s son from the tiny village of Nazareth is in the Jerusalem temple exchanging insights on the scriptures with teachers several times his age. Imagine a twelve-year old Korean child walking onto the campus of Seoul National University and debating the faculty in the philosophy department. If it were your child, even if he or she had disappeared and caused you to become frantic with worry, you d still be impressed and secretly proud. But soon the pride of Mary and Joseph gives way to anger. Mary is the one who speaks, asking her son, Child, why have you treated us like this? (Lk. 2:48b). It s such a human moment...a concerned mother confronting her son with his irresponsibility. Son, how could you do this to us? Your father and I were worried sick! We were looking for you all over the place! I m going to guess that most of the parents here can relate. You ve used similar words with your own children when they did something to upset you, something for which they should have known better. Why have you treated us like this? Mary waits for Jesus to respond to her question. 5
Later, when Jesus is much older, he will be asked many questions by those who want to challenge his authority. In almost every instance, he answers each question with a question of his own [SLIDE]: Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? What did Moses command you? (Mk. 10:2-3) Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Why do you call me good? (Lk. 18:18-19) Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to the emperor or not? Give me a denarius. Whose head do you see? (Lk. 20:14-15) That technique of answering a question with a question is one that Jesus learned from a young age, because in response to his mother Mary s question, Why have you treated us like this?, Jesus has a question of his own [SLIDE]: Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father s house? (Lk. 2:49). Jesus is unmoved by his parents concern. His answer is basically, Of course I was in my Father s house. Where else would I be? Let s remember that in this passage Jesus is twelve years old, nearly a teenager. There comes a point in the life of every teenager when they begin to separate themselves from their parents. When children are young, they strongly identify with their mother and father. Parents are larger-than-life, heroic figures. Plus, parents control nearly every aspect of a young child s life. But teens on the verge of adulthood necessarily begin to disassociate themselves from their parents. Teens don t want to be controlled; they want to assert control over their own lives. 6
Here in this passage Jesus takes control of his own faith. He had accompanied his parents to Jerusalem. They brought him with them, but in the temple he becomes his own man. He chooses to stay there and engage with the teachers. His parents have no part in it. His faith is now his own. If you were baptized as a child and brought up in the church, you had no choice in the matter. You were a Christian because your parents were Christians. You went to church because your parents went to church. But at some point you had to decide for yourself that being a Christian was important to you or not. It was part of your identity or it was not. I remember making that decision when I was in my twenties. I can t pinpoint an exact day. There wasn t a particular day when I said, Yes, I believe these things for myself. I just remember that in college my faith was deconstructed. I was exposed to interpretations of Christianity other than the conservative Catholic one with which I had grown up. I was exposed to different religions. I met people who were much smarter than I was. And I was in conversation with old friends who had deconverted, who had cast aside the faith they once had. Most significantly, I wrestled with the suffering of my brother, my brilliant brother who skipped kindergarten but died too young of AIDS, a terrible, insidious disease. All of that factored into my faith becoming my faith and not that of my parents. I no longer believed because my parents believed; my faith was my own. Now, this might sound counterintuitive, but my faith emerged stronger than it had been before I began questioning. My faith had been forged in the fires of questioning and uncertainty. Like metal that is heated to the point that it becomes malleable able to be shaped my faith changed shape. It underwent a hammering! But what emerged from the fire was stronger than what had gone in. 7
Often times we hear in church that we should not question, that questioning is dangerous because it might lead to doubt. Nonsense! Questioning is a sign of humility. Questioning means that we don t have all the answers. We don t have everything sorted out. We question because we don t know. Questioning is also a sign of curiosity. We question because we want to know. Questioning, doubting, seeking, searching this is all part of the maturation process of faith. And we are all maturing in faith at least we ought to be. A faith that s not maturing is stagnant. When it comes to Christianity, there are no mature Christians. There are no finished products. There is no one who has all the answers. Certainly not your pastor. Korean church culture tends to have a very high view of the pastor s authority. The pastor s word is treated no pun intended as gospel, as the final authority. But this is a humbling job. One thing you quickly learn is just how much you don t know. And honestly, that is one of the things that I most enjoy about being a pastor. Every week I learn something new about the Bible, the church, and even myself. But it s not just pastors. We are all learning, discerning, and growing. We don t need to have all the answers. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it s better to ask the right questions than it is to have all the right answers. If you think you have all the answers, then (1) you re deceiving yourself, and (2) you ve stopped growing. You ve stopped growing because you ve stopped asking questions. Even Jesus was asking questions of the teachers in the temple. He was learning. He didn t have all the answers [SLIDE]. The last verse of today s passage states matter of factly that Jesus increased in wisdom. Yes, he was brilliant. He was insightful. But he too was learning. 8
The good news is that we don t need to be spiritual geniuses for God to accept us. We don t need to master the Bible, or prayer, or theology before God can use us. There will not be a test. There s no final exam. God is not grading us. God is not taking attendance at dawn prayer. Praise the Lord! The heart of our faith is not our knowledge of God, it s God s compassion for us, for sinners like us. God s compassion is so great that God enters into our fallen human condition. God subjects himself to the sin and death that we experience. God comes to us in the flesh by being born of a human mother. Even Mary, Jesus mother, the one person who knew him better than any other human being, did not know all there was to know about her son. Verse 50 portrays Mary and Joseph as not understanding the twelve-year-old Jesus [SLIDE]: But they did not understand what he said to them (Lk. 2:50). Even Mary, his own mother, was also learning about Jesus, as we all are. Mary learned as Jesus matured that she was not only Jesus mother, she was becoming his disciple. As disciples of Christ, we could spend a lifetime learning about the love of God that comes to us in Jesus, and we would not scratch the surface. Fortunately, God has given us just that a lifetime to learn and discover the depth and the breadth of God s love, a lifetime to grow and mature in wisdom and wonder at the riches of God s grace. 9