Posts Tagged ‘disobedience’

Dismissive teenager – Jesus in the Temple

December 28, 2024

Christmas 1 – 2024

Luke 2: 41-52

Marian Free

in the name of God who cannot be contained in mere words, simple stories or inaccurate histories. Amen.

In the Christmas carol, Once in Royal David’s City we sing the words; “for that child so dear and gentle.” In the Book of Hebrews we read: “For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.(7:6)” and “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb 4:15).

Song and scripture lead us to conclude that the child Jesus was always obedient to his parents, never said a cross word, was kind to his siblings, his friends and neighbours, always cheerful and so on. This is well and good, but we actually know little to nothing of Jesus’ childhood except that it seems to have been spent in Galilee (possibly in Nazareth) and that he had brothers and sisters. There is also a reference to hisi father being a craftsperson of some sort, traditionally a carpenter.

The only biblical record that we have of Jesus before he began his public ministry is this one recorded only by Luke (and the much later in Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus). 

Other accounts of Jesus’ childhood do exist in the Apocrypha. These are by and large legendary, fantastical, even disturbing. They recount that miracles occur in relation to the infant Jesus and that the child Jesus performs miracles. For example, you may have heard the legend of the spider who spun a web at the entrance of the cave in which Mary and Joseph were hiding from the soldiers, but perhaps you have not heard the truly apocryphal story from The History of Joseph the Carpenter. Joseph and Mary have taken refuge in the home of a brigand. There, Jesus is bathed, and his bath water miraculously bubbles up into a foam. The brigand’s wife has the foresight to keep the foam which she then uses to heal the sick and the dying. As a result, the brigand’s family become very rich. 

It is in The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, that we discover what are purported to be details of the life of Jesus as a child, but the picture it presents is one that I think most of us would reject out of hand[1]. The child Jesus is recorded not only as one who heals and raises from the dead, but also as one who strikes down (dead) those who disagree with or provoke him.  He is rude and disrespectful not only to his parents but also to his teacher. On one occasion, as Jesus was going through the village, a child ran and dashed against his shoulder.  This provoked Jesus who “said unto him: Thou shalt not finish thy course. (VI.1) And immediately the child fell down and died. Those who lived in his neighbourhood lived in fear (not reverence) of this young Jesus. “No one dared provoke him lest he should curse him and should be maimed.” (VII.I)

My point is, that after Jesus’ birth, the gospels are silent regarding Jesus’ early life, his adolescence and his 20’s. The only recorded story is that which we have read today – an account of a precocious adolescent who causes his parents great anxiety by failing to join the party who are returning home to Galilee after the Passover festival in Jerusalem. At twelve Jesus would have many of the responsibilities of an adult.  He would not have been expected to be with his parents for the duration of the visit, but he would have been expected to be with his fellow travellers when they began the journey back to Galilee.

Mary and Joseph simply expect him to be with the party, so it takes three days before they notice that he is not with them. We can imagine what was going through their heads – had he stumbled along the way or been attacked by robbers? was he lying injured somewhere along the route? if he was still in Jerusalem, what had detained him, with whom was he staying? No doubt they envisaged worse case scenarios. He had been hurt, he was dead, he had been kidnapped. 

(Meda Stamper points out that the word translated ‘anxiously’ is not the verb normally used for worry (Luke 12:22–31; 10:41). It is perhaps more akin to the soul-piercing sword of 2:35 “to cause pain”. It appears elsewhere in the New Testament only two other times. In Luke 16:24–25, it refers to the rich man’s agony in the flames of Hades. In Acts 20:38, it refers to Paul’s grief-stricken friends when he says they will never see him again. When Mary rebukes Jesus for having left his parents, she is referring to their agony at the prospect of losing their child.)[2]

Mary and Joseph return to Jerusalem and, after some searching, find Jesus in the Temple. Jesus is quite cavalier, he dismisses their (sword piercing) anxiety out of hand. As a typical teenager, he implies that his parents were foolish for worrying, foolish for not guessing what he was up to and where he was. (It is only afterthis even that Luke tells us that Jesus was obedient to them – suggesting that he thinks that Jesus is out of order here.)

There is so little information about Jesus’ early life or his life in general. It is tempting to fill in the gaps, (as has occurred in the Apocrypha), to make assumptions about the sort of person Jesus was, the sort of child he might have been. This may settle our curiosity, but instead of increasing our knowledge it simply creates misinformation and leads us to create the sort of Jesus we would like to imagine – a perfect, compliant baby, a perfect, compliant child, a perfect, compliant adolescent.  But if Jesus was fully human, we have to allow that he tested the boundaries when he was two years old, that he was rebellious as a teenager and that he chose his own path as a young man.[3]

We have to take care that we don’t mythologise Jesus (make him perfect, less than human), that we don’t read into the story things that simply are not there, and that we don’t create a story out of nothing.  Sometimes we have to be content with not knowing all the details. often times we have to concede that. we will never know all there is to know and at all times we have to remember that there is always far more than that which God has already revealed to us. 

[1] It is very short, you can read it here: http://www.gnosis.org/library/inftoma.htm

[2] Meda Stamper https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-of-christmas-3/commentary-on-luke-241-52-6

[3] After all, contrary to societal expectation he appears not to have married.

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Uneasy childhoods

December 26, 2015

Christmas 1 – 2015

Luke 2:41-52

Marian Free

In the name of God whose unconventional choices transform the world. Amen.

The readings from 1 Samuel and from Luke tell the stories of two young boys – Samuel and Jesus – whose childhoods are anything but conventional. Two boys – born generations apart whose stories are remarkably similar and yet vast different. Both were conceived in miraculous circumstances, both were separated from their family, both were found in the house of the Lord, both were doing God’s will and both were destined to play significant part in the life of God’s people. Two boys who stories coincide, but whose experiences, personalities and roles are entirely different.

Samuel is the son of Hannah and Elkanah. Samuel’s mother, Hannah was her husband’s second wife. Elkanah already had children and he loved Hannah even though she was childless. However, Hannah was desperate for children of her own – both to remove the sense of shame that she felt and also to remove the disdain in which Elkanah’s first wife held her. Hannah was desperate and, in the house of the Lord, she prayed fervently for a child. As she prayed, she made a commitment to God that if her prayer was answered she would dedicate her son to God’s service.

According to the story, it is only when the child is born that she tells Elkanah of her promise. Elkanah accepts her decision but asks that the child remain at home until he is weaned.

Even so Samuel can have been no older than four when his parents took him to the house of the Lord and abandoned him to be raised by a complete stranger who was old enough to be his grandfather. Apart from a yearly visit, Hannah and Elkanah have no more to do with the raising of Samuel who seems to accept and to adapt to his new life and to obedient to his surrogate father Eli. Hannah has three more sons and two daughters as a reward for her gift to God.

This is the bible, so we are led to believe that Hannah’s behaviour is perfectly acceptable, that Samuel is perfectly acquiescent and that he experienced no long-term negative consequences as a result of his being deserted by his parents at such a young age and did not resent his siblings who presumably stayed at home with their parents). Samuel goes on the play a significant role in the life of Israel. He oversees the transition from priestly to kingly rule and it is through him that the first two kings of Israel are appointed and anointed.

Jesus’ story and Jesus’ character is completely different to that of Samuel. Jesus was, if you like, imposed on his parents rather than sought after. His parents did not abandon him he abandons them. Jesus did not willing accept his family obligations nor did he comply to societal expectations. He consistently strained against the real and perceived restrictions and limitations of living in that time and place.

In today’s gospel, Jesus is in Jerusalem. It is apparently not his first visit. His parents have brought him every year for the Passover festival. Jerusalem was a small town by our standards and no doubt as a twelve-year-old Jesus and his friends have had a degree of freedom to roam the streets. All the same, he would have known that his parents were returning home yet he chose to remain behind, oblivious to or selfishly disregarding the anxiety that his remaining would cause them. When Mary and Joseph finally discovered Jesus after days of searching the teenaged Jesus was any but apologetic, in fact, he was disrespectful to the point of being callous. He showed no compassion for his parent’s anxiety. Instead, he behaved as teenager would, by expressing surprise that they had been worried. Worse, when Mary says: “your father and I have been searching for you”, Jesus responds by saying: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Joseph’s feelings and is role in Jesus’ life are completely ignored as his precocious son redefines his responsibilities and commitments. Jesus separated himself still further when, as an adult, he claimed that it was believers, not his natural family who were his mothers and brothers and sisters.

Again, this is scripture. The story of Jesus’ defiance is told in such a way that we are led to believe that Jesus’ behaviour in the Temple is an aberration or that it is an illustration of his recognition of his role and of his obedience to God. From now on at least until adulthood, Luke tells us that Jesus was obedient to his parents, to Mary and to Joseph.

Two stories of two very different boys chosen by God, to do God’s will – one willingly given up, the other reluctantly let go, one compliant, accommodating and obedient, the other non-compliant, non-accommodating and rebellious – both chosen by God to fulfill God’s purpose: for the people of Israel and for the salvation of the world.

The childhood stories of Samuel and Jesus remind us that God is not conventional and does not operate according to human standards. God can and does choose unusual people and unexpected situations to work out God’s will in the world. God’s chosen may or may not behave in conventional ways and may or may not conform to the expectations of the world in which they find themselves.

We would do well to withhold our judgement and suspend our expectations of others, for God in them, may take us completely by surprise.

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