Adult Bible Study January 6, 2008

Lesson Text: Luke 2:41-52
By George Epp
E-mail: g.epp@sasktel.net

[Jesus asked] “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49 TNIV).

I’m currently reading Tom Yoder Neufeld’s Recovering Jesus (Brazos Press, 2007). It’s one of many books currently available on the life of Jesus, including Marcus Borg’s Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (Thorndike Press, 2006) and Philip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew (HarperCollins Canada, 2002).

The desire to know more about the Christ we follow is not surprising. The fact that we have only legends, various traditions, and the one story in Luke of the twelve-year-old Jesus’ temple encounter leaves us open to a great deal of unverifiable speculation about the young Jesus.

At the core of Luke’s story is the clear indication that Jesus was an extraordinary twelve-year-old. That his special wisdom and enthusiasm for the faith became evident on other occasions is highly likely, but neither the Gospels nor Paul seem to find it necessary to make reference to the events of Jesus’ growing-up time. Apparently, the possibility that he fashioned birds of clay and caused them to fly—as some traditions report it—does not figure as significant in terms of what we need to know to follow the Christ.

“The child is parent to the adult,” it’s been said. At least, the branch grows as the twig is bent. As in earlier lessons, Zachariah and Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary were prepared by God for the role they would play in shaping the adults that the young John and Jesus would become. As parents, it’s likely that Joseph and Mary took their children to Jerusalem for all the major festivals, and it was they who transported him to the temple—as well as back to Nazareth.

Around the world today, many children not only are being denied proper nurture and education, they are being neglected, abused and taught the ways of selfishness and violence. “Albert was 15 when he was recruited by an armed opposition group in the Democratic Republic of Congo. ‘They would give us chanvre [cannabis] and force us to kill people to toughen us up. Sometimes they brought us women and girls to rape .. . . They would beat us if we refused’” (Source: Amnesty International).

How different from the boy Jesus, who grew up “in wisdom and in favor with God and people” (2:52). Would that all young people would joyfully be “about their Father’s business.”