It was one of those moments when in the midst of having the experience you wish you were somewhere else, but on reflection, you were glad of the experience. It was Boxing Day this past year, after the glory and majesty of Christmas. I was sitting at my desk at home looking at all the Christmas cards that so many of you had sent to me. I felt warm and comfortable, and assured somehow that we had honestly, truly over Christmas both praised our God and met with each other in a deep way. A glorious moment! Then I turned to my right and looked down at the bookshelf, and there leaning against it was my father’s old cricket bag. It must be seventy years old. He had played as a semi-professional in Lancashire before the Second World War, and looking at it, all those memories came flooding back. Playing in what cricket calls, the net, where we practiced both bowling and hitting, enjoying each other’s company and laughter. And realizing that my father was much more knowledgeable than I, AND a better athlete. Humbling!
I remember how he used to prepare his cricket bat, for a cricket bat isn’t just something that you buy; it is something you have to break in. You break it in with linseed oil, which soaks into the Willow, and you take the cricket ball and bounce it off the bat so it matures. You don’t go into a game without a mature bat; you make sure that it has been prepared – oiled, hit, matured. I thought of all the hours my father spent with his cricket bat, and all the hours I had spent with that cricket bat, and it was as if somehow the ages sort of rolled into one. It was a deeply personal moment.
I thought about that cricket bat and how the maturing of something to become effective requires experience and time; it is not just something that happens. As human beings, we mature with our engagement with people, life experiences, memories and history. We are what we are by virtue of the things that we have experienced, and we mature as those experiences accumulate. Sometimes we mature for the better and sometimes we mature for the worse, but in these various experiences our life grows and enriches and develops.
In today’s passage from Luke, we see the maturation of Jesus of Nazareth. This is the only time in all of the Gospels that the early childhood days of Jesus are captured. Only in one place does Luke make it known. Unlike some of the more apocryphal Gospels that have been written, such as the Gospel of Thomas and others, which were written much later in the second century and had myths and legends about what happened to Jesus, this one is rooted in the earliest literature of The New Testament, and it is the only moment where Luke actually tells us about the young Jesus. It was a moment of importance. Remember I said over the last few weeks when talking about the Gospel of Luke: Luke doesn’t put something in there without a good reason. He is an historian and gives a sense of what has transpired, so telling the story of the young Jesus going into the Temple was a very powerful statement, because it was a statement about Jesus coming of age. In the great tradition of Judaism, when boys reached the age of twelve years old it was expected that they would become knowledgeable of the law, so-much-so that boys were actually called at that age “Sons of the Law.” The idea was that they would go for instruction and education, and that they would grow in their knowledge of the Scripture, of the Torah in particular.
Luke tells us that it was the Passover time, and Jesus and his family go, as they would in their tradition, for the Passover to Jerusalem. It was expected that all children of a certain age go to the Passover at some point in their lives. Jesus goes with his parents to the Temple to learn, to experience the Passover, to become a Son of the Law. We are told that when he got there he had discussions with the rabbis, he listened to their teachings, he discussed things with them, so-much-so that they were impressed by his wisdom. But then something very strange happens.
I don’t know about you, but over the Christmas period I have watched, almost nauseatingly so, some of the repeats of the Christmas movies on television. I think it must be the cheapest form of broadcasting there is, because how many times can you watch a Christmas story or Home Alone 1 and 2? (thank goodness it ended there!) I don’t know if you are like me, there are a couple you have just got to watch! The Red Ryder BB Gun is still my favourite Christmas gift of all time, and still I love A Christmas Story and Mr. Bean and his famous turkey head. I just love those, so I watched them, and I even watched Home Alone! Home Alone is bad!
The first “Home Alone” was Joseph, Mary and Jesus, because we are told by Luke, and this is sort of humorous by the way, he is trying to be humorous as well, that they went back home and left Jesus in Jerusalem. He is only a twelve year-old boy. You would think they would have a little more savvy than that, but there is a reason. When a family travelled to Jerusalem to go to the Passover, they would go as a group, often with extended family. They would travel in two different caravans or two different groups. The first were the women, who often arrived at the camp at night and set it up, and the men would come along afterwards and make sure that everything was safe. It would not be uncommon for a mother to assume that the boy was with the father and for the father to assume that the boy was with the mother. Just like Home Alone, which one of you has the child?
So, they arrived at the camp, and, “Where is Jesus?” They don’t know what to do. They go back eventually. This is a lot of trekking! This isn’t in a car, it takes days to get from Jericho to Jerusalem, and they were on their way back to Nazareth. They were a long way away! They find their way back to Jerusalem, and where do they find Jesus? They find him still at the Temple. Now, this would not be uncommon either, because the rabbis, the teachers, the Pharisees, would actually take in young people and look after them if they were inquiring. It was somewhat like the very earliest universities in a way. Here they find Jesus. Jesus says, “Why are you searching for me?” and, the Greek makes it clear, “Why are you so anxious?”
Clearly he didn’t understand being a parent, right? He says, “Surely you know that I am in my Father’s house.” There it all is! That is why it is there! Jesus is affirming his relationship with his father. This is not a statement of detachment, it is not simply about being in God’s house, or being in the Lord’s house, but being in his Father’s house. This was the language of relationship. This was the language of me and the one who owned the cricket bat. This was personal.
The relationship that Jesus had with the Father comes out for the very first time in Jesus’ life in this story in Luke’s Gospel. But it is also a profoundly human moment because Jesus is learning and growing. He is receiving instruction under the law. He knows that he needs to mature. Jesus isn’t some sort of mythological figure who drops from the sky prepared and all knowing. No! Jesus is a fully human person. And, like a fully human person, he needs to learn, to grow, and to mature. What is interesting is that Luke tells us almost nothing more about the life of Jesus. This is the only moment that seems to have been recounted by those who were close to him, except to say that he remained obedient to his parents, was a good son, and grew in wisdom in the stature of men and women and God. What we have here is a picture of a divine son and a human son; a son who was intimately related to the Father and wanted to know the Father’s word, but at the same time wanted to be the good son and have a loving relationship with his parents.
From that, I think we need to ask ourselves not only why Luke put that there – perhaps we have already answered that – but what is there about the encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees that makes it so important for us today? If that story is about Jesus coming of age, then I think it is a word for a world coming of age. There are many pundits, philosophers and social commentators today who genuinely believe that as a human race, we have come of age. That maturity is such that they don’t believe there is what we call a mena-narrative, an over-arching story of humanity, but rather only the narrative, only the stories of our own experiences and our own lives. That we have matured beyond the greatest story about humanity, and we’ve got to a series of stories manifesting themselves in our own. From that, we moved on to conceive of the world and ourselves as being autonomous. In other words, there is no need for a mature world come of age to have a God or a greater being who reaches beyond ourselves; our own stories, our own narratives are all that matter, and they will dictate our future. From that narrative of the self and our own growth and experience, we can live as autonomous creatures not depending upon, not requiring, and not needing a relationship with a higher power.
While that might not be completely the case, and while there are many exceptions to that world view, there are still many who believe that we are a world that has come of age. One of the things about a world come of age is that there is a radical separation – you will see where I am going on that – between our study and our inquiry into earthly matters and divine matters, and that divine matters, having been separated completely from earthly matters, can be deemed as being relevant or irrelevant depending upon our own personal experience. In other words, if we don’t think there is a need for a divine inquiry, if there is no need for us to explore further beyond ourselves, then there is no need to explore beyond ourselves; we are an autonomous world come of age and there is no place for God.
How then do we read a story like the one of Jesus going into the Temple, and how do those who actually believe that there is a God and that God has been revealed in Jesus then speak to a world that thinks it has come of age? Many years ago, I visited Israel and went to the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, of the great Temple, what is left of it on the Temple Mount, and – for those of you who have been there you will know this very well – there is a segregated area for men to go and stand in one particular place. For those who have religious training there is an opportunity if you know ahead of time to be able to speak to some of the Hassidic biblical scholars, who are actually by the side of the wall. I remember wondering if – and this was a Home Alone experience for Marial because she didn’t know where I had gone –I had wandered into this tomb area and the Hassidim were reading the Torah. I spoke to one of them. You shouldn’t interrupt them when they are meditating on a passage, but I did anyway, and asked what he was reading. He was reading the prophet Isaiah. I asked him where he was in his reading, and he told me. I think it was Chapter 49 or 50. I asked how long he had been reading.
“Thirty years.”
I said, “Hold on, you’ve been reading Isaiah for thirty years?!”
He said, “Yes. This has been the focus of my inquiry.”
I left feeling so inadequate! So unprepared! I was in awe of him. He had committed his life to the study of the Torah in such depth and with such passion that even on that day, a hot day in October, he was still there in his robes reading this incredible book.
Maybe that’s an excessive illustration of a commitment to the study of the law, but you can understand then why Jesus goes into the Temple and why he listened to the rabbis and Pharisees and learned from them about his Father’s house and the Word of God. It seems to me that those who follow, even in a world come of age, it is important for us to mature in our walk with God. There is no point asking the world to embrace something that we ourselves have not embraced with a degree of dedication and depth. If there are trends at the moment within our own faith and within Christianity in North America in particular, it is the trend of shallowness, of entertainment, of wanting a spiritual buzz or hype, but it is not always grounded in a deeper knowledge of that faith. We sometimes even see it at the systematic level. The United Church of Canada is debating whether it is going to eliminate the notion of ordained ministers. This is going to be a subject of discussion over the next two or three years, and one of the things that I am writing on while I am at Oxford.
When we eliminate the scholarly, trained clergy, and have a flat lined ministry, without the same requirements we have had in the past – and you can tell which way I am coming down on this one – not only to preserve who and what I am, but I believe if anything, the degree of commitment to wisdom and knowledge and learning of a worldly and a spiritual nature is even more important in a world that thinks it has come of age and in fact, the level and depth of inquiry and knowledge is even more important. The academies, the universities, and even the seminaries, for example, are now evolving into places where you study religion – religious studies –a perfectly good line of inquiry, but it is a sociological and an historical study; it is not theology. Theology is the study of the Word of God. The universities started out as places where theology was studied, and now they are getting rid of those. Fewer and fewer Departments of Theology are in existence. Even in the last few months, Queen’s University closed its great seminary! I believe we have let them close. We have not taken seriously enough the need for good, scholarly inquiry into our faith. After all, Jesus did that in the Temple as a twelve year old boy, and continued to grow, and go to the Temple, and even in his adult life, to debate the scribes and the Pharisees, debating them on the basis of the Word. That is how he wrestled with it.
The great tradition from which we come, from which you come, is from the likes of Philip Melanchthon, the great German scholar of the sixteenth century, who at the age of seventeen went to Tubingen University and got his MA, and then continued to teach Greek and Latin, the great scholastic works of the medieval period. It was he who wrote the famous Augsberg Confession, which became the Confession of the Lutheran Church, and a foundational doctrine for the Reformation. It was he who wrote the famous book, Common Places, and Queen Elizabeth thought it was so good that she had it as required reading for anyone within her Court. Cambridge University demanded that every student who goes to that university read Melanchthon’s Common Places. This great scholar, this theologian who formed the Reformation Church did so because of his love of the study of humanity and of God. A passion for a study of worldly knowledge and humanism and the humanistic writings, and co-incidentally the writings of the Word of God, were the two things that Melanchthon wanted to bring to the Reformation, just like Jesus in the Temple.
You learn from the scholars. Melanchthon said, “I do not wish to have a happy life, only to have a righteous life like Christ.” He was one of the greatest minds of the century. That is the kind of commitment that people like Melanchthon had. That is part of our great Protestant tradition. It seems to me that we need to have that same passion in our own lives. And, if we are going to make a commitment on this New Year, it is to follow the example of Jesus Christ. It is to follow him into his Father’s house and to learn. It is to grow and to mature, and that this time next year you can honestly say, “I have grown in wisdom and I have grown in knowledge and in favour of God and humanity.” The world desperately needs this.
On Christmas Eve, for those of you who were here, I told the story of being sent home to England by my parents for Christmas when they lived in Bermuda. I was sent home because I think they wanted a break from me! I went to stay with my uncles and aunts and my grandparents – and maybe you can read that sermon sometime later on – but suffice to say I was in the UK over Christmas as a twelve-and-a-half year old boy, on my own, but nevertheless with my cousins, who I will see in two weeks. I have thought about that many times, because Santa Claus that year gave me my own cricket bat. Evidently, my father had already been in touch with Santa, and Santa had concluded that he needed his own cricket bat so I couldn’t borrow his any longer. Like a lot of boys having got a gift from Santa, I wanted to play with it on Christmas Day. I took my cricket bat out into the back garden and had my cousins bowl bowls at me. It was great, and it lasted three hours! By the final bowl, it split – the bottom cracked! My bat was broken! My beloved gift from Santa was destroyed! Why? Why? I hadn’t matured it! I hadn’t prepared it for what was coming, and it was destroyed.
I don’t think our lives are quite like that, but I do think the lesson is clear: we need to be mature, we need to be knowledgeable, and we need to be like Christ in the Temple. Keep growing! Amen.