Last week an idea came to me. I should do some theology on the Unadulterated Love blog. I know this is isn’t a novel idea. Friends have told me for years that I’m doing theology all the time, but I don’t see what I do as “doing theology”, the kind of theology that gets published in books and is thus academic, learn-ed authority. One morning when I was meditating last week, the story in Luke’s gospel of the boy Jesus in the temple, aged twelve, gone missing. It’s the only story of the missing years of Jesus’ life, from birth to baptism, getting on for thirty years (Luke 2.40-52 REB). Why not do some Colin-style theology on this passage, I thought, based on the way I had always approached doing theology as a priest, the kind of sermon I used to create when I was vicar of St Faith’s Wandsworth. I read the gospels then and now, slowly, carefully giving myself time to notice the details of the story rather than reading the biblical passage through the lens of Christian history, tradition, reason and contemporary orthodoxy.
So I sat down and read and re-read the verses and started making notes. First of all, I wondered where the story came from. Luke alone records this incident in the life of Jesus. Did Luke invent the story himself, or was it part of the oral tradition, stories told about Jesus, remembered by those who had heard them from those who were followers of Jesus. It’s not going to be an eye witness account, is it? But it’s there in Luke for a reason. It has a purpose in the story Luke is setting out to tell. Does it make a difference whether this event actually happened when Jesus was twelve years old or whether the whole story is invented? I turned to the Jerome Biblical Commentary. It wasn’t much – well, any – help, so I proceeded, as I usually do, to take the story as an actual account of what happened, seeing what it revealed to me and thinking about the implications for my own life experiences and the meaning for our life as it was back then as a Christian congregation, thirty years ago in Wandsworth.
The baby Jesus had been born in unusual circumstances in a stable in Bethlehem. After he was born and the appropriate time had elapsed, his parents did everything prescribed in the law of the Lord in the temple in Jerusalem and returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. Twelve years later, Jesus had made the journey back to Jerusalem with his parents for the Passover festival. This wasn’t the first time they had returned. It was their practice to go every year so by now Jesus was familiar with the city, the temple, and the festival routine. Still a boy, he had grown big and strong and full of wisdom, independent enough to go off exploring on his own so that he was able to stay behind without Mary and Joseph’s knowledge when the party from Nazareth set off back home. It must have been quite a large group for his parents not to notice that he wasn’t with them. It must have been quite normal, by then, for Jesus to be off out of the house doing his own thing - it wasn’t a surprise to his parents that he wasn’t with them. They assumed he was somewhere in the group with his friends.
It was only towards the end of the first day of the journey home that they started looking for him among their friends and relations. Not finding him, they decided to return to Jerusalem. By the time they got back, two days had elapsed. It took a further three days searching in Jerusalem before they found him. Clearly the last place they expected him to be was in the temple. Had he not shown any signs on previous visits to Jerusalem or back in Nazareth of an unusual interest in his religious heritage, no signs of a religious precocity? Did the unusual events surrounding his birth not provide Mary with a clue? The legends say they did. But there he was, sitting in the temple surrounded by teachers, listening to them and putting questions.
Jesus has now been in Jerusalem aged 12 for five days without his parents. He doesn’t seem to be at all concerned about them getting anxious about where he was, not worried about his own safety and security, not worried about food and drink and where to sleep. If it was me, insecure and neurotic as I can be sometimes, I’d have been really conscious that my parents would be worrying about me, feeling a bit guilty, realising that at some point I was going to have to set off alone, or with another group, to make the journey back home.
Our attention is taken by the reaction of the teachers in the temple to the boy Jesus and their amazement at his intelligence and the answers he gave. Mary and Joseph were astonished to see him there; astonished at the conversation he was having with the teachers and the answers he was giving. Mary does the talking. Son, why have you treated us like this? We’ve been so anxious, searching for you. She blames Jesus for creating such anxiety and worry for her, not letting his parents know what his plans were and where he was, not thinking of them and the emotional distress he was creating for his mother in particular.
Why did you search for me?, Jesus replies, an answer that doesn’t show much empathy with his mother or any understanding of the emotional distress he had caused. Did you not know that I was bound to be in my Father’s house? (I wonder how Joseph felt, hearing this) At the age of twelve it had become obvious to Jesus that this was his vocation. Wasn’t it obvious to them as well? Haven’t you been aware of the way I’ve been maturing, mother and father? Haven’t you noticed how I’ve developed a keen awareness of God as father, familiar, safe and secure. Have you not been paying attention to my development, to the ideas and experiences that attract me. But Mary and Joseph seem not to have been paying attention and don’t understand their son. This makes me wonder what it is that I and we are not understanding about Jesus, about God, about ourselves, our children and our parents, our faith, and the deep truths we believe the Bible holds for us.
Jesus then went back to Nazareth and continued to be under their authority. He learnt that he wasn’t yet free to assert his independence as an adult and returned to being an obedient son, but a son with an extraordinary maturity and wisdom for his age. Joseph disappears from the narrative; Mary becomes a confident, responsible mother. We have to assume that Jesus continued to make the annual journey to Jerusalem for the Passover festival, obedient to his parents, travelling each year with the Nazareth crowd. (There’s something missing from the story – any reference to Jesus having siblings).
Luke concludes the narrative: “His mother treasured all these things up in her heart. As Jesus grew he advanced in wisdom and in favour with God and men.”
I find it easy, if I read the story slowly and carefully, to see a perfectly normal family dynamic at work in which assumptions and expectations between adults and children occur and are dealt with, or not; in which significant behavioural signs are missed and expectations put on hold. If I read the Bible as Holy Scripture, the Word of God, giving authority for judging human behaviour, I misunderstand the text and fail to see that the people in these stories, however elevated they have become in Christian mythology, are still the same as me with the same dynamics as the people around me, the same feelings and thoughts, sharing the same difficulty I have in being conscious and fully aware in the present moment.
This is what the gospels are for me, dense, complex, humane narratives filled with human detail (when I stop to notice, becoming more aware, living in the moment). There are details throughout the Gospels of human interactions and emotions, family dynamics, understanding and misunderstanding, assumptions and expectations. Jesus is not the ultimate, perfect, ideal son and Mary and Joseph are not the ultimate, perfect, ideal parents. I understand that I am and we all are, works in progress, with unavoidable human foibles and failures. I understand how necessary it is to work on myself, my awareness, consciousness, capacity for self-awareness and self-reflection. Spiritual wisdom from friends, counselling and therapy, and work with groups on my body as well as my mind, are all valuable ingredients of opening up the narrow way that leads to wisdom.
The Jerome Biblical Commentary suggests that Luke’s Gospel points out the necessity of the hidden years of Jesus’ childhood and adolescence, that “he might grow strong in the full experience of a human nature; thus he might be able to bring the Spirit of God into immediate contact with every human area.” From the age of twelve, “Jesus grew in all ways – physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually – for the work that lay ahead of him” – he advanced in wisdom. That is a model that has increasingly characterised my belief and my ministry. Growth in these dimensions is the model for each of us, the essence of Christian life, teaching and practice for every congregation and community of Christian seekers, developing our awareness and our confidence of knowing in love. To humanise Jesus, to bring Jesus down to earth, is to enhance our own giftedness and awareness of our sacred essence. I seek and am sought by humane, unconditional, infinite, imminent, universal love. It’s something we only discover by setting out to discover, to take risks, experiment, explore, internalise, and live by. According to Luke Jesus’ growing awareness as an adolescent had a transformative effect on him; who he is in relation to his parents, his village, his culture, and who he is in relation to God, intimate son to intimate father, ultimate compassion and presence.