“Did you not know that I must be in my
Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49)
I don’t remember how I got into the habit
of using the nick-name “Slick” for Stephen. Really, there was nothing
pretentious or cosmopolitan about this kid. He was just an average
twelve-year-old with a round, friendly face who looked like any other kid from a
blue-collar family in Northeast Philly. He had a jovial way about him, and an
openness that reminded me of Curly from the Three Stooges. You couldn’t help
but like him.
Stephen hadn’t been a regular in Sunday
school, and this really upset his grandmother, Joanne. One day she came to my
office and lamented that her daughter-in-law was not sending the grandchildren
to church. She wanted to know if there was anything I could do about it. I
noticed that Stephen was of age to begin Confirmation studies, so I wrote his
mom the sort of guilt-inducing letter which only a clergyman can write, telling
her that she and the boy’s father had promised
at Stephen’s baptism to provide for his instruction in the Christian faith. I
sent this epistle off via the USPS, pretty secure in the knowledge that it
would likely end up unopened in the circular file cabinet. To my delighted
astonishment, I got a phone call from the mother a few days later, and Stephen
was enrolled in Confirmation studies that fall.
I’ve been a Bible and Catechism teacher
for over twenty years, and I also spent six excruciating years as a junior high
special ed teacher for the Los Angles public schools. In all that time, I’ve had
few students I’ve enjoyed as much as the kid I called “Slick.” He came into
class knowing virtually nothing about the Bible or the Christian faith, and he
devoured Bible stories like they popped out of a Pez dispenser. For some
mysterious reason known only to Slick and God, this kid just took to religious
studies. He had a marvelous sense of joy in learning about Jesus and the
characters from the Hebrew Scriptures. During one class he exclaimed, “The
Bible is the most fascinating book ever written!” Now, I ask you, how many
twelve or thirteen-year olds say that?
To be honest, I find most students see
Confirmation class as a minor Purgatory which must be endured for the sake of
parents and grandparents. Their one solace is the knowledge that once they have
made their Confirmation, they will have “graduated” from church and those
parental tyrants will never again demand their attendance at religious
services. I’ve also noticed some parents suddenly drop off the church’s radar
as soon as their youngest child makes Confirmation. I guess they feel they have
paid their debt to the angry God and, in their superstitious way, have
guaranteed that neither they nor their children are in danger of suffering the
torments of Hell. They can now sleep in on Sunday and get ready for the Eagles
to play Dallas.
Every once in a great while, however, I
get a kid like Slick. Every now and then there’s that one student who feels the
passion and the mystery in the Word of God.
I think of Slick and Jeremy and Mickey and
Jessica and Kayleigh, and a whole bunch of other really cool young adults who
have endured my catechetical teaching over the years and who have demonstrated that
mystical affinity for things spiritual. Not every kid has it. Many of us don’t
contemplate eternal questions until we’ve suffered the weirdness of life and tripped
over the knowledge of our own mortality. But some young people just have that
light inside which draws them to the things of God.
The gospel lesson in the RCL for the
Sunday after Christmas (Luke 2:41-52) is the only story in the gospels which
deals with Jesus as a youngster.[i] What really thrills me
about this story is that Jesus is twelve years of age and would soon be making
his bar mitzvah. He’s the same age as the kids who are in my Confirmation class.
BY the way, the term “bar mitzvah” literally translates as “son of the commandments.”
That is, should a boy make his bar mitzvah at age thirteen, he would then be
considered old enough to take responsibility for living under the Law of God.
As a son, he would be an heir of the
faith of Moses—a truly awesome responsibility if you think about it.
So here’s this twelve-year-old who has just
experienced the annual ritual of the Passover and its sacrificial duties. He’s
supposed to get in the caravan with the other families and walk the seventy
miles or so back to Galilee when the festival is over. Note the cool detail in
verse 44 that Jesus’ parents just assumed
he was okay even though they didn’t see him for an entire day. Talk about “taking
a village!” We can only imagine that everyone in the caravan[ii] looked out for everyone
else and for their kids, so there was no worry if you didn’t see your own boy for
24 hours. You knew he was okay.
Note, too, that Mary and Joseph are
referred to as Jesus’ parents. Plural. Joseph is called Jesus’ father in verse 28. Yes, we confess that
Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but for all practical purposes, Mary’s
husband was Jesus’ dad. Paternity is
not just a matter of DNA. It’s about taking responsibility for raising
children. Joseph was taking his boy to Jerusalem and teaching him the faith. He
taught him a trade. He made sure he was fed and clothed. In this sense, Joseph
was every bit Jesus’ real father.
But Jesus also had a feeling that he had
another Father. Something inside him—we’d say it was the Holy Spirit—drew him to
the teachers of the Law. He had a hunger inside of him to hear what they were
saying and to ask them questions about the mysteries of God. Luke includes this
story to show his readers that Jesus wasn’t just some self-proclaimed peasant
teacher. Rather, he was one who hungered for the things of God all his life,
who listened to the scholars, who questioned his faith, and who amazed adults
with his understanding. He was steeped in the tradition of his people, and desired
to grow in wisdom.
Would that we all showed that desire to
grow in the things of God! Instead of looking superstitiously at our religious
observance and considering that we’re “done” learning once we’re out of Sunday
school, wouldn’t it be wonderful to attack the Bible and our worship and prayer
lives with the same zeal as the twelve-year-old in the Temple?
Think about it, won’t you?
[i]
There are a ton of stories which were written about the boy Jesus in the first
centuries of our faith. Scholars refer to them as “Infancy Narratives.” Very
few of them survive because the books which contain them were condemned as
heretical by church councils in the Fourth Century. This story in Luke is the
only one the early church felt was authoritative.
[ii] I
wonder if the caravan of Central American migrants who are seeking asylum in
the US have become this sort of family? I kind of think they have.
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