The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Second Sunday after Christmas
Merry Christmas! Happy 12th Day of Christmas!
In the Gospel reading for today, we read about Jesus’ time in the Temple when he was a young teenager. It’s brief – he stays behind and asks all sorts of questions and engages in conversations with the wise, and his parents don’t realize he’s not in the caravan of travelers going home with them; they trusted that the community had tabs on him just as well. It’s a sacred trust. So when they realize he isn’t with them, Mary and Joseph return to Jerusalem to find him. It’s a strange little interaction; Jesus says “Well of course I’d be in my Father’s house” but then he also returns home with them and behaves, and he grows in wisdom and years. Young Teenager Jesus is both a human teenager and divine. The story threads the needle – Jesus is both human and divine.
But still, so much speculation about the childhood and youth of Jesus! We get Baby Jesus on Christmas Day, then we get child Jesus and youth Jesus as we steam toward Epiphany… and then by the Sunday after the Epiphany we’re already at Jesus at 30 years old, when he’s baptized by John and begins his public ministry. Early Christians, much like us, wonder about those “hidden years.”
If you take a peek into the earliest centuries of Christianity, you’d stumble upon a bunch of texts called “Gospels” that didn’t find wide enough acceptance to be included in the collection of texts we now call the New Testament. We cannot know for exact certain why certain texts were included or excluded. The whole process was not clear cut; we get different lists of “canonical” or accepted New Testament texts from different early church leaders, but over time the list was winnowed down to what we have. Perhaps it was a “less is more” approach. There were a lot of texts floating around – and some of them were a little outlandish and overwrought, and some of them were dangerously hateful toward the body, or antagonistic toward anyone who wasn’t smart enough to comprehend complicated philosophy, or they might have injected worse forms of antisemitism into the Bible.
And so that means that some of the infancy and childhood stories of Jesus are left out, too. There were stories floating around about Jesus’ childhood and the “hidden years” of his young adult life, but maybe those stories would have ended up pushing away and suppressing Jesus’ humanity entirely.
One of the most challenging of these early church texts is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas – not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas, which is more of a list of sayings. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas tells the story of Jesus’ childhood, and let me tell you it is not pleasant reading. In its attempt to show that Jesus was fully divine from birth, the stories it tells makes Jesus look like a holy terror. The Jesus we know in the canonical Gospels where he refuses to condemn and hate those who crucify him is not what we get in that Infancy Gospel of Thomas; the writer of the Infancy Gospel apparently thought that child Jesus would use his powers to strike down a kid who bumped him or a kid who messed up a pond Jesus was making. Zap!
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas twists our understanding of divine and human and showcases the worst of each, not the best. What does that story tell us about God and humanity? That Infancy Gospel of Thomas suggests that God and humanity are ultimately short-tempered, angry, pompous, eager to abuse power, wanting vengeance and punishment, desiring to show power over others … that’s the depiction of the divine and human in that text. I’m glad the Church saw through that text and said, “That’s not the Jesus we know – we’re not including this story.” The Church knows that Jesus is the best of our humanity and the fullness of God, and the Church recognized that this story did not tell the truth about Jesus.
But so then what is the image we get in the Gospel of Luke that we read today, this short story about Jesus and the Temple?
Jesus – devoted to faith and conversation, a wisdom of great depth, confidence, a knowledge of who He is and what He is called to do. Jesus – a human being who does not denigrate others, who doesn’t lash out at Mary and Joseph. Jesus – whose eyes could see both Heaven and Earth, to see God His Father and also see His parents, and love them, and listen to them, to keep his ears and heart open to what he could learn from them.
The Gospel of Luke story helps us to see the goodness of God and the goodness of humanity. Devoted, curious, open, steadfast, courageous, listening, growing, connected in communion and community. This short story in the Gospel of Luke tells wonderful truth about Jesus. It may be strange, it may leave us wanting more details, but it also tells us enough. Do we want to be kind and courageous, do we want to be devoted and curious, do we want to be connected to others, do we want to grow in wisdom and grace?
With this little story, we’re invited to grow more like Jesus, the real Jesus, the Jesus we saw born on Christmas. This is the Jesus we know, this is the Jesus we love, this is the Jesus who loves us. Let’s grow up to be like him. Amen.