Jesus' Bedtime Stories--December 30, 2024

Jesus' Bedtime Stories--December 30, 2024

"Now every year [Jesus’] parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival." (Luke 2:41-42)

This is more than just the set-up to a Home Alone-style mix-up with the young boy Jesus, even though that's likely what we remember this scene for.  But before anybody jumps ahead to a pre-teen Christ telling his mother she should have expected him to be in the temple with the retort, "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" let's just sit for a moment with the way Luke begins the story. 

Luke tells us that like all first-century faithful Jewish families, Jesus grew up immersed in the story of the Passover.  Mary and Joseph were apparently devout and went, as the Torah directed, to celebrate the Passover each year, and that meant pilgrimages to the Temple in Jerusalem.  Every year, for certain, then, Jesus would have been reminded of that central truth of God's identity: God wasn't just an impersonal force or a neutral, morally-ambiguous "watcher" figure who saw human history playing out from a distance up in heaven. Rather, the true and living God was the One who heard the cry of enslaved Hebrews and struck down the oppressive Pharaoh to set them free.  Jesus surely heard the stories of ancient Israel's Exodus journey all the time, and on top of that, his family went every year to the Temple where the story of the Passover to freedom was rehearsed and celebrated in worship. In other words, with every celebration of the Passover story, Jesus was raised to believe that God took the side of the oppressed rather than rubber-stamping the decrees of their oppressor, and to look for God among those on the margins rather than the centers of power.  Jesus learned to recognize God at the edges of things with the lowly and powerless, not simply to equate the decrees of a king or Pharaoh with the will of the divine.

For whatever else we say about Jesus' divinity (and indeed, the Christian faith also hangs on the confession that Jesus brings us face to face with none other than God in the full humanity of Jesus), we can't get away from the notion that the child Jesus was taught things about the story of God and God's people.  Jesus, we confess, was and is "God from God, Light from Light," but also in his humanity learned everything that human beings have to learn--from how to walk and how to speak to how to read and how to understand his people's relationship with God.  So the handful of moments we are given in the Scriptures about Jesus' childhood tell us something formative about how Jesus would have learned to see God and God's work in the world.  Mary's "Magnificat" wouldn't have been just a one-time random exclamation before Jesus was born, but the kind of description Jesus heard in his lullabies and bedtime stories. Jesus would have grown up hearing his mother tell him that God was the One who remembered poor childless Sarah and Abraham and gave them a son... and that God was the One who fed the hungry with good things while sending the rich away empty... and that God was the One who lifted up the lowly and pulled the powerful down from their thrones.  And every year at the Passover, Jesus would have been retold the story of God's deliverance at the Sea overpowering the armies of Pharaoh and his fearsome chariots. Jesus would have been taught that God was a Keeper of promises, a liberator of the enslaved, and a judge of tyrants.

So when the adult Jesus declares God's blessing on the poor, the mourning, and the hungry, it shouldn't surprise us at all (and for that matter, when he pronounces "woe" to the well-fed, well-heeled, and comfortable, it's the other side of the same coin).  When Jesus declares that in God's Reign, the last are first and the first are last, it makes perfect sense since he has grown up immersed in the story of a God who humbled Pharaoh and delivered the enslaved from his grip. And when Jesus sets out his mission statement in his first hometown sermon, it is only natural that he announces (quoting from the book of Isaiah) that he has come to bring good news to the poor, freedom to the oppressed, release to the captive, the jubilee-year forgiveness of debts, and healing for the sick and wounded. He is only taking seriously what his parents first taught him about God, from their nightly stories and songs to the annual trips to Jerusalem for Passover.

That's important for us to remember--especially any of us who are in roles that shape the faith of young people, whether our children, our grandchildren, or the young faces in our congregations.  If we teach the next generation about the God of the Bible--the One who frees slaves, feeds the hungry, cares for the foreigner, and opposes the arrogant and powerful--then we aren't allowed to be upset with them for calling out our hypocrisy when we settle for some counterfeit version of our faith that sells out for political power, glorifies greed, and rationalizes cruelty to the vulnerable.  I have seen and heard from too many young adults who reach maturity feeling betrayed by the voices of Respectable Religion in their lives, who all insisted that they read their Bibles and ask, "What Would Jesus Do?" only to be criticized by their elders when they actually took seriously the Bible's call to care for those on the margins and Jesus' priority for "the least of these." I have read the words of too many teenagers and twenty-somethings who truly listened in childhood when their Sunday School teachers instructed them to follow the way of Jesus, who calls us to dedicated servanthood, radical peacemaking, and expansive love of neighbor, only to see those same people embrace the self-centered "Me and My Group First!" thinking that smells of sulfur and runs counter to Christ.  For any of us who spend our time and energy teaching young people to follow Jesus, we should be prepared for them to hold us accountable when we are the ones who fall short of Jesus' ways, and we dare not criticize them later for actually taking seriously the character of the God we taught them about.

In all honesty, I have not run across many people at all who gave up on Christianity because they found Jesus lacking.  I have, however, known far too many who left the church because when they actually took Jesus' radical love and concern for justice seriously, it was Respectable Religious Folks who scolded them or derided them as "bleeding hearts." If we will allow this scene from early in Luke's gospel to speak to us, it might remind us that Jesus took seriously what his family and faith community taught him about God. He listened and took to heart that the God of Israel was the One who freed slaves and fed them as they sought refuge out of Pharaoh's grip, rather than endorsing Pharaoh's sort of law and order. And when that same Jesus came to maturity, he continued to live out of the faith he had learned from childhood. May we do the same, and may we raise children and young people in faith who take seriously the way of Jesus, wherever that leads them, and however it directs them to change the world.

Lord God, re-ground us in who you are, and enable us to teach those in our care about your ways that care for the vulnerable, the lost, and the left-out.