“Knowledge”
Rev. Dr. David E. Gray
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
January 3, 2010
I Cor. 12: 1-11; Luke 2: 41-51
This morning we begin a sermon series on spiritual gifts, celebrating the different spiritual gifts we have. Over the next six weeks we'll be looking at various spiritual gifts from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Paul makes the point that there are many gifts. Enough to go around. That we all have gifts. God uses every one of us, and the church and our society need all those gifts. Moreover, that those gifts come from God through the Holy Spirit.
This morning we look at one of those gifts in particular, knowledge. The word “knowledge,” “Gnosis,” has several connotations in Christian history – the ability to understand others, a focus on how we might “know” we are saved, and the basis of the description of the heretical Gnostic movement. Most commentaries of I Corinthians 12 focus on Paul’s use of “knowledge” as meaning the teaching of religious doctrine.
This morning, I’d like us to look at how Jesus seems to gain knowledge. What does the Bible tell us about how Jesus began to learn about religious doctrine and about how to act in the world? We find our answer in one of my favorite passages in the Bible. It follows on our Advent and Christmas focus on the Gospel of Luke. On Christmas Eve, we read of Jesus’ birth in a stable. Last week, we heard of Christ’s presentation in the Temple. This morning we hear of Jesus’ returning to the Temple as a twelve year old. Reading now from God’s holy word.
Isn’t this a great passage? This is a passage that shows how “real” Jesus and Mary can be. And that is appropriate for the first few weeks after Christmas. When the splendor of the Christmas season dies down we are left with the reality and realness of the New Year as we return to work, school and our routines.
Here we have Jesus, as a twelve year old. This is preteen Jesus. No longer a cute baby and not yet the powerful teacher he would become. He is a classic middle schooler. For all middle and high schoolers out there, Jesus was once of middle school age too. This is someone who is old enough to do his own thing, but vulnerable enough to get in trouble.
He goes to Jerusalem with his parents, Mary and Joseph, on the feast of the Passover. While commentators disagree about whether and what kind of bar mitzvah Jesus had, he is going to Jerusalem around the time of, and likely just before, his bar mitzvah. And he gets lost. Or his parents lose him. He loses the group and heads off for the temple. Mary and Joseph leave Jerusalem and they don’t have Jesus. It takes them a day before they realize they don’t have their son and so they return to Jerusalem only to find Jesus sitting in the Temple listening to the teachers talk theology.
The fact that his parents are so concerned about him is evidence that Jesus must have needed some help and his parents must have felt responsibility. If Jesus at age twelve seemed all powerful, his parents would have likely been fine with him running off as he could have taken care of himself. Bar mitzvahs were different then from the modern day ceremonies we know in Jewish culture, but age thirteen was a clear rite-of-passage date then. It’s the age at which a young man had to start obeying the commandments, the laws of Moses. It’s like age eighteen is now as the age of responsibility between minor and adult. We know how seriously Israelites took the laws of Moses. Being thirteen meant a person must be responsible for fulfilling the laws. But being twelve, Jesus was still a “minor,” still his parent’s responsibility. As we know, the 5th commandment is to “honor your father and mother.”
It does not appear that his parents felt honored. Mary’s reaction to Jesus’ running off is typical of most parents. When she finds her son she says, “Why have you treated us this way?” She is mad. And to underscore the point, the Bible says that Jesus returned to Nazareth with them and he was “obedient” to his parents. You better believe he was. I’m sure he was grounded at that point.
I love this passage because it’s very real. We can relate to it. We cannot always relate to how people in the Bible act, but here we can. Jesus is real, like an easily distracted teenager. We know how Jesus is destined to be a great teacher and so going past the temple for first time and hearing great teachers must have been amazing to him. Remember, religion was centrally focused on that great temple in Jerusalem so Jesus would not have had access to great teaching on Galilee. Hearing the teaching would draw Jesus to it. Mary is real as well. There is no turning the other cheek here. When she finds Jesus, he is in trouble and she lets him have it.
Now, we have to wonder a bit about why his parents take so long to look for Jesus in the temple. That is certainly what Jesus wants to know when he says, “Didn’t you think I’d be in my father’s house.” We know from just a few verses earlier in Luke’s Gospel that Jesus was born the messiah with angels trumpeting his divinity and wise men bringing him presents. And now here twelve years later his parents seem to have forgotten all that. Forgotten who he was and what his destiny is.
Speaking of “Luke,” this is the opposite situation of Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars movie. When we meet Luke Skywalker as a teenager at the beginning of Star Wars, Luke’s Uncle Owen is taking care of him and he gets it about Luke’s destiny. Uncle Owen knows Luke is special and doesn’t want Luke to go off with Obi Won Kenobi because he knows he’ll be attracted to space ships and run off like his father Anakin.
Well, given what we know about Jesus it should be no surprise that he is going to be really attracted to great Biblical teaching at the Jerusalem temple. He sits there for days and just soaks all that knowledge and teaching up. Yet Mary and Joseph seem surprised that he goes and sits there, don’t go and look there at first and are surprised to hear that he is asking amazing questions of the rabbis. “Of course he is,” we’d say, he’s Jesus! He has the power of God. He is fully divine.
Yet Jesus is also fully human. Paul writes about the spiritual gift of knowledge. We all have the capacity for knowledge. Paul writes that some people are especially gifted with learning and teaching the knowledge of religious doctrine. But no one more so than Jesus. And how does Jesus learn? Through experience, primarily mistakes, and from listening.
Jesus does not start out with all the knowledge of life in his mind. He does not come programmed with everything he knows at birth. The baby has to learn from experience. It is often said that we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. I certainly have. I bet many or most of you might say the same thing about your work and your relationships.
Secondly, Jesus’ knowledge comes from listening. Luke’s Gospel lets us know that Jesus was in the temple listening. He was not lecturing at first; he was listening to the teachers. He had so much to learn to be the great teacher. Jesus did not really begin his ministry for more than 15 years yet. He had a lot to learn, and he learned by listening. What great advice it is and example for us that our Lord’s first interaction with knowledge was not to start telling people, but respecting and listening to the teachers.
All this shows us Jesus’ great humanity. He is not only fully divine, but fully human. As we sang of Jesus in our opening hymn, Once In Royal David’s City, “For He is our childhood's pattern; Day by day, like us, He grew; He was little, weak, and helpless, Tears and smiles, like us He knew; And He cares when we are sad, And he shares when we are glad.” In Jesus, God took on the full limitations of humanity. Jesus made mistakes, not sins, but had things to learn by experience and by listening. As a twelve year old, he disappointed his parents and upset his mother. While his answers in the temple were amazing for a twelve year old, I bet he wasn’t perfect in his answers. God took on the limitations of humanity so that we could have a savior who would be able to relate to us and represent us on the cross.
As we begin this New Year, we do so with humility and hope. Humility to realize that we are not perfect and that we have a lot to learn. On lessons and carols Sunday, we affirm that we have lots of lessons to learn. We begin by giving thanks for our teachers. Those in children’s and youth education and adult education who help us gain knowledge. Paul writes about the spiritual gift of knowledge, but even the most spiritually gifted person ever when it came to teaching about religious doctrine learned from experience and from listening. So we affirm our need to study, listen, watch and learn from experience.
And we begin the New Year with hope. Hope that a God who would subject God’ self to all the limitations of humanity can understand our existence, our struggles, our fears and our dreams. And that God is interested in finding us when we are lost. So that no matter where we wander, a God who enters into the human dilemma so fully will seek us until we are found. Happy New Year.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
