Don Friesen
Introduction: The Missing Years
Less than a week ago we celebrated Jesus' birth, and in today's Gospel reading Jesus is already twelve years old! The Gospels tell us nothing about Jesus' childhood, and aside from this one incident when Jesus was twelve, we also know nothing about his adolescent years. Now, turning twelve in a Jewish household is important, so we can fill in some of the colour around the temple incident. Jesus would have recently had his bar mitzvah, and from now on he will no longer be regarded as a child. He will be considered of age, capable of discretion and greater responsibility. Aside from this incident, however, we know nothing of him in the years preceding or in the decade or more to follow.
Folk-singer John Prine wrote a song entitled, "Jesus: The Missing Years," in which he fills in those years with a fanciful yarn, but no more fanciful, really, than the yarns told in the Gospel of Thomas, one of several gospels that did not make the cut when the Church chose the biblical canon. The Gospel of Thomas contains several exaggerated stories of Jesus' childhood, portraying him as a Wunderkind who makes birds out of clay, breathes into them, and they fly away. In the Gospel of Thomas the infant Jesus' clothes magically become bigger as he grows taller!
Jesus: At the Feet of the Masters
The Gospel of Luke is the only Gospel that tells the story of the temple incident. Mary and Joseph, as was their custom, did an annual trek to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival, where this particular year — well, you know the story — Jesus' parents lost track of him. After a frantic search they found him in the temple, "sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions". (Luke 2:46) The teachers "were amazed at his understanding" (2:47), his parents much less so! He received a dressing down from his mother, to which he replied, rather precociously, "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" (2:49) The incident over, parental anxieties returned to a normal level, they all returned to Nazareth, and there, says Luke, "Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour." (2:52)
No doubt Luke wanted to impress his readers with the promise of this young lad. No doubt Jesus' upbringing prepared him for this moment — his parents had told him the Old Testament stories of Israel — and while his parents had taken him to Jerusalem every year, but this particular year something clicked! Upon sight of the temple, he was moved by this holy place. This year, when the story of Israel's liberation was retold, Jesus may have identified with the story more profoundly; he may have felt a need to explore its meaning, and what better opportunity than to sit at the feet of the learned masters who lived in the temple precincts. His interaction with them took him to a new level of understanding, and after he returned home with his parents, Luke tells us, "Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour." (Luke 2:52) A beautiful phrase!
He increased in wisdom, ... and in divine and human favour. A beautiful phrase and an echo of the Old Testament story of Samuel, who in ages past sat at the feet of Eli. Samuel was destined to be a great leader of Israel, but in our reading from 1 Samuel he too is about twelve years of age, and we read, "...the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favour with the Lord and with the people." (1 Samuel 2:26)
In the late nineteenth century a Danish brewer (J. C. Jacobsen) commissioned Carl Bloch (1834-90), a Danish painter, to paint twenty-three pieces illustrating the life of Christ. Bloch worked on this project for nearly fourteen years; it deepened his own understanding of Christ, and one of those pieces is entitled "Christ Teaching at the Temple" (1875), showing a young Jesus imparting wisdom to the priests and elders in the temple. Carl Bloch is recognized as one of the greatest artists ever to interpret the life and death of Christ, but he got it wrong! In the painting Jesus is standing in the midst of the elders, looking very wise, imparting his twelve-year-old wisdom, the learned ones sitting at his feet, listening with rapt attention. Luke's Gospel, however, says that the student was Jesus. Jesus was asking the teachers questions, and though the learned men were impressed with his interest and grasp of difficult notions, it was Jesus' understanding that grew as a result.
Some people may be uneasy with the notion that Jesus was like the rest of us, in need of deepening his understanding of life and of God, but it is precisely his own spiritual development that has inspired many others to grow in their understanding of God and of themselves.
The Year 507: John Chrysostom
Today we stand on the eve of the year 2007, and using a rather arbitrary device, I would like to illustrate the ripples of Jesus' growth and development in the lives of others through the ages.
The year is 407. Constantine III became the Roman Emperor that year and began a withdrawal of troops from Britain. It was also the year that John Chrysostom, a Christian bishop in Syria and Constantinople, died. Chrysostom (347-407) was well-known for his eloquence in public speaking and he is honoured by the Church as a saint.
Chrysostom began his education under a pagan teacher, acquiring skills in rhetoric, and acquiring a love of Greek language and literature. As he grew older, his understanding of his Christian faith deepened as he went on to study theology. His nickname was Golden Mouth, for he was considered a great preacher, especially with respect to his New Testament sermons. He emphasised almsgiving, very concerned with the spiritual and temporal needs of the poor, and he spoke out against abuse of wealth and personal property. In one of his sermons, he said:
Chrysostom denounced abuse of authority in the Church and in the Roman Empire, and when in the year 407 several of the elite took offense at sermons that showed up their shame, he found himself in exile in the Taurus mountains. There he suffered dreadfully from the cold, but he continued to direct the Church from exile, annoying his enemies exceedingly. Though he was weak and ill, they decided to move him to an even more remote location, and it was on that forced march that he died.
Like his Lord, Chrysostom sought to deepen his understanding of the faith, and powerful opposition could do little to intimidate hm. However, like any human being, Chrysostom had understandings that would have benefited from further reflection. His harsh anti-Semitism played a considerable part in the history of anti-Semitism and was used 1500 years later to promote an unforgivable program of genocide.
The Year 907: Chinese Christianity Enters a New Era
The year is 907. The T'ang Dynasty (618-907) came to an end that year. Lasting three centuries, it featured two of Chinese history's most prosperous periods. It was during this dynasty that the Silk Road, a most important trade route, reached its golden age, Persian merchants, for example, benefiting immensely from commerce between East and West.
The T'ang Dynasty welcomed foreign cultures, making the T'ang capital the most cosmopolitan city in the world. The T'ang rulers hospitably received foreigners at its court, among whom were a large number of Nestorian Christians. Consequently, portions of Scripture, including the Sermon on the Mount, were translated into Chinese, and the "Gloria in Excelsis Deo" — which we sang earlier — was used as a Chinese hymn of praise. Traders visiting China recorded the Chinese emperor's knowledge of Noah, the prophets, Moses, and Jesus.
Christianity is often regarded as a Western religion, but the Gospel has a long, noble, and interesting history in Asia. The church essentially began in Asia. Asia produced the first known church building, the first New Testament translation, the first Christian poets. People from Asia were present on the day of Pentecost — pilgrims from modern Iran, Iraq and other places — who then returned home with news of this Jesus. The Apostle Paul visited the cities of Asia Minor and wrote the Epistles of Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians to Asian churches.
With the fall of the T'ang Dynasty, there was a rapid decline of Christianity in China. In 986 a Nestorian monk reported, "Christianity is extinct in China; the native Christians have perished in one way or another; the church which they had has been destroyed and there is only one Christian left in the land." His report may have been exaggerated, but four centuries later (1260s) the Polos, an Italian merchant family, travelled to China and were well received at the court of the emperor (Kublai Khan), who requested them to ask the Pope to send a hundred teachers of science and religion to instruct his subjects. The Pope, in fact, only managed to send two Dominican friars, and a war along the way frightened those two, such that they turned back. Who knows how our own understanding of Christian faith would have developed had this opportunity not been missed!
The Year 1707: Isaac Watts
The year is 1707. John V was crowned King of Portugal that year. The Acts of Union became law, making the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into one country, the Kingdom of Great Britain. Mount Fuji in Japan erupted. British novelist Henry Fielding was born, as was Charles Wesley, who with his brother founded Methodism. The mistress (Marquise de Montespan) of King Louis XIV of France died that year, and Mennonite immigrants began to arrive in Pennsylvania from Switzerland and South Germany.
It was also the year that Isaac Watts published his first edition of Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Isaac Watts (1674-1748) wrote over 600 hymns over his lifetime, twenty of which appear in our own hymnal. Watts was an intelligent child who loved books, learned to read early, began learning Latin at age four and went on to learn Greek, Hebrew, and French. From an early age Watts had a knack for rhyming, often using it in conversation, which greatly annoyed his father. When told in no uncertain terms to stop, the boy cried out:
I can see where Watts could have annoyed not only his father but others as well! Time and suffering, however, produced in him a gentle, modest, and charitable spirit; he gave one-third of his modest income to the poor. He was also a frail man, and unkind people said that his head was too large for his five-foot body. He had small, piercing eyes, and when a woman who fell in love with him by reading his poetry met him face to face, she grew disillusioned. When he asked her to marry him, she replied, as delicately as possible, "Mr. Watts, I only wish I could admire the jewelry box as much as I admire the jewel."
Watts was particularly fond of the psalms. His paraphrase of Psalm 98 became "Joy to the World," and Psalm 90, "O God, Our Help in Ages Past, Our Hope for Years to Come".
Though Watts possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge and was a keen scholar, developing an impressive grasp of ideas, he also developed a keen sense of that which was beyond his grasp, writing:
(The Psalms and Hymns of Isaac Watts, Hymn #38)
The Year 2007: You and Me
Tomorrow begins the year 2007, and while daily events will claim our focus, perhaps my rather random selection of historical glimpses serves to instill in us a larger perspective. Running through these lives are threads of growth, learning, and development. As the young Jesus "increased in wisdom, ... and in divine and human favour," so we all strive to come to Christian "maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ." (Ephesians 4:13) On the one hand, we are the "vile polluted lump of earth" of Watts' seven-year-old theology, but we are also capable of what the twelve-year-Jesus experienced, an increase in wisdom.
No doubt in the year, decade, and century ahead there will be opportunities, as in thirteenth-century China, that will be missed. There will be mistakes made, hopefully not bad as in the case of John Chrysostom, the effects of which cascaded down through centuries. However, there will also be threads of faith and hope that will carry us well into the future.
The legendary lives of ages past had feet of clay, but they also had the potential to "advance in wisdom" (Luke 2:52, NEB) Evelyn Waugh, writing about the third-century St. Helena (250-330), gave as the reason for his choice of subject: "What we learn from Helena is something about the workings of God; that (God) wants a different thing from each of us, labourious or easy, conspicuous or quite private, but something that only we can do and for which we were each created." (Saints and Ourselves, Philip Caraman, ed.) For this reason, wrote the Apostle Paul: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom" (Colossians 3:16), so that we come "to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ." (Ephesians 4:13) AMEN
"Do you wish to honour the body of Christ? Do not ignore him when he is naked. Do not pay him homage in the temple clad in silk, only then to neglect him outside where he is cold and ill-clad."
In 398 Chrysostom was called to be the bishop in Constantinople. He deplored the fact that Imperial court protocol assigned to him privileges greater than the highest state officials, and he adamantly refused to host lavish entertainments as a bishop. He was popular with the common people, but rather un-popular with the wealthy and the clergy. His reforms of the clergy were also unpopular with the clergy. Another enemy was Aelia Eudoxia, the wife of the eastern Emperor Arcadius, who assumed that his denunciations of extravagance in feminine dress were aimed at her!
"O father, do some pity take
At the age of seven Watts wrote an acrostic poem based on his name — Isaac — which also reveals an amazing theological understanding; it read:
And I will no more verses make."
"I am a vile polluted lump of earth
Watts was a Renaissance man. Though denied access to Cambridge and Oxford because his father had been imprisoned as a Dissenter, Watts nonetheless excelled in learning. In addition to hundreds of hymns, he published fifty-two other works, including a book of logic used in the universities, books on grammar, pedagogy, ethics, psychology, astronomy, geography, three volumes of sermons, and twenty-nine treatises on theology.
So I've continued ever since my birth;
Although Jehovah grace does give me,
As sure this monster Satan will deceive me.
Come therefore, Lord, from Satan's claws relieve me."
"Where reason fails,
There is much more that could be said of Isaac Watt's understanding of Christian faith and how that understanding influenced the understanding of so many others, including John Wesley, who, when he published his first hymn book, devoted one-third of the book to hymns written by Watts.
With all her powers,
There faith prevails
And love adores."
Sources
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.