Narrative Lectionary Program Year – “Boy in the Temple”
Luke 2:41-52 (Link)
Free Additional Resources for Study & Sermon Preparation
Furthering the Power of God’s Story – Narrative Lectionary Commentary
by Daniel D. Maurer
Going along the lines of historical-critical inquiry, I asked myself whether or not this story in Luke reflected any parallel within the corpus of spiritual literature. As it turns out, it does.
First, let me clarify why I’m going this direction as the first step—preachers do not need to inform congregations about ancient cultural history, but the historical context I would argue always needs to play a role in well-informed preaching. Without it, scripture only removes itself more and more from the contemporary setting. And yeah, I get it. Time. Right? But that’s why you’re reading here, so that I can save you time. So on with it.
Nearly every Mediterranean contemporary culture to Luke’s gospel held childhood as only a prelude to what one should expect from a person until they became a “real” adult. It’s important to recognize this, because our modern understanding of childhood—informed through psychology, and centuries of social reforms, not to mention child labor laws—stands at a wholly different place from the ancient perspective.
According to Dr. Andries G. van Aarde from the Department of New Testament Studies, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Pretoria, South Africa, Luke portrays Jesus in the temple as an already formed “God-child-man”, and this shouldn’t have been surprising to ancient readers. Not at all. Van Aarde’s extremely dense and gargantuan article can be summed up here:
By the time that the children reached the age of 12, for most of them schooling in the Roman and Israelite societies was at an end Ancient writers therefore portrayed the heroic figures in their stories in such a manner, that they possessed the abilities already in their youth, for which they were to be known in later life. The qualities that one would normally expect children to have - playfulness, impulsiveness, disobedience, however not innocent - are all absent in such texts and are replaced with qualities that were highly regarded in adults of 1st-century Mediterranean culture. Qualities such as wisdom, maturity, conformity and self-control generally appear in child narrations about revered persons in Graeco-Roman literature.
Furthermore, in my understanding, Van Aarde states that Jesus already knew he was the Son of God when he was in the Temple.
This should temper a modern knee-jerk reaction to the text, namely that Jesus was extraordinary above all other heroes of old. No. In fact, that Luke is the only gospel to include any childhood/infancy stories at all isn’t surprising. Childhood simply wasn’t that important, and Luke’s inclusion of this story only goes to show that Jesus—like other ancient Mediterranean hero stories—had already become the Son of God. In a similar note Jesus’ infancy story pointed to his adult achievements.
Well, haven’t I just contradicted the title of this little article? Doesn’t this narrative show that, even as a kid, his knowledge with the old guys showed just how super-duper special he was over anyone else?
No. Here’s why.
I think today’s preachers fail to see the forest for the trees. Luke’s account needs to be taken as a whole. In particular, we need to see less the wunderkind Jesus and instead the more important factors in play throughout the whole of the Lukan narrative like God’s new relationship with us and the importance of children in their own right.
Dr. Leetch in Clergy Stuff’s Narrative Lectionary worship resources rightly asserts that, “familial language for God would have seemed foreign to Jewish ears. God was many things, but “daddy” was not one of them. Even at 12, Jesus had a perspective on God that most did not . . . He saw the loving, parental relationship that others missed. The relationship he saw would shape his ministry and his life.”
Indeed, the theme of relationship would go on to state just how different Jesus saw God as Daddy (and I’d argue, Mommy).
What’s more, Luke’s Jesus respects children as special, just as they are. Luke’s Jesus doesn’t compare the child Jesus in the temple over-against other “normal” kids. Instead, Jesus welcomes children and sees their untarnished perspective as God-like on its own. Take Luke 18:15-17: “People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it. But Jesus called for them and said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’”
Preachers should focus less on the super powers of the kid Jesus, and more on the new relationship aspects and the respect for children, just as they are. These are the things that really are unique in Luke. Look to the forest of Luke’s whole gospel and this text in context with all of Luke’s witness, instead of a detached, slapped-together tag-on to the Christmas story.
Jesus witness to the value of children changed the world.
I’ll end with a quote from none other than Karl Marx (not exactly a proponent of religion.)
We can forgive Christianity much, because it taught us to love children. - Karl Marx
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The following links and resources are not produced or maintained by Clergy Stuff. However, at the time of this posting, the links were active and considered to be good source material for proclamation for the text for this week. Please scroll down or click on the quick jump menu you find below. For more free worship resources & planning materials, please visit our links for RCL Worship Resources.
Other Resources
Exegetical Links
“A moment of charity to Christianity.” Blog post, Wright’s Writing.
“Parents Just Don't Understand: Ambiguity in Stories about the Childhood of Jesus.” Harvard Theological Review.
Living by the Word, David Keck, The Christian Century, 2018.
And the Child Grew and Became Strong: Reflections on Luke 2:39-52. Patheos.
Great Quotes
“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
“We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that she is someone today.”
“Children are not things to be molded, but are people to be unfolded.”
“You have to love your children unselfishly. That is hard. But it is the only way.”
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Free Dramatic Reading For This Text (NRSV)
Readers: Narrator, Mary, Jesus
Narrator: Now every year his 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. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him,
Mary: “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.”
Narrator: He said to them,
Jesus: “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
Narrator: But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.