Growing In Wisdom: Even 12 Year Old Jesus Needed To Learn

Because today marks the Christian feast of Epiphany—the day in which the Three Kings (the Magi) finally arrived in Bethlehem to adore the newly born Christ Child—this also means that today marks the official end to the liturgical season of Christmas! ?Now for some of us here, this might be a sad thing! Perhaps you love the atmosphere Christmas brings… or perhaps you’re dreading tomorrow’s return to work (or school) after two weeks off for the Christmas festivities! But me, I’m just really looking forward to the fact that the end of the liturgical season of Christmas means I do not have to hear "Away in a Manger" one more time for another 11 months!

I know I must sound like Ebenezer Scrooge in desperate need of a visit from Three Ghosts right now, but, I do honestly feel that I have a legitimate reason to have it out for this particular carol! Let’s take a look at the second verse…

“The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, But little Lord Jesus no crying He makes. I love thee, Lord Jesus! Look down from the sky, And stay by my bedside till morning is nigh.”

Now I won’t ask you to guess which part of these lyrics really does my head in, because that just feels mean, so I’ll tell you… it's “no crying He makes.”

In implying that Baby Jesus couldn’t have possibly cried because He’s the special baby, these lyrics deny one of the very central tenants of our Christian religion—that God became fully human in the form of Jesus (to live as a human), so that He could sacrifice Himself on the cross for all our sakes. Consequently, of course Baby Jesus would have cried like every other human baby who has ever been born! He’s human… (as well as God). Crying is one of the primary things that human babies do!

Now besides the story of the Nativity (which we’ve just spent a good amount of time with over the past month) and the story of Good Friday (which we’ll revisit in April), we don’t often get many other opportunities to really consider Christ’s humanity in the stories we hear about Him. Most of the time, we hear about the miracles He preformed, or the wise things He said… and we spend less time on the fact that He needed to sleep (just like the rest of us), or that He sweat.

That’s what makes today’s Gospel story (Luke 2:41-52) so special. We see Jesus in a moment of relatable humanity. We see Jesus being a kid and not thinking anything of wandering off from His adults and totally freaking them out in the process.

At the end of Luke chapter 2, we encounter an anecdote about Jesus at the age of 12. Every year, as part of celebrating the Jewish feast of Passover, Jesus, Mary and Joseph (as part of a larger group of pilgrims) travelled to the city of Jerusalem from their home town of Nazareth. When they were departing Jerusalem (after celebrating Passover), Mary and Joseph didn’t initially realise that Jesus wasn’t with their group—that He’d gone off somewhere without telling them.

Eventually (and after much worry), Mary and Joseph found Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple engaging with the most learned rabbis in theological discussion. And whilst Jesus being able to answer deep theological questions at just age 12 highlights His nature as Divine, Jesus wandering off to the Temple without consulting with His adults first (likewise) highlights His nature as a 12 year old human being. I think many of us here—as young people or former young people—have, at some point (maybe in a big store), wandered off from our adults without telling them where we were going, thus causing them to panic. And then a store employee has had to get on the intercom and make an announcement for our respective adults to come and collect us from the customer service desk…

Like how Jesus, as a baby, definitely would have cried (whatever "Away in a Manger" might want us to think), Jesus, as a young person, would have needed to learn—to “grow in wisdom”. And the last verse of our Gospel story this morning (v52) tells us that He did exactly that!

Every human (even the God-Man, Himself) needs to learn… and part of the learning that all of us humans will do at some point over the course of our childhoods or adulthoods is that it’s unsafe to wander away without communicating where you’re going. Even our Lord Jesus needed to learn this.