Aren’t babies wonderful? Babies are so sweet and so soft and cuddly. Everybody loves babies. Never mind, as some wit has put it, that a baby is nothing but a digestive system with a loud voice at one end and total irresponsibility at the other! Despite all that, everyone loves babies.
That, of course, is part of the magic and charm of Christmas. A mother, an infant, soft lights, bright music ... the whole scene is wonderful and warm and glorious. We love it. But what happens next? That’s the problem. What happens after babies start to grow up?
Feeding, clothing, paying the bills. Guiding, protecting, paying the bills. Loving, arguing, paying the bills. Teaching, reconciling, paying the bills. A whole lot takes place in the next twenty or so years.
And the discipline! Oh, the discipline! Those of you who are grandparents tell me that the best thing about being a grandparent is that when the little darlings get out of hand, you can send them home! Babies are fine, and grandchildren are grand, but the best part is that they are somebody else’s responsibility.
The truth 1s that growth is always hard work. Whether it is a child growing up or a young adult growing into her marriage; whether it is a middle-aged man trying to adjust to a changing job market or an older person figuring out how to live on diminished resources ... it’s all growth, and it takes hard work, painful work.
I want to think with you this morning about the growing Jesus. I wish we knew more about Jesus as a young person. It’s too bad the gospels are practically silent about those years. I think there would be a great deal to learn.
But we do know some things. We know, because Luke was careful to record it for us, about a twelve-year-old Jesus, in the Temple, listening to the teachers and questioning them. We do know what kind of demand that made on his family. And best of all, we do know what the outcome was. We do know that Jesus "increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man." That is, He grew!
I like to think of the little episode with the young man Jesus in the Temple as the time "When Jesus Went to College". It may not have been a degree program, and it had no football team. But Jesus there in the temple for just a few hours provides us with a miniature student growth experience. May I share it with you?
There are three observations about growing that come from this lovely little story. First, that growth starts when you know that you don’t know, and you want to learn all you can.
Second, that more growth comes when you know that you do know something, and you share that confidently.
And finally, that growth is full blown when you know that you know some things, you know that you’ll never know some other things, but you discover that relationships matter more than knowledge.
When Jesus went to college ...
I
Notice first that when Jesus went to college, He went there to learn all he could. Growth starts when you know that you don’t know, and you want to learn all you can. When Jesus took advantage of his first exposure to education outside of home and hearth, he was driven by the desire to know.
In fact, we are told that he was so absorbed by the teachers in the temple that he just set aside everything to devote himself to listening and to asking questions. For this young man, in this moment nothing was more important than learning and growing.
"After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions."
How is your curiosity this morning? What drives us to learn? Some of us are driven to learn only by the dictates of the marketplace. "How much does it pay?" "How will it look on my resume?" "Will this gain me entry into corporate America?"
But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about curiosity. Some of us seem to have lost our curiosity. Just don’t care to learn anything new. Claiming that an old dog cannot be taught any new tricks, or proclaiming ourselves uncomfortable with change, we just sit still, where we are, and refuse to grow.
I saw a sign on somebody’s desk; it reads, "Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits." That’s where we are. We just sits.
I raise again the issue, what happens with our desire to know? What kills our curiosity?
The answer is that we justify irresponsibility by not knowing. Listen to that again: we manage to justify irresponsibility by not knowing. If I don’t know how to do something, I cannot be held responsible for not doing it, right? If I have never learned a given skill, it’s not my fault if that skill is needed and I can’t supply it, right? Our assumption is that if I do not know how to do something, I cannot be held responsible for not doing it. I can therefore manage to justify irresponsibility.
But no, God has given us minds and expects us to use them. God has provided us with intelligence, and wants us to hone our curiosity so that we can be responsible.
I tell you, it seems to me that to be an authentic Christian is to be a curious person, a person on the growing edge. To be a Christian is to be a person who is always questing after more knowledge. It is God’s knowledge, God’s truth, and it cannot hurt us. It can only help us.
Sadly, there are still Christians who do not think this way. There are Christians who would try to tell you that learning is a dangerous thing. I remember preaching one Sunday in a church in Indiana ... you Hoosiers run for cover now... and I said something or other about science. Something about the God whose complex glories are revealed in science. And afterward one lady came up and said, "God and science ... I just think those are two very different things, and I just think you ought to keep God and science separated."
Well, I hope she gets Time magazine, with its cover story the other day, "What science can tell us about God." Nothing is off base, nothing is out of bounds, for Christians. To be a follower of Jesus Christ is to be curious about creation, because we believe God made it all. To be a Christian is to be driven by intellectual curiosity ... like the friend of mine who set out years ago to teach himself at least the fundamentals of a new foreign language every year. Like another friend of mine who spent his spare time reading medical textbooks, not because he was going to become a physician, but because he really wanted to understand how God had made us. Like our own associate pastor, who unwittingly became a sermon illustration the other day when he said about some matter, "That’s something I’m interested in. Actually," he said, "I’m interested in a whole lot of things." That’s it!
When Jesus went to college there in the temple, he soaked up everything he could, he turned on his mind even in the house of worship, he was not afraid of new knowledge. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.
II
But now turn that coin over. When Jesus went to college, he did so not only to learn all that he could, but also to share all that he knew. Growth begins when you know that you do not know. More growth comes when you know that you do know something, and you share that confidently. Jesus went with a confidence in himself and in the truths that he had been taught, and did not feel it necessary to cast aside the old stuff to make room for the new.
The text says, "All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers."
When Jesus went to college, three-day short course, he knew what he lacked, yes. But he also knew what he had and did not hesitate to use it and to build on it. He used both what the scholars could teach him and what he already knew to build his own independent of mind.
Now our problem is that we depend so heavily on authority figures. Authority figures. We let others do the thinking for us. We are too lazy to do our own thinking and find it easier just to swallow what others tell us.
Look at how this works. You grow up and morn and dad are the authority figures. It never occurs to you as a young child to think that they might be wrong. Then you get along toward high school and there are other authority figures ... teachers, friends, folk heroes ... and mom and dad begin to look kind of shopworn. Sort of loveable old dinosaurs.
And then you go on to college, and there there is another kind of authority figure. He sits in a dusty office, smoking a pipe and wearing a slouch hat, and when they print his name it is always with lots of letters signifying degrees he has earned. The temptation is to take everything he says as the last word. The temptation is to treat him as an authority, as the authority.
I knew of a professor who cast that kind of spell over his students. They seized on to every word he said as if it were a pearl of infinite wisdom. And much of it was. But his influence was so powerful, his spell so hypnotic, that his students even affected his way of walking. Dr. Sampey had been in some kind of childhood accident, and limped heavily when he walked. You could tell his students by the fact that they too limped their way across the campus! So powerful is the influence of an authority figure.
And so, you may be looking for freedom. But guess what? You don’t have freedom. You’ve just exchanged one authority figure for another. Instead of mom and dad, it’s the professor. Instead of the professor, some day, it will be the boss. Instead of the boss, it will be the guys on the corner who act so macho. Instead of the guys on the corner it will be the girls in your club, with their latest designer fashions.
Do you see? The issue is that we submit to a whole lot of different authorities, but look at the young Jesus asking them questions and startling them with his own wisdom. He came to his education with a quiet confidence that the truths he had already learned were worth something.
Another friend of mine likes to tell of the day he left his little hometown in New Mexico to go off to college. It was Sunday, and they lined up, every one of them, in his little hometown church, as if they were attending a funeral. One by one they filed by and shook his hand soberly and said, "Ken, don’t go. Don’t go to college. It’ll ruin you." Well, what does that mean? It means that these folks did not really believe in themselves. They did not believe that the simple truths they had lived by would stand the scrutiny of a big league university. That’s too bad. That’s tragic.
The things we teach here at this church are solid. We do not tolerate shoddy teaching or slippery thinking in this church. When you go out to confront the world, go with the confidence that you do know something. Go with the certainty that while you do not know everything, what you do know is worthy and will stand the test.
Go as Jesus did with your questions and your own thinking, and you will as he did amaze them with your understanding. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.
III
Now finally, when Jesus went to college he reshaped more than his mind; he reshaped his relationships. Yes, growth begins when you know that you do not know. Yes, growth continues when you use the knowledge you already have. But now I want you to see that growth is full blown when you know that you know some things, you know that you’ll never know some other things, but you discover that relationships matter more than mere knowledge.
Here is an amazing thing. After all the questions and answers ... after the testimony that startled those who listened to him ... after all that the focus is on Joseph and Mary and their anxiety. "Child, why have you treated us this way? We have been searching for you" Jesus answers, "Did you not know I must be in my father’s house?" ... which you could take as a smart-aleck answer if you want ... and then this ... listen: "Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them." He was obedient.
That word obedient ... it means he respected them. It means he took them seriously. It means that though he had been exposed to far more learning than they could have understood ... it means that though he could have out-argued them and outwitted them a hundred times over, he respected their place in his life and he became comfortable with their contributions to him.
I have good news. The good news is that parents and children can become best friends. Not adversaries, but friends. When we get past the stage of knowing that we don’t know and move through the pattern of sharing with confidence and even with arrogance everything that we do know, the day can come when we become more interested in a right relationship than in being right. The day can come, when, in fuller maturity, we see that it is more important to love than to be right, more valuable to care than to win arguments.
When Jesus went home and was obedient to Joseph and Mary, it meant that his maturity made him comfortable with what even ignorant peasants could teach him.
I want to tell you that it sometimes takes a lifetime to arrive at a place like that. It’s not easy, always, to appreciate what we have learned from the unlearned.
Two weeks ago, my brother and I sat in his home in Fort Worth, after I had visited my critically ill mother in the nursing home. We frankly tried to reminisce about her. We tried to remember with explicit appreciation the things she had done for us. But we could not come up with much. Every time we tried to talk about her we ended up talking about our father instead. He had been so much more obvious an influence.
That was two weeks ago. Yesterday morning, as I prepared this message, I realized that there were valuable lessons I learned from my mother. It was my mother who taught me devotion to duty. It was my mother who instructed me to do the right thing at the right time, whether or not I felt like it. It was my mother who pushed me to discipline myself and make unwavering commitments to marriage and family and church. There were things, valuable things, I learned from that relationship. I really didn’t figure that out until yesterday morning. It’s about time I got in touch with those things, for yesterday afternoon about 3:30 she passed into eternity.
Maturity comes at last when you can acknowledge that the most fundamental lessons of all are learned in loving relationships.
Jesus became obedient to them. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.
When Jesus went to college, knowing that he did not know, he learned.
When Jesus went to college, knowing that he knew something, he shared it confidently.
But when Jesus went to college, learning that those who loved him taught him something that neither book nor school could teach, he truly grew. And in His life and in His love for us, we may grow into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, into mature adulthood, pressing on for the mark toward the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
