NO GROWTH WITHOUT CURIOSITY
(Dec. 27. ’09. Luke 2:41-52)

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Here we are four days away from the end of yet another year… An entire year raced by; somehow it seemed like only a few months, weeks maybe – the blink of an eye. Doesn’t it feel like that? Einstein described it in his Theory of Relativity: we can freely move around in the 3 dimensions of space: forward and backwards, left and right, up and down. But he also proved there’s a 4th dimension through which we move: time. Past, present and future time. For some reason we cannot move around in this dimension, we can only be in the present, the now. The future is always ahead of us, the past always behind. When this day is done, it gone. Gone forever. We can’t look back and see all our yesterdays sitting there in a neat long row. There’s no gallery of the days and years we have lived, we can’t walk back and experience them again. Time is like a river on which we’re carried along in a canoe. There’s only one direction to go: slowly forward, only experiencing the here and now. Reading the New Testament, Jesus’ childhood seems just like that: gone forever. The apostles only seem to relate to the Jesus they experienced, the here and now in a sense. There’s only this one story about Jesus’ childhood, this one brief passage from Luke. The time and years of Jesus’ childhood through youth to adulthood seem implied by Luke. He writes: “The child Jesus grew into a mature adult, filled with wisdom, and God regarded him favourably...” That’s it! Not much content. We have no idea how he progressed from saying ‘mum’ and ‘dada’ to pronouncing big words like ‘messianic’ and ‘Deuteronomy’!
Or how his first baby cry evolved to the singing of songs of joy – or sadness. There’s only this big gap in time. And we are left to wonder or speculate. Yet that fleeting moment in time that Luke describes, that brief temple experience can serve as a model for growing up and growing in wisdom. On the verge of adulthood, the child Jesus retreats to the temple, the “church”, to reflect and question... It’s his first time there, and immediately he realizes he’s entirely at home here. Time flies by. Three entire days – just gone. These 3 days in the temple were a fundamental moment in his spiritual evolution. Jesus grew spiritually by fully embracing his faith tradition. And not only that: he also absorbed and digested it all. Many years pass, and the next time we read about him, we see a person who has taken this faith and transformed it into something radically different. Jesus gave the faith of his forefathers entirely new life and new meaning, pushing its boundaries to new horizons never seen before.
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So what happened in the time between the 12-year old Jesus who discovers and explores his faith, and the 30-something Jesus who proclaims God’s Kingdom of justice and peace? What happened was the child Jesus grew into a mature adult, in Luke’s words: “filled with wisdom, gaining favour with God and people...” The text gives us 2 key words. The first one is “growing”. Jesus grew. From being a helpless child he grew into adulthood, where he was capable of holding down a job, making and keeping friends, thinking things over, separating fantasy from fact, getting angry without hurting others, caring for others and not expecting anything back. “The child Jesus Jesus grew both in body and in wisdom, gaining favour with God and people...” The other word is “wisdom”. Jesus grew in body - and wisdom. He discovered that a fool and his money are soon parted, and that the love of money is the root of many evils. He learned you cannot tell a book by its cover. That power corrupts, that the devil can quote scripture, and a smile sometimes is a mask for hate. Through all this “The child Jesus Jesus grew both in body and in wisdom, gaining favour with God and people...” And whenever he came near or in a temple, things happened. Forgiveness and healings happen – but also heated exchanges with the priests and other dignitaries. Jesus questions them and their faith, continuing what he started as a 12-year old child. Jesus was restless, he had to share his vision with all who would listen. By doing this he and took risks, big risks; and both the priests and the Romans didn’t like it one bit. Priesthood and the temple had always been places of comfortable rest and quietude, and now here’s this Jesus who starts stirring the pot, rocking the boat. Who has a very different image of God, namely as a loving parent. Jesus who heals the sick, who speaks out when injustice is done, who treats prostitutes and corrupt tax collectors as valuable human beings, who proclaims forgiveness for all – Jews and gentiles, friends and enemies. The mature Jesus came to the temple to experience and live this faith, as a person and as a community – not the place where you have to pay a priest to mediate with God on your behalf. Jesus embraced his faith, and his curious, probing mind realized early in life that faith isn’t about stagnation and status quo. It’s about growth and taking chances. It’s about questioning the status quo and opening yourself to new horizons, being unafraid of new ideas. Living your faith means living on the edge of something new. It can be wonderful and scary at the same time. How we meet that “new” makes us who we are, as individuals and as a congregation. It sounds so obvious, doesn’t it? But is it…? Ask yourself when was the last time you picked up a book with the intention to learn something genuinely new about your faith. Something that maybe shook up some of your existing beliefs, something that made you stop in your tracks and think: wow, I never realized that…Or do we stick to what feels comfortable and familiar, and keep things as they are…?
Growing in wisdom and stature as Jesus showed us calls us to take our faith seriously enough to study scripture, wrestle with what feels comfortable, explore new images of God,
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Christ, and salvation, and spend time in prayer, meditation, and service. Faith is like a seed, as Jesus illustrates in one of his parables: it won’t grow automatically, but requires nurturing and work. It requires going to our own spiritual ‘temple’ regularly to listen, to be curious, and share. Let’s make this our New Year resolution: to greet these new horizons in this coming year, unafraid and fully aware of the fact that we’re always on the edge of something new about to take form. Without it, a vibrant congregational and personal life is just unthinkable. And then maybe it can be said of us all: these people... these congregations, grew into a mature adulthood, filled with wisdom, and God regarded them favourably... Amen. (illustration: “Jesus in the Temple”, by Éric de Saussure)

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