Gregory Sterling and Harold Attridge discuss the humanity of young Jesus and the role of Mary as mother in Luke 2:41-52. The text is appointed for the First Sunday after Christmas, Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Young Jesus in the Temple (1st Sunday after Christmas)
Voiceover Voice:
One way to read this story is a story about parents who are confront with a very difficult situation, and what do they do?
Helena Martin:
This is Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. I’m Helena Martin.
Welcome back, and Merry Christmas! I know we’re not quite there yet, but we’re through the fourth Sunday of Advent, and now we’re getting ready for Christmas any day.
Each week, we invite you into a conversation with two of our Yale Divinity School faculty. And they share some thoughts about a text from the Revised Common Lectionary to jumpstart your reading that week.
This episode, we have Greg Sterling, the Reverend Henry L. Slack Dean and Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament, and Harry Attridge, Sterling Professor of Divinity.
They’re discussing Luke 2:41-52, which is appointed for Sunday, December 26, the First Sunday after Christmas Day.
The text is read for you by student Caity Stuart.
Caity Stuart:
Luke 2:41-52.
Now every year [Jesus’] 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, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.”
He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 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.
Harold Attridge:
Greg, nice to be with you today, talking about a really interesting passage in Luke. This is the story about Jesus and his parents going up to Jerusalem, and him getting left behind, putting on quite a show in the Temple, causing his parents some distress, and eventually they catch up with him and bring him home to Nazareth. What do you make of this story?
Gregory Sterling:
Well, it’s a great story. One of the things that strikes me about this is that it’s the only story we have about Jesus as a boy in the canonical gospels. So, it’s part of what Luke (and Matthew does the same thing with Mark) in expanding Mark, by telling us a little bit about the beginning of Jesus’s life, when they added their infancy narratives.
I think that all depends on which character you focus on, in some ways—at least that’s how I read it. But Jesus, I think, is presented as a type of wunderkind in the story, as you suggested.
But he’s very different here than he is in other early Christian gospels to do things that are similar, like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus does all kinds of things. It could be dangerous to be his friend or his teacher, even.
Harold Attridge:
Doesn’t he kill a little boy who’s annoying him?
Gregory Sterling:
Yeah, he does. A boy runs into him, and he curses him or pronounces a curse on him, and the boy dies. And he did the same thing to one of his teachers who didn’t like the way he responded and swatted him, and he pronounced a curse on him and he died.
Harold Attridge:
It’s very different picture of Jesus there.
Gregory Sterling:
So there’s this quite different, where you have Jesus in the temple as in his father’s house, the obedient son of God, but also in the trope of a wunderkind.
And you and I have both studied Josephus a lot, but this reminds me of the story Josephus tells about himself. When he was 14 years old, and he says the chief priests and the authorities in the Temple at Jerusalem used to come to him and ask him questions about the specifics of the law. Now I believe that about the same way I believe that the Pope doesn’t like to say mass; I don’t believe that at all. But it’s a nice trope.
But recognizing that it’s a standard trope, what do you make of the use of a standard trope in this Gospel? Why include this as one story? It’s the only story we get from Jesus’s boyhood.
Harold Attridge:
You know, I think it’s doing something similar to what you get in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. I mean, at the end of the day, Jesus learns in that story. And he becomes obedient to his parents and learns to use his powers appropriately.
This is a toned-down version of the same kind of thing, I think. Jesus is really smart. He can engage with the leading authorities in the Temple about matters of interpreting Torah, but he’s subordinate to his parents. He goes home with them and learns obedience that way. The Epistle to the Hebrews has a line on that; Jesus learned obedience through his suffering. And I think that Luke has that in mind. He wants to show the humanity of Jesus, even as a very special young man.
Greg Sterling:
Yeah, well he even gives us that last line is about Jesus’s development. One of the only places we have that.
The other thing that strikes me, though, is that he’s in the Temple. It’s a way of anchoring Jesus in Judaism, and in the piety of Judaism, which the entire infancy narrative does. But it shows a connection and his own grounding in his ancestral faith.
I’ve often wondered, there’s quite a bit of attention to the story given to the parents, especially to Mary. But, they’re pretty upset and I would say, you know, if you’re a parent and your child goes missing, and you’re a day off where you last saw him, you’d be pretty upset, too.
Harold Attridge:
Yeah, the parents are certainly anguished. And, you know, we see so many pictures of that in the news these days—or have done in the last couple of years—of parents being separated from the children on the borders, right? And you can sense the anguish as that separation takes place. So I mean, one way to read this story is a story about the parents who are confronted with a very difficult situation. What do they do? They act responsibly. They trust in the Lord and indeed the Lord provides. But yeah. The anguish is there. And I think that needs to be recognized.
On the continuity business, that’s an important part of what Luke wants to convey generally, that is, that Jesus and what he stands for, stands in a tradition that goes back to ancient Israel, and it fulfills that tradition and carries it forward. So, that’s an important point that the Temple here is the house of the father of Jesus.
Greg Sterling:
It is. And I mean, the infancy narrative starts basically in the Temple, with Zacharias—at least once we get to Zacharias, we get to the Temple. And now it ends this way in the temple.
Harold Attridge:
Going back to the parents for minute, as someone brought up in the Catholic tradition, I have a certain respect for Mary, the mother of Jesus. And she plays a very large role in these opening chapters of Luke with a Magnificat and all of that. And it’s Mary that’s the focus at the end of this story who puts these things in her heart.
And so there’s a start of a kind of recognition of the role of the mother of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke that carries on in the tradition that I’m certainly familiar with.
Greg Sterling:
Yeah. I’ve sometimes been asked to some Protestant because I once taught at a Catholic university. “Well, what do you make of Mary?” And I would say from a Protestant perspective, she is an ideal disciple, and she’s held out as an ideal disciple. And I think, in this case, you have a sense of her uniqueness in putting these things up in her heart, knowing that her son is different than other children in this story. And I see that uniqueness here.
Harold Attridge:
Yeah. And as an ideal disciple, I kinda like that that image as an ideal disciple, she’s learning about who he is. And I think that’s something that all disciples of Jesus have to do. It’s a learning process. You don’t get it the first time around. You grow in a deeper understanding of the significance of Jesus as you try to follow him.
Gregory Sterling:
Yeah, no, I think that’s right. I mean, even in the infancy narrative there’s one line that gives her a little bit of a hint about what will come at the end of the gospel, not in our text but in an earlier part of this. But she does have an understanding that he’s going to change the world. And in fact, he did.
Helena Martin:
Thanks for listening to Chapter, Verse, and Season!
For more information about the podcast, including a transcript and this week’s show notes, check out YaleBibleStudy.org. You can also find a lot of other great Bible study resources there. And remember to follow us on Twitter @BibleYale.
Chapter, Verse, and Season is produced by Joel Baden, Kelly Morrissey, and me, Helena Martin. Our theme music is by Calvin Linderman.
Thanks to the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. And thank you to Dean Sterling and Professor Attridge for spending some time with us.
We’ll be back next week with another conversation from Chapter, Verse, and Season.
Book of the Bible:
Luke
Subjects:
Luke
Guests
Text
New Revised Standard Version Bible
Copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Credits
Host and Executive Producer: Helena Martin
Production Manager: Kelly Morrissey
Creator and Managing Editor: Joel Baden
Assistant Producer: Aidan Stoddart
Music: Calvin Linderman
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Chapter, Verse, and Season gives listeners the opportunity to overhear the kinds of conversations that take place in the halls of Yale Divinity School. Each week, professors from different theological disciplines chat about biblical texts from the Revised Common Lectionary. They bring their own interests to the table and hopefully spark new insights into the scripture appointed for each Sunday.