I hear from reliable sources that teens and tweens (kids who are over ten but not yet teenagers) can tend to be somewhat rebellious. I’m sure this is something that is exaggerated by the parents I’ve talked to and it’s just that they don’t understand their kids, but it is a regularly agreed upon fact. When I look back at my own youth I see a bit of rebellious behavior in myself and my friends. Let me tell you about my friends…
At my high school it was against the rules for boys to wear earrings. I remember one guy coming to school with one and having to go to the principle’s office and having it removed. Well, I have to admit that I never really had much desire to have an earring and I guess I assumed that my classmates weren’t terribly interested in it either. But when we were out of high school we had a class get-together the next Christmas when many of us were home from college. I was the only guy in my class who showed up without an earring… Of course, I was rebelling in my own way by growing my hair out long.
I actually realized that most youth have a bit of themselves that rebel. They want to define themselves as different and unique and special and therefore they do things to show this. I personally never really rebelled against my teachers or my parents… at least not major-ly, not like my friends did. My own form of rebellion was rebellion against my peers. I didn’t like the things they liked, I wasn’t into the things they were into. They often looked at me and thought I was a kid who towed the line and didn’t rebel at all, but looking back at it, I realize that I was rebelling, just not against the same thing they were rebelling against.
Because of this, I tend to believe that all youth have a bit of rebellion in them… even those who don’t seem the rebellious sort. And then I come to the story we read this morning in Luke 2. And we see that even Jesus rebelled in a way against his human parents. But, of course, Jesus’ rebellion isn’t like ours and it was something that showed that he was growing into the ministry ahead of him.
I. Rebellious Jesus
Usually, when you talk about someone, a kid in particular, being a bit rebellious, you aren’t just talking about getting their ear pierced. No, usually it is something more drastic, more serious. Perhaps they are talking back to their parents, not really showing the respect they should. Perhaps they run away from home. Perhaps they hang out with people they shouldn’t. I believe it is worthwhile to look at today’s scripture in this light. You might think I’m stretching a bit to do so, but truly, when you look at a twelve year old Jesus, you see that his story is one about rebellion against the “normal” life he is living as he longs to move on and define himself.
Jesus doesn’t necessarily run away from home as he has traveled to Jerusalem with his family. At the same time one cannot argue that he was just absentminded or too caught up in the world of the temple to realize that it was time to go. Jesus chose to be rebellious. He chose to hang out in Jerusalem instead of going home.
Jesus definitely talked back to his parents. When they did finally find him, he acted as if it was perfectly natural that he would be where he was. He acted as if they were the ones who had messed up and not him… and there is something to support this argument. After all, they probably should have checked to make sure he was with them before they left the city.
But what really catches my eye is what it is that Jesus says when they do find him. It’s not necessarily that he thinks it is natural that he is in his Father’s house. It’s the fact that he doesn’t feel that his parents understand him. Talk about the center of adolescent life. I know when I was upset with my parents in junior high and high school it was because they just didn’t understand me. They wanted me to be something I was not and they didn’t get who I truly was. Many of our arguments had a thought process behind them that went like this, “If you truly understood and accepted who I am… you would understand what it is I’m doing.”
And I must say that this seems like the thought behind Jesus’ words here. If Mary and Joseph truly understood who he was they would get why it is that he hung out at the temple and they would realize what it is that he was about. Now bear with me on this one… I know that it’s hard to picture Jesus as a 12 year old kid worrying that his parents just don’t understand him. But this is truly the picture that we get of Jesus in this scripture passage.
And it’s not only here that we see this as an issue for Jesus. It seems that he is constantly, throughout his ministry, longing for people to understand him. Being the Son of God, being the Messiah, the promised Savior, he has to deal with people’s misconceptions and misunderstandings of who he is and he has to constantly work past them. There are people who follow him around expecting him to be something that they have decided he must be. They expect him to heal them… they expect him to feed them… they expect him to kick Rome out of Israel… they expect him to rule. But these aren’t the things that Jesus is about. He is constantly moving from place to place, not to spread his word to new places as much as to get away from the flocks of people who want something from him.
He asks his disciples at one point, “Who do people say that I am?” Basically he is wondering if people, if his disciples, actually understand what he is about. And even when Peter responds, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Jesus tells him to keep it quiet because he knows people won’t get it. And the people who misunderstood Jesus the most in his day were the religious leaders. He didn’t meet their expectations and therefore they eventually found a way to have him killed because they could not understand him.
II. Two Reasons
I think it is interesting to look at Jesus, at his life and ministry, at his childhood trip to Jerusalem, and see it in the light of him being misunderstood. Why? For a couple reasons: First, it helps us to relate to Jesus better, it helps us to see that he went through some of the same things we went through. And second, it forces us to ask ourselves whether we are misunderstanding Jesus today.
First, helping us to relate to Jesus better. Let’s face it, Jesus lived in a vastly different world than we live in. Not only was he in a different time and place but he was also living in a different culture with different cultural expectations. When we read scripture we often decide things don’t necessarily apply to us because the culture we are in is so different than the one Jesus lived in. But then, when we see him growing up as an adolescent boy and dealing with the problems that all adolescents deal with, we realize that some things don’t change as much as we think they do. And we also, hopefully realize that though Jesus was fully God, he was also fully human and therefore not only can we understand him better, he understands us better as well. He knows how we feel when we feel misunderstood by our families and our peers. How does he know this? He felt it himself. So, now we have a connection with Jesus, which allows him to be more than just our Savior or Lord. Now we can have a relationship with him because we know that he knows what we are going through, sometimes better than even we do.
And second, are we misunderstanding Jesus today? I truly believe that the church today does misunderstand Jesus. Actually, I’m willing to go a step farther than that. I believe that everyone today misunderstands Jesus… well, everyone but me. No, you all have been led astray by inappropriate teachings and the culture that you are surrounded by, but I somehow have moved past all that and really, truly, get Jesus.
Unfortunately, this is the way that many of us like to think. We think that though others have messed up in their understanding of Jesus, they get him. After all, what they were taught about him is accurate and he must think and act the same way that they do. I know that I’m guilty of this, and I’m sure that you are, to a certain degree as well. This is why denominations don’t always get along very well. Because each one thinks that they get Jesus better than their neighbors. And, truthfully, we’re probably all a bit off.
I mentioned earlier that it was the religious leaders of Jesus’ day that got him the least, that misunderstood him the most. I think that when we look at their attitudes and behaviors we will see why. They approached Jesus with superiority, they came at him with the knowledge that they were right and he had nothing to teach him. They approached him with a critical eye looking for mistakes and finding ones that weren’t there. Whereas, there were some that came to Jesus with a spirit of humility and they are the ones who truly grew from their interaction with him. They were the ones who became true followers of Christ.
Do we approach Jesus with that same humility? Do we expect ourselves, our minds, our hearts, to be changed by our interaction with Jesus? Or are we too busy trying to use him to prove ourselves right? It is the very difference between the tone of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and the tone of humility.
I encourage you to find that tone of humility in your own life, in your own walk with the Lord, in your own reading of scripture. Then, perhaps, you might understand Jesus in a way that you haven’t before. Then, perhaps, you might connect with your Savior and Lord in a deeper relationship than you thought possible. Then, perhaps, you will find new and exciting ways to live out your faith, your Christian walk.
It’s kind of crazy to think of Jesus as a twelve year old crying out for his parents, Mary and Joseph, to understand him. But I think it is even more difficult for us to realize that Jesus is calling for us, today, to truly understand him. He isn’t going to be snitty with us about it as he is with his parents… but he does long for each of us to truly understand him in our own way. Are you ready for that life of understanding?
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