The Son of God Grows Up

Luke 2: 41-52

 

If you are a theologian on facebook at the moment you probably know the story of Larycia Hawkins. Larycia was stood down from her position as Professor of Political Science at the large Christian University in the US called Wheaton College. The thing the College was concerned about was her statement that she wanted to stand in solidarity with Muslims throughout the world… and one of her stated reasons was that Christians and Muslims ‘worship the same God’.

 

And it’s this idea that Wheaton College has a problem with: Christians and Muslims worship the same God.

 

It has spawned a mass of theological commentary all over the internet, some arguing that we do not worship the same God, others that we do. The problem with this political controversy is that there is actually a very complex philosophical question hidden under a simple claim. But right now, it’s dynamite!

 

Let’s just pause over this issue for a moment. Professor Michael Rea argues that there is one belief that Christianity, Judaism and Islam all have in common: they all believe that there is exactly one God. In other words if you understand the idea of God at all you understand that there cannot be more than one (by definition we might say). God our creator is the single source of all else that is.

 

So it really makes no sense to say that someone believes in another God. To a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim… the idea of another God is just nonsense. So what is going on here if someone says that Muslims don’t believe in the same God as us? Perhaps what they mean is that they are using the word God in some different way to refer to some thing like a human being only more powerful (something there could be more than one of) the wind or a rock, or another human being, or something , or an idea like love or truth. To do this is simply to misunderstand the meaning of the word “God”. Now, I think its possible that many Muslims might think this is in fact what Christians do and also many Christians might think this is what Muslims do. But it’s quite an extreme position to reach… and a lot more would need to be said to justify it.

 

If that’s not what’s going on, if we are, in fact, using this word God in basically the same way… then there is really only one other alternative – that Muslims do believe in the same God, but they understand God differently. Maybe very differently, to the point of producing a very different religion or set of practices. Much like medieval Catholics and modern Pentecostals might be said to believe in the same God, just understanding God differently. And most Christians down the ages would agree that Abraham believed in the same God as they do… we just understand that God differently.

 

So there are really only two alternatives… misunderstanding of the word ‘God’ or the same God understood differently.

 

I raise all that because today’s reading highlights an aspect of Christianity which might demonstrate these alternatives. Today’s reading highlights arguably the central aspect of Christianity which for a Muslim must seem crazy…

 

Today’s lesson is the follow-on to Christmas… it’s really the further implication of the incarnation. God became flesh. The single source of all that is, became flesh and lived among us. And to add insult to injury (from a Muslim and Jewish perspective). God in the flesh began to ‘grow up.’

 

Jesus, the 12 year old, gets left behind. Did he lose track of the time? Did his parents neglect him? They were travelling in convoy with a whole wider whanau and so it wasn’t till after a day’s travel that they realise that there’s no Jesus in the group. So they go back and look for him. Wracking their brains… What would Jesus do? Where would he be likely to go? It’s bad enough losing your wallet or your keys… but your child! Finally they find him… after three days!… In the temple, asking questions of the teachers of the law. He is curious. He wants to learn. He is totally absorbed in this desire. He says to his parents: “Did you not know I must be in my Father’s house?”

 

I suspect for some of you here, that sounds a bit rude coming from a child… In the old days it might have been called ‘talking back’. Parents declared what was authoritatively the case and children simply listened and obeyed. Pretty much a one-way stream of authority. This is how many have understood what it means to honour your parents. And many of you will be saying… ‘And it’s gone too much the other way now’. Jesus is clearly challenging his parents. Does he get away with this ‘bad behaviour’ because he is the Son of God? I am reminded of this well known cartoon. [show ‘Jesus at bath time’]

 

Perhaps, to truly honour your parents means to honour them with a very good question. Perhaps the one-way-traffic of authority is not the best model of what ‘good behaviour’ is. What kind of culture treats a question as an insult or a threat? Jesus question is: Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house? Did you not know that the knowledge of God my Father and the will of God is the most important thing for my life?

 

For our purposes today I don’t think it matters whether this is good behaviour… we are past the Christmas season. We can forget all the stupid cliches about who is naughty and who is nice. What is important here is the humanity (human nature) of the Son of God. That the Son of God is human, that God, the source of all, becomes flesh. And here we have stories of him needing to learn, submitting to the knowledge of his elders, growing in the knowledge of God, the one whom he would come to call Abba in a way that no one before him ever had. And in doing so he broke the rules about God and perhaps he broke the rules about childhood behaviour too… in order to follow this call upon his life.

 

To be the Son of God doesn’t mean you know everything … like you are sitting above the earth looking down … no it means you have a brain like everyone else, but one which is formed in a way that no brain before has ever been formed. In one sense completely like you and I. In another sense completely different. Jesus is, according to Christianity, a revolution in the making.

 

Already there is a form of civil disobedience going on in his young life (challenging his parents). He goes home to Nazareth and Luke tells us he was obedient to his parents. But here we have a glimpse of the fact that his obedience to his parents is limited by his obedience to the way of his Father. His ‘father’s house’ will be his home, even when he is living with Joseph and Mary. Render unto God what is God’s, and to Joseph and Mary what is theirs.

 

Everything changes with Jesus… politically and theologically Jesus is a threat. For Islam (and Judaism) he represents a threat to how the whole relationship between God and the world is to be understood. As the incarnate Son of God he embodies the dance of divine love in the world. It is not separate. The love of God moves in and grows up. It heals the world from within. Grace and Truth are not just ideas… they become flesh as God (the one creator of all) becomes flesh.

 

For us… to worship the same God as Muslims and Jews… is to pay close attention to this life and its growing up in history.

 

To worship the same God is also to worship very differently.