 |
| search |
I read a story about searching this morning. It is a bible story. From the Gospel of Luke, New Testament. It is the only story in the New Testament that features neither an infant nor an adult Jesus. It features a 12-year-old Jesus and his parents, Mary and Joseph. They have gone up to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. Passover is the cultural and religious festival celebrating that story of Jewish liberation from Egyptian slavery recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, book of Exodus. It is the story of Moses, the ancestral God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (YHWH, by Hebrew name), the Egyptian Pharaoh, and the enslaved people of Israel. It is a story of political power and a coup d d'etat, through which GOD overcomes the power of Pharaoh and liberates His people. It is the story of God's compassion for an oppressed people and their release. They become refugees and asylum-seekers. They spend 40 years in the wilderness before occupying the land of Canaan, where Israel is established through war. The Passover story is the heart of Jewish faith, believing in the liberating compassion of GOD for God's people.
Jesus is 12. He is in the city of David, Jerusalem. The Holy city, the dwelling place of GOD, the center of their religion. Unbeknownst to his parents, he remained in the city after the festival ends and they have departed for home. Three days of anxious searching ensues, until they find him in the temple. A lost son is found safe and sound. But you can imagine their worry. This is the exchange between mother and son: "Son, why did you do this to us? Look, your Father and I have been anxiously searching for you." And he said to them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you know know that in my Father's interests it was necessary for me to be?" Didn't you know I'd be about my Father's business? I'd be where my Father is? Smart alec, 12-year-old Jesus. This is not subtle. Mary's admonition includes Jesus' father---Joseph, her husband. Jesus' response says that he is identifying with another Father. This has implications. At 12, he would become a man. To what work would he be apprenticed? His Father Joseph's or to a Rabbi's? He suggests that he will be apprenticed to neither, but instead to the trade of his Father (YHWH, GOD). He applies himself to this work, spending three days listening and asking questions in the temple. He is preparing for his calling. Now, we know he will also be apprenticed to Joseph and become known as the carpenter's son. But, even at 12, Jesus identifies with another Father. In so doing, Luke confirms Jesus' identity as the "Son of God." This calling will not only involve three days in the temple. It will conclude with three days in the grave.
I like what New Testament scholar Bishop NT Wright has written about this passage: "One of the best loved moments in his (Luke's) gospel is the story of the road to Emmaus (Luke 24.13-25), in which two disciples are sharing their anguish over the three days that have elapsed since Jesus' death. Jesus meets them, explains how 'it was necessary' that these things happen. Here is another couple, coming back to Jerusalem, finding after three days the Jesus they thought they had lost, and having him explain that 'it was necessary' (same Greek Word) 'that I had to be busy at my Father's work'. You might call the pair of stories something like 'On finding the Jesus you thought you'd lost.' And if that is the message of these two passages, maybe Luke is wanting to tell us something about hid gospel as a whole: maybe he is writing, at one level at least, for people who may have some idea about Jesus but find he is more elusive than they had imagined." NT Wright, Luke for Everyone, p. 29.
Whatever we are searching for, we are searching for the truth. We are searching for what is most real, what is most meaningful, most worthy, most human about our humanity. We are searching for someone who will make sense of it all. We search, because we are lost or have lost something or someone or have need of something or someone to make us whole. We search because we are anxious or grief-stricken or confused or disoriented or in pain. We search because we want to know more. We search for God, the ultimate invisible source of life, love, hope, help. I think all of humanity is searching for Jesus. An essential part of being human is to search for the best of our humanity and for the divinity that resides within; a sense of goodness, rightness, and peace that we long to embody and experience everyday. Jesus, according to Luke, is that human. He is the quintessential 'new man,' formed in God's image for God's world. To be human in a way that advances our universal common humanity and brings dignity and hope to the human race; that is meaningful truth. To be the kind of human that exemplifies the best of what we are and can be. Ultimately, that is found in Jesus of Nazareth. He is called savior, because he rescues humanity from our inhumanity toward one another and toward the planet we inhabit.
I take this away for today: If I want to find God, I need to search for the Jesus I have lost. I need to listen to others, ask questions, wonder. I must look at and beyond the crosses. Jesus is there, in human suffering, pain, and death. But Jesus is also on the road walking with me and you. Jesus is at my table, eating and drinking with me. Jesus is about the Father's work; so he is with the poorest, the weakest, the oppressed, enslaved, imprisoned in this world. To discover Jesus is to see the poor. To see the poor is to discover Jesus. He is there because God is busy bringing humanity from the depths of despair to the heights of heaven. May you find what you are looking for. And may your search bring you closer to God.
No comments:
Post a Comment