Young, but not a child
Luke 2:1 – 3:38 Read it here
While Jesus will not begin his actual ministry until he is about 30, his role is set even before his birth.
While all of today’s reading is familiar to us as the Christmas story, I’d like to call your attention to what happens later, when Jesus is 12.
At an age when we still dismiss people as being just children, we see Jesus going off on his own and speaking with leaders in the Temple, showing great wisdom.
It would be easy to attribute this to the fact that he is the Son of God if it weren’t for the fact that we see no suggestion that Jesus himself has any supernatural power until his affirmation through baptism. The wise 12-year-old is definitely the human side of Jesus.
When we return to the Old Testament and begin with the stories of the kings, notice how often persons of 12 or even younger are used by God and seen as leaders among their people.
In our culture where children are often seen as being cute and innocent, it’s easy to miss the fact that young people often have much to offer if taken seriously. The biblical account is full of such examples, including Jesus himself.
Later, when he begins calling his disciples, it’s likely that many of them were younger than we usually think of them—it was common for apprenticeships or rabbinic education to begin in the early teens or even earlier.
If we want to do serious ministry with young people, it’s important to learn the biblical lesson that they are real people who have relationships with God and can be called by God to serve in significant ways.