Lesson 5 - Looking for Jesus - His Life and Times

Jesus

 Nerd or Bad Boy Coming of Age

As a kid in the fifties and sixties in Queens, New York, my own street was evenly divided among Protestants like me, Catholics and Jews. We played together as one big happy family – cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, tag and stick ball. Then we all reached puberty at about the same time, and each of us was confirmed or had a bar/bat mitzvah and was recognized as an adult by our religious communities. We had giddily become teens while at the same time our parents watched and probably trembled with fear.

          Now, let’s go way back in time and take a snapshot of how a young Jew, like Jesus, marked his puberty and became a man in his religious community.

          Dads had the responsibility to educate their sons in the Jewish tradition. Shortly after a boy’s birth he was circumcised to mark him as a Jew. By five years old a boy was studying the Scripture, by ten years old he was studying the oral traditions. At twelve he would need to fast for the first time on the Day of Atonement to prepare himself for the year ahead when he would regularly sit at the feet of his rabbis, or teachers, learning and animatedly discussing theology. At thirteen he would now have studied the commandments, the Scriptures, the traditions and be ready for his big day when he was no longer a responsibility of his Dad, but now of his rabbis. He would legally become a man.

Keep in mind that there were three big Jewish holiday feasts that the male Jews (accompanied by their families – read that women and girl children) were required to attend at the only Temple in Jerusalem. Since attending three feasts a year was sometimes a burden, the pressure was placed on men to attend at least Passover once a year at the Temple. And here would be the perfect time for Joseph to take the twelve year old Jesus, so the boy could officially begin his studies with the rabbis. Jesus could now show his stuff and his readiness for becoming a man a year from then. This event was remembered by Mary and you can find it retold in the Gospel of Luke.

So, in Jesus’ twelfth year, he accompanies his family on the yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover. They join the crowds and the hustle and bustle of thousands of Jews massing into Jerusalem for the Passover week. Let’s take a quick snapshot of their destination, the Temple, and notice the acres of courtyard inside the Temple complex. Over there are corrals filled with squealing lambs ready to be bought and then sacrificed for the holiday. Over here are the male members of extended families guffawing and slapping backs as they meet up after months of separation. And here and there we see small groups of rabbis loudly debating the intricacies of Jewish Law. The noise must have been ear numbing.

Now zooming in we capture another shot. We see Jesus, a twelve years old boy, already eloquent, funny, really smart and utterly captivating. He has captured his audience of rabbis, and we can see them leaning forward, stroking their beards with intense interest in what this precocious young man has to say. This group is so focused that when Jesus’ extended family and friends leave later that week for Nazareth, the boy gets left behind and no one notices for a day or two. Not the rabbis, not the family and certainly not Jesus. He was having just too much fun.

Well, eventually Mary notices and the family returns to the Temple and Joseph metaphorically grabs him by the ear dragging him outside to continue the two day trip back home to Nazareth.  It is interesting that at least two Gospels have briefly noted that Jesus’ family thought he might be a little crazy and they didn’t approve of him. You get the feeling he was a hand full to raise.

. . .The next year, when Jesus officially became a man, Joseph could ‘hand him off’ to the rabbis as a full member of the congregation and their responsibility. And just like parents of teens today, that year probably couldn’t pass fast enough.

Questions to Contemplate and Discuss and Share on Facebook if you wis

1.     What was your religious training as a youngster, if at all?

2.     Did you live in a mixed religious/ethnic community as a child and what happened to your friendships when you reached puberty?

3.     At what point in your life did you begin to see yourself as an adult member of the community? Was this the same age that your parents saw you become an adult? And what created that ‘adulthood’ in your eyes and also your parents’ eyes.

4.     What do you think the ramifications of reaching adulthood would have been for Jesus? How were your experiences the same or different from Jesus’?

You can always order the paperback or ebook if you wish the whole course.