Teenage Rebels Finding a Cause
John
(and later) Jesus
Teens tend to hang together. Friends offer the best place to air
growing angst with just about everything. Nature plans this carefully so that
each generation gets the chance to crave change and strive to evolve to a
higher and better life. If you are a parent of a teen, perhaps seeing it this
way can be a comfort. And then again, nothing usually helps except enough time
for maturity to rear its long awaited self. Nothing was different for Jesus,
John and their families.
Let’s start the snapshots at this point with the teen John, the
slightly older by six months, and his cousin Jesus. Their moms had spent
emotional pregnancies together and the extended families probably lived in the
same or nearby villages, visiting often and certainly at holiday times. This
extended family would travel together each year to the Passover celebration at
the Temple in Jerusalem. The boys, also, would have come of religious age at twelve
in the same year, having both studied intensely the same information in the
same way. Their experiences up to now would overlap and be distinctly similar.
Now that they have become teens, what might be the obvious and not so
obvious points where life begins to rub them the wrong way? How will each of
them respond and act out? For now, let’s begin by looking at John. Zooming in the camera a little we notice that
John’s dad is a priest in the local synagogue and serves frequently in the
Temple at Jerusalem. Being a priest is hereditary and John would be expected to
follow in his father’s conservative footsteps.
Here’s a quick political snapshot we will explore more fully later. The
high priests in the Temple at Jerusalem were collaborators with Rome. They
helped keep the peace between Jews and Roman soldiers – a thankless and much
distrusted position. Remember, this was a turbulent time of insurrection. We
will catch up on the importance of all this later. But for now, we can immediately
see the result in recorded history. John
must have heatedly rebelled and said, no way! because he became a dissident, and
we can catch a quick snapshot of him out in the wilds preaching about
apocalyptic end times. He was becoming a strident political radical. His dad
and mom must have been shocked and really ticked off.
For now, however, we will leave John eating locusts until we can travel
back and take more snapshots. Then we can explore more fully his influential
ministry and the profound impact his apocalyptic vision will have on his
cousin, Jesus and how Jesus changes the message with his personal vision.
. . . For these two teens however, this is
just the beginning of their idealistic dreams of changing the world.
1.
Look
back at your own teen years and recall how you saw your parents at that time.
2.
Did you
as a teen see yourself at odds with your parent’s viewpoints on religion,
politics, social issues? Did you agree and if not, how did you respond/act out?
3.
Do you
think John’s rebellion was extreme? And how does John’s rebellion from his
dad’s conservative religious position look familiar to today’s young people’s
issues?
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