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Family

In this Christmas season family is the source of our great joy, our great sorrow, hurt or anger, or both at the same time.

There is a belief, not without justification that if we do right by family, or if family does right by us then life will go better.

Human beings are not hatched or spawned in the middle of a stream. Everyone is born with a biological father and mother. There is design in this. The optimal situation for a child’s welfare is to be raised by two good biological parents in a home full of love and security. Unfortunately fallen planet earth seldom comes through with “optimal”.

Jesus: Wonder Boy and Luke

Only Luke completes Jesus’ birth narrative with this story of the 12 year old Jesus.

In the 2nd century AD as Christianity grew there was a demand for more stories of boy Jesus. You can read the Infancy Gospel of Thomas on the web.  Stories of boy Jesus doing miracles like making clay birds alive and raising little playmates from the dead.

Early church fathers had these books but the church rejected them as canonical. Only Luke provides us with a childhood story of Jesus and if you read them both you can get a sense of the difference between canonical stories and the ones created to satisfy the religious market for more Jesus as “wonder boy” stories.

Luke’s Greco-Roman audience expected some sign in his early life of the man he would become. Luke’s story of Jesus staying behind in the temple complete’s Luke’s “Infancy” narratives in important ways.

A Good Home

Luke 2:40–42 (NET)

⁴⁰ And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him. ⁴¹ Now Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem every year for the feast of the Passover.⁴² When he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom.

Verse 40 echoes Old Testament stories of the likes of Samuel and Samson where God is preparing someone for service and the signs are there already in the person in their youth.

In verse 41 and 42 we are told that Jesus is brought up right by Mary and Joseph. They are law observing, promising keeping good parents who are not only faithful in their private lives but faithful in their public devotion to God and their people. They travel down from Nazareth to Jerusalem every year for the Passover, as the Law demands and they take their son Jesus with them.

Here the emphasis is Jesus as a boy, good home, raised right, everything looks like all will be done.

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