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Close to God’s Heart
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3 January 2010 One of the images that remains with me from our time in Jerusalem last summer comes from our first day at the Shalom Hartman Institute. The dozen or so of us Christians who were part of the seminar just beginning were interspersed into small groups of five and six Orthodox and Reformed rabbis who were just completing their session. Kind of a cross-over, merge and split arrangement. We sat in the courtyard at the bottom of a small amphitheater, one story below street level, shielded from the summer sun by canopies that could be opened or closed as needed. We met in that setting only once, but the pattern of small groups continued throughout our seminar, engaging in havruta, or discussion about a particular aspect of scripture. Even though Shalom Hartman Institute was founded millennia after the time of Jesus, the practice of gathering with rabbis to discuss and to argue scripture is deeply, deeply Jewish. That’s the image I now have of the bar mitzvah-aged Jesus in the temple. Not miraculous. Not showing off. Just a Jewish boy who has come of age, totally engrossed in the respected practice of reflecting on, probably even arguing about scripture with other men of faith. There’s a delightful rabbinic story of learned men arguing a point of halakha, or Jewish law. Everyone agrees except Rabbi Eliezer, and one argument follows another. The good rabbi calls for miraculous signs to support his perspective. And they come: a carob tree is moved, the walls of the school tilt, a voice from heaven speaks–even God agrees with Rabbi Eliezer. But the other sages do not. Rabbi Joshua quotes Deuteronomy 30.12: “It is not in the heavens” to settle things.
In Jewish eyes, even God is part of the ongoing debate, and delights in the questions in the variety, even in being out-voted. In an era when opposing perspectives increasingly are dismissed as not worthy of our consideration, let alone our respect, this little jewel of the story of Jesus in the temple reminds us that the entire tradition of Jewish discourse is a series of holy conversations. Jesus is a part of those conversations. Barbara Brown Taylor comments, Jesus “grows sturdily from his religious roots, not in spite of them.”(Feasting on the Word) Once Jesus and his parents and the festival pilgrims have finished observing Passover, finished observing the high holy days of Jesus’ first year of adulthood, the crowds head for home. Not unlike our own congregations. But Jesus stays behind, sitting among the teachers, engaged in discussion with them, hungry for the exchange. The nativity stories we cherish remind us that Jesus doesn’t spring like Venus on the half shell, fully grown, fully mature. The same is true for us. Faith isn’t laid on us, fully formed; it grows and develops. Faith is more than figuring out what we believe. Faith is a life-long process that requires the kind of engagement we find in our story today...a story set within a larger story. From Mary’s Magnificat to the refrains that Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature, in favor with God and people, Luke is careful to locate the story of Jesus within the story of Samuel, shaping the Jesus story within the context of the biblical story that has shaped and formed people for generations. In the first meeting of our confirmation class we looked a bit at one of those biblical stories–the story of Hannah and Samuel, with its echoes of the stories of Sarah and Isaac, and Rebecca and Jacob. Stories that on one level simply tell of shame and ostracism, of difficult conceptions and longed-for births. Stories that on another level tell of a God of promise and fulfillment, of hope and redemption. Stories that tell us something of who we are and whose we are. I am reminded that the Speilberg movie, Hook, opens as Peter Pan is juggling the demands of the corporate world against the needs of his wife and children–and the corporate world is winning. In every way but the costume, Peter has become the pirate he fought in Neverland. But Hook has never changed. He comes back for revenge, and Peter returns to Neverland. In time, Peter is reacquainted with his true self; he sees who he has become, and of course, regains the skills he needs to remain faithful to that self as an adult in the real world.[4] Jesus is no Peter Pan. When he leaves the temple, he also re-enters a world whose values are shaped not by the temple, but by Rome, by an empire and its gods. At the same time, he carries with him the stories of who he is: sacred stories that link him to Samuel and connect him with God, stories told to him within the family, and questioned in the temple. When we leave the sacred space of this sanctuary, we also take with us stories of God, stories of ourselves that we believe are true. Today’s scripture reminds us to find ourselves in these sacred stories, and allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to question them. May our own questions find us in church, discussing things that really matter. *** [1] Swanson, Richard W., Provoking the Gospel of Luke Year C, Pilgrim Press, © 2006, pages 82-86. |