Jesus as a child
Hopefully you are all aware that Alpha starts on Tuesday. And Alpha is a major part of our life, here in GK Church - there will be 27 of us involved in making it happen every Tuesday for the next 11 weeks, as well as how ever many guests end up coming (more on that at the end of the service!) And we wanted to find a way to connect what’s going to be happening in the Primary school each week with that we’re doing here, Sunday by Sunday.
And one way to do that is through our preaching. So today marks the start of a new sermon series which will broadly follow the same themes that our guests at Alpha will be exploring each week. We’ve changed it a bit, to make sure there’s enough meaty content for you, and to make it all memorable we’ve gone all alliterative.
So over the next 3 months we’re going to work our way through Jesus January; Faith February and Mission March. And we’ve called it ‘Back to basics’ because these three months give us a chance to explore together some of the essential foundations - the basics - of our faith; a month on Jesus, a month on prayer, the bible and church and a month on mission and living our faith in the world.
And we start, where our faith should always start, with Jesus. With Jesus January. And I’m going to speak today about Jesus as a child.
And I’m going to do two things. First to look at what we know from the gospels about Jesus’ childhood and then explore 2 reasons why it really matters that Jesus was really born as a real child.
So, Jesus the child - what do we know? Well, really not that much. Matthew’s gospel gives us lots of information about Jesus’ family tree, then tells the story of Mary’s pregnancy from Jospeh’s perspective, mentions very briefly that Jesus was born and then tells the story of the Magi - which we have just heard. That story ends with Mary, Joseph and Jesus becoming refugees in Egypt until Herod has died when they return to settle in Nazareth. Then nothing until Jesus appears alongside John the Baptist at the start of his adult ministry.
In Mark’s gospel we get nothing at all about Jesus as a child - his story begins, straight in, with John the Baptist. Later on, in chapter 6, we get a hint about his upbringing when the people of Nazareth reject him saying ‘isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James, Joses, Judas and Simon and are not his sisters here with us?’ Giving a sense of a big family, Jesus apprenticeship as a carpenter and an ordinary life - so ordinary that it’s shocking to think that Jesus could be anything special.
Luke is much more fulsome, and he tells the story of Jesus birth that we know so well - the version with the shepherds and angels, and the stable and manger. Luke also gives us the story of Jesus, as an 8 day old, being taken to the temple for prayers. That passage ends with us being told that ‘The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him’
And then Luke gives us the only story we have about Jesus as an older child. He’s 12 and the whole family head to Jerusalem for the Passover - this is at the end of Luke 2. When they come to leave, Mary and Joseph somehow fail to notice that Jesus isn’t with them, only clocking the fact at the end of a full day’s travelling back home. When they rush back to look for him, they discover he has been in the Temple all along, listening and contributing to discussion about God and the Scriptures. After a telling off, they return home where Jesus, we’re told ‘was obedient’ to his parents and that he ‘increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour’.
And that’s the lot. John’s gospel doesn’t bother with any of the Christmas stuff, instead telling the story of Jesus birth from a theological perspective - ‘the word became flesh and dwelt among us’ - and says nothing at all about his childhood.
So there’s not much we can really say about what Jesus was like as a child. We know he lived an ordinary family life with brothers and sisters, we know his father was a craftsman and that they were therefore neither rich nor desperately poor, we know that he knew the Scriptures well and loved to talk about them, and that he was strong and wise and was well regarded by God and people.
But how about the fact that he was a child? Why does that matter? Let’s think about that - because presumably God could have done something different. He could have fulfilled his plan to restore the world in any number of ways; He could have sent an army of angels, or a new kind of prophet, or a great king - or whatever he wanted. But he didn’t. He sent Jesus to be born as a baby, to grow as a child and to go through the teenage years. Why does that matter?
Let me share two reasons why that matters - and really matters. In fact, why that is an absolute foundation of our faith. That Jesus was born and grew up, just like you and me, and just like our own children and grandchildren.
First of all it means that God loves us. It means that God completely, utterly and totally loves us
Life as a child in Palestine in the first century was risky. The best estimates suggest that infant mortality rates then were about 300 in 1000 live births; ie for every thousand children born, 300 wouldn’t make it to 5 years old. For comparison, the figure today is about 4 per 1000 in the UK and 100 per 1000 in the poorest parts of the world. So Jesus was 3 times more likely to have died as a young child than a baby born in the very worst conditions today.
God took an almighty risk in sending Jesus. And that’s before we factor in Herod’s vicious attempt to murder him, and the impact of having to flee with a new born on a dangerous journey as a refugee.
Why would God take a risk like that? It can only be because he is completely sold out on us - because he is ready to give us everything he’s got. He is absolutely and 100% committed to the creation that he called into being and which he loves. He took the most precious relationship that he has - with his own Son, the one who was there with him at the birth of the Universe - and entrusted him to this dangerous, risky world where anything could happen.
God gambled every he had on his love for his creation and his passion to see all people restored, forgiven and set free.
Take a moment to reflect on that. That in sending Jesus to be born as a baby and to grow as a child, God risked everything for you. Everything, because he loves you.
Secondly, it means that this real world matters.
In the very early days of the church, groups of people who were interested in ‘spiritual stuff’ heard about Jesus. They were known as ‘Gnostics’. Gnostics believed that the world was pretty suspicious - that messy, dirty things like bodies kept us away from God, who was pure and spiritual. Their theology taught that real holiness lay in transcending physical stuff to be united with ‘spiritual’ stuff. They said, for instance, that we all have a divine spark within us which has been imprisoned by our bodies - the solution being to set that pure divine spark free so it can be united with God
And for a while, that view was very influential in the early church, and some were tempted to see Jesus like that - as a holy man who remained pure and holy in a messy world by keeping himself unsullied by difficult things like emotion, dirt and complexity, and who eventually moved beyond earth, and beyond his body, to return to some kind of pure essence of God ‘out there’ somewhere.
In the end though the Scriptures just won’t allow that view. Jesus was born as a real human being, who really cried, really needed his nappy changing, really had to figure out his relationship with his Mum and really had friends with whom he laughed and bantered and, presumably cried. Jesus made stuff with his hands, probably whacked his thumb with a hammer once or twice, bled when cut, burnt the food when distracted. He was entirely and completely human, just like you and me.
That Jesus was born as a baby is convicting proof that this real world - this real world of trees and stones, of work and travel, of bodies, food, sex and emotion really matter. God’s aim isn’t to remove us all from this world into a floaty spiritual space somewhere ‘out there’ - His aim is to redeem all of it. All of it.
And that matters because it means that our bodies matter. That the things we make matter. That art and and music matter. That food and sport and laughter matter. These things matter because Jesus came and became flesh - became flesh - and dwelt among us; dwelt with us. Dwelt as us.
A really holy life isn’t one that transcends this world and spends its time in free floating meditation, a really holy life is one that lives right in the middle of the mess and the muddle, always looking to bring God’s goodness and redemption to real people, in their real lives.
Take a moment with that thought. Where have you come to think that freedom, holiness or peace lie in escaping this world? Where, instead, do you need to reinvest in discovering and sharing God’s love right in the middle of your actual, real life?
We know very little about Jesus’ childhood - but that doesn’t matter; that’s not the point.
That Jesus was a child is convicting proof of God’s total love for creation.
That he was a child is convicting proof that this world - this real world - really matters.
Amen
Going Deeper
What does the thought of Jesus as a child make you think? What it does it make you feel? How about Jesus as a teenager?
Luke’s gospel says that Jesus grew in ‘divine and human favour’. What do you think that means?
Does it change the way you think of Jesus to think of the risk God took in sending him to be born in such a risky situation? If so, how?
Have you ever had an experience of knowing yourself loved (I mean really loved) by God? What was it like?
Can you think of ways that our culture has been influenced by the kind of gnostic thinking, which says holiness is found separate from the world? Have you been influenced by this way of thinking?
How does the fact that Jesus was born into this real world, as a real child, challenge that perspective?