January 4, 2016

Luke 2:42 When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom.

He is Jesus. They are his family. This is the only account we have about Jesus where he is not an infant or adult. Have you ever known a teenage boy? I was one once. Can you picture Jesus as a teenager? Did he have acne? Did his voice crack as it changed? Did he laugh at bad bathroom humor? Maybe. While we in the 21^st century often have trouble understanding how a man could be divine, in earlier times when Christianity was taking shape, they had more trouble understanding how a divine being could be really human. According to Wikipedia one of the early ideas the early church reacted against we now refer to a Docetism which they define this way: “Broadly it is taken as the belief that Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his human form was an illusion.” The church fought against this because they believed, as Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” The baby we celebrate at Christmas was a real human baby and grew into a real human teenager and died a real human death that we humans might experience an extra-human resurrection. This week when you see teenagers consider, “How human is Jesus really?”