Bringing Up Baby Jesus
December 27, 2009
Luke 2:21-52 and Psalm 148
Why does the church seem to be more comfortable with the heresy of Docetism than with the heresy of Arianism? This was the question posed to a Film and Bible class I was a part of in seminary. We had just finished watching the provocative Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ. Released originally in 1988 to scores of complaints and passionate protests from Christians around the country (many of whom never ever saw the movie) the film envisioned the other side of Jesus. The side we often don’t give justice to in the church. The human side. The side of vivid dreams and realistic temptations. The side of earthly frailty. The side of insecurity. The side of emotions and vulnerabilities. The side of unsettling, unadulterated humanity.
After watching the movie, I remember thinking to myself, what was so lamentable about this very human Jesus? Why was this movie considered to be outrageous? Why was and is it so offensive to so many Christians when the humanity of Jesus’ life is elevated? Why does the church seem to be more comfortable with the heresy of Docetism than with the heresy of Arianism?
It would perhaps be helpful to define these theological terms. The word “Docetism” derives from the Greek word δοκέω, which means “to seem.” There was a segment of early Christians (and I dare say quite a large number of contemporary Christians) who believed that because Jesus was divine, he was an entirely spiritual being and he could not really exist in sinful earthly structures, like the human body. So, the Docetists concluded, Jesus only “seemed“ to have a body.
On a different side of heresy was a man named Arias, from whose name the word Arianism (different from the “Aryanism“ white supremacy!) was created. Arias taught that Jesus did not exist from the beginning of time but was created by God and that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit formed a kind of divine hierarchy. In this way, Arias seemed to limit the divinity of Jesus for many people. His teachings caused such a great controversy that eventually the Nicene Creed was created, in part, as an attempt to banish Arianism from the church.
Docetism, Jesus only seemed to have a body. Arianism, Jesus was a creation of God, like humans were. Both have been expelled from church orthodoxy, yet are we more comfortable with a fully divine Jesus than a fully human one? Is it easier to envision Jesus as God than Jesus as human?
One of the many reasons I personally enjoy the stories in Luke’s Gospel is because the humanity of Jesus is on full display in several passages. In particular his elaborate birth story—Jesus being born in a manger, wrapped in bands of cloth—as well as our passage today which describes the circumcision of Jesus, of him going through the ritual of purification, and of Jesus and his parents experiencing the eternal debate of how much freedom can you allow your adolescent children—these moments show us a very human Jesus.
Most of the time in our Gospels Jesus is the active character. He is the one who heals. He is the one who helps. He is the one who washes feet. He is the one who appears to be in complete control, out-smarting Pharisees, confusing Saduccees, and stumping scribes.
But in the Christmas story Jesus is passive. He is subject to the whims of others. He is simply a babe lying in a manger who needs to be nursed, cleaned, comforted, and cared for. He is the infant, eight days old, who must be brought to the Temple in the excited and worried hands of his parents who know how painful circumcision will be for their young boy and who must tend to his recovery from an unsterile, slow-healing procedure. Jesus needs to be cared for and there is nothing more human that this.
In the second half of Luke’s story today Jesus is a little twelve year old boy. Luke makes sure we know that Jesus is certainly more gifted than most twelve year olds—instead of laboring through a middle school curriculum, he is chatting with the professors at the premier University. Yet despite his natural gifts, he is still simply a twelve year old boy who struggles with his parents.
In the story of Jesus remaining in the Temple, Joseph, Mary and Jesus are part of a large family caravan of travellers who had gone to Jerusalem together for the Passover festival. In the era the story takes place, the nuclear family—father, mother, children—was often accompanied by a larger extended family and the children were under the guardianship of the entire group. Thus it is understandable why no one would notice Jesus not being present when the caravan left Jerusalem heading back to Nazareth.
From a parent’s perspective Jesus is not where he’s supposed to be. What parent has never had this problem? You tell your child to be somewhere at a certain time, only to find they are late, or have forgotten, and they didn’t send you a text message or call you to let you know. Your worry grows, your fear grows—what has happened to my child?
And what child has never had the desire for indepence that Jesus possesses at twelve? What young person among us has not gotten frustrated by always having to check-in with mom or dad, who feels their parents are always hovering, who wants more trust, more freedom, more space?
And who resonates with the concern of Mary and Joseph? They are a day’s travel from Jerusalem before they realize their son is missing. This means they have to travel an entire day back, worrying desperately the whole way about their eldest son who is stuck in a big city, all by himself, with perhaps no roof over his head, no food in his stomach, at the whims of city life.
And when they finally find Jesus in the Temple what does he say? “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?“
Because we are familiar with Jesus‘ story and know who he is, we tend to read this statement as if it came from the boy Jesus‘ mouth with kindness and love.
But I wonder if there was not a little teenage angst in his voice. “Geez, Mom and Dad, you should know where I am. I can’t believe I’m twelve years old and you don’t know me better than this. Why can’t you just give me a little space.“
And I can imagine Mary and Joseph‘s befuddlement, and perhaps anger: “Jesus, don’t take that tone with me! We could barely breathe thinking of all that could happen to you. You can’t just traipse around Jerusalem without telling your parents where you are. Who do you think you are? We‘re happy you’re safe. Let’s just go home.“
After this misunderstanding, the next line in Luke is this: “Then [Jesus] went down with them and he came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.“ Now I don’t know if Jesus got a talking to or not, but I can imagine that the return trip to Nazareth may have been a tad uncomfortable. There may have been a bit of silence as Jesus and his parents walked to Nazareth pondering the difficulties of family life, of a maturing son being obedient to his parents, of the limits of parenthood, of the precariousness of raising a child, of the dual responsibilities of honoring parents and of being faithful to one’s calling in life.
Here, in these stories, we have a very human Jesus. A Jesus that does not heal, that does not seem to understand his parents‘ frustrations, who is not in control, who is maturing into the Jesus we are more familiar with, but who is not there quite yet.
I have often heard parents empathize with Mary. How difficult it must be to be the parent of Jesus! To bring up this baby, to prepare him for the world, to get him ready for his ordained tasks. What a responsibility!
But parents today struggle with questions no different than the the ones Mary surely asked herself. What if I’m insufficient? What if I don’t know enough? What if I make the wrong decisions? What if I change who my child is? What if we get in arguments and we can’t understand one another?
We like to envision the perfect life of Jesus and that perfection often rests upon perfect relationships and a perfect childhood as well. But is it impossible to imagine that Jesus and his parents had arguments? Jesus surely argued with disciples, the Pharisees, and politicians, later in in life. Is it impossible that Jesus and his parents struggled over issues of control, that there were more than passing moments of anger between them, and that Jesus, maybe, was even grounded once or twice!
If Jesus was human, just like the rest of us, then is it too much to assume that his humanity also encompassed the simple difficulties of growing up; that he experienced maturity like the rest of us. How else would Jesus know the fully human experience unless he had to shut himself in his room and sulk once in a while.
What I enjoy most about considering the fully human side of Jesus and his parents is that we can more easily relate to them. They become allies in our human experience. If the Holy Family made it through the ebbs and flows, the heartaches and happinesses of being a family, then perhaps we can too.
Are we more comfortable with Docetism than Arianism? Is it easier if we imagine the perfect Jesus, living a perfect life, in perfect relationships? Or can it also helpful to see the human side to Jesus, to know that he went through the same growing pains that we go through.
While we often envision Jesus in formal divinity, imagining him instead clothed in casual humanity grants us a supremely precious perspective. Because if we can see the humanity in the son of God, then perhaps we can more clearly distinguish the God within humanity.
Too often it seems we focus upon the imperfections of our own human lives, when one of the blessings of being alive is knowing that the reverberations of the human life of Jesus sound within our souls even today. We are confused by loved ones, we have misunderstandings with our parents, we eat, we breathe, we fall in love, we desire, we see, we hear, we touch, we feel, just as Jesus did. And perhaps by recognizing the places of intersection between our own lives and the life of Jesus we can be more even inspired to follow his teachings. After all, we are, in part, just like Jesus. Amen.
