6 Seasons of CallingSýnishorn

Called To Be a Student

As curious as we might be about the way Jesus would have been as a child (all the years before that), it seems, as far as the canon of Scripture is concerned, unimportant. This silence is interrupted by one singular moment, coming at what I would consider the threshold age between childhood and adolescence.

It is Passover, and as was their family’s custom, Jesus’ parents made the annual pilgrimage to the temple in the heart of Jerusalem. Being from Galilee and from a very poor town, this would have been a remarkable moment in the life of the family and especially in the life of the adolescent Jesus. He does not only take in the sights, smells, and pageantry of this bustling place, but He also somehow locates and insinuates Himself into the theological conversation happening there. We find Jesus seated among the teachers and truth-seekers, not just listening but contributing. This is especially significant because this young Jewish acolyte would not yet have been considered a man. Jesus had not yet reached His bar mitzvah (age 13), and He was not just sitting among the men, but amazing them with insights of His own.

Possibly conveyed to the disciples by Jesus’ mother, this story is told from the vantage point of the family who are not so much amazed by Jesus as they are annoyed. As the family begins the journey home to Galilee, they eventually discover that somehow Jesus is no longer with their entourage. Exasperated, they return to Jerusalem to find Him regaling an audience with His teachings about God.

Still, the story seems less about a young savant and more about a typical teenager finding himself in trouble with his parents. “Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to Him, “Son, why have you treated us like this?” (Luke 2:47–48). A response that now is viewed as a Christological revelation—“Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49)—might well have been received by His parents as what my grandmother called “sass.”

Jesus enters his adolescence asking questions, testing His ideas, and even deviating from the expectations of others. From the outside that can look like rebellion, but it is really the externalized acts of someone who is learning. If Day 1 and childhood offer us the non-anxious possibility that God is only asking us to be what we already are (children), so too the adolescent should not rush the deep work of being a student. What is the calling, and in turn, the formed identity for the adolescent? In the broadest possible terms, it is to be an apprentice to their own life.

A big part of being a student is choosing who your teachers will be. If God is calling the adolescent to listen, try, discover, test, and learn, there is no greater partner in that journey than Jesus. The second person of the Trinity offers us this profound metaphor for the relationship between God and His people; student and teacher. Jesus is the perfect teacher for the developing adolescent, giving them identity, agency, and mystery. If the general call for the adolescent is to learn, then the specific call is to learn from Jesus.