THE YOUNG JESUS, THE LORD AND MASTER

OF THE YOUTH
Samuel Baltazar Batara (1986)

(A homily delivered at the main Eucharist service during the First National
Youth Congress held in the South Pacific City of Lae in September 1986.)

As Christians we look to Jesus Christ as our Example, our Model. And as young
people we should look at and study his youthfulness and try to pattern ourselves,
our lives, and the activities we may do. The Bible, however, doesn’t seem to
provide enough information or stories on how Jesus spent his adolescence and
early adulthood.

The Gospel stories presented Jesus as an infant from the manger at Bethlehem.
There is very little about his childhood in the small village of Nazareth where his
foster parents, Mary and Joseph, had settled in and where Joseph was well-known
as a carpenter.

The last we read of Jesus as a young person is when he was 12 years old. As a
family, they went with others to Jerusalem for the annual Passover festival. Late on
the way back, Joseph and Mary realized that Jesus who would have been expected
to be walking with fellow youth was not at all with the crowd. With fear that the
boy Jesus might have been lost, they went back to the city looking for him. They
found him in the temple doing some social, educational, and spiritual development
exercise with the lawyers and professors. This was the last mention of Jesus in his
age as youth. We next hear of him when he started his ministry at the age of 30, at
his baptism officiated by his cousin John.

The hidden years of Jesus’ life are what we should be interested in because as
youth leaders we ought to be concerned with young people ages 13 to 29, if youth
is a matter of age rather than a state of heart and mind. But it looks like there is
nothing we can refer to and learn from regarding the life of Jesus as a youngster.

There is, however, one verse that can give us a good picture of those silent years
Jesus spent as a young man. Only one verse but it is so full of description. Let us
look at Luke 2:52. “Jesus grew both in body and in wisdom, gaining favor with
God and men.” Here is the young Jesus growing physically, in body; growing
intellectually or educationally, in wisdom; growing spiritually, gaining favor with
God; and growing socially, gaining favor with men. Jesus is here described as
developing into a full example of a well-balanced, integrated, total human being.
Jesus grew in body. Physical build-up. The last we also hear of Joseph, the foster
father of Jesus, was at that time Jesus was “lost and found” in Jerusalem at the age
of 12. We can’t find Joseph of Nazareth again after the temple incident. An
explanation could be that Joseph died at an early age. If that was the case, Jesus
being the first born in the home, took over the responsibility of supporting, through
sweat and honest labor, a rather large, perhaps extended, family. According to
Gospel records, he had at least four younger brothers, a number of sisters, plus the
widowed mother whom Jesus as family head would have to support. This, in
addition to a Levitical regulation of starting priestly work at 30, could be a big
reason why Jesus started his ministry late. He must have taken over the
management of the family business, the joinery shop, from his earthly father.

To be a carpenter, or more properly termed “technician,” it meant hard work and a

good physical fitness program. He did not buy his timber from a saw mill or from
a hardware store as we would do today. He went up the hills, cut down a tree, and
carried it on his shoulder to his workshop. Going up and down the hills, his skin
must have been tanned by the sun and weather-beaten by the coastal wind. This
occupational physical development also prepared Jesus for his coming ministry. He
could later walk from village to village through deserts, hills and lakes, preaching,
teaching and healing, eating and sleeping wherever opportunity came. His three
years of intensive ministry could only spell a strong, robust young man.

Jesus grew in wisdom. Intellectual search. Educational enrichment. Blessed with

lowly but loving parents, that model home in Nazareth became a school ground
that shaped Jesus’ impressive thoughts and actions. As a Jewish child he would
have attended the village school or the synagogue at Nazareth. He learned to read
and write. He studied and put to heart the Scriptures so that he was so well-versed
later when teachers and wise men asked him questions and argued with him. He
learned the basic skills and knowledge necessary to equip man. He learned how to
get along with people, and to talk with God in meditation. He had a love for
adventure. As he climbed the hilltop of Nazareth, the sights and beyond developed
his desire to explore, discover, and do great things. He developed a sense of
wonder and beauty, and learned to love God’s world as he watched nature, the
trees, the beautiful sea, the plain, the sower planting seeds, the cornfields, the
singing birds around the mustard bush and the lilies blooming on the hillside.
These objects later became his subjects that told lasting truths.

Jesus grew gaining favor with God. Spiritual growth. Theological equipment.
Jesus obviously grew up in a home nurtured by love and joy springing from a
strong religious faith. We could imagine the parents going, bringing the curious
boy along, to Jerusalem every year for the Passover, if not all the main temple
feasts. The name “Father” was the most natural and significant name he could
think of for God. He studied the purpose and love of God in the Scriptures, in
nature, and in everyday events. He learned how to find a quiet place and be alone
to talk with God and listen to His will. His sense of trust in God was deeply rooted
and developed, that in those last hours before and after he was nailed on the cross
he could pray: “Father… not my will, but yours be done,” and “Father, into your
hands I place my spirit.”

Jesus grew gaining favor with men. Human relationships. Social responsibility.
Just as he loved God, Jesus loved all kinds of people. He loved and was loved by
his parents, brothers and sisters. His pleasant experience in the home developed in
him a loving attitude towards other people. We find him teaching that neighbors
and even enemies must be treated with love. He was giving hope and friendship to
the social outcasts, the despised, the unclean, and the sinners. He went into homes
and places of work, even in the countryside, meeting and eating with and
reassuring people. He considered as his social duty and responsibility to organize
the feeding of the hungry crowd around him.

He also came to learn how precious freedom was as a prerequisite to peace, and
that oppression in any form is satanic bondage. He lived in a country with a long
history of struggle for independence, and at that time, governed by colonial rulers,
the Romans, with their cruelty and immorality. He labored to earn sufficient
amount to pay for Roman taxes. He saw how his own people whom he loved were
doomed to servitude, institutional oppression, and subtle violations of human
rights.

In one Gospel account, almost the very first thing Jesus did in his ministry was to
get angry. He went into the temple, drove away the sellers and the money
changers, overturning business tables. If analyzed more closely, his fury had not
much to do with religious beliefs as it was a cry for social action. Those merchants
and those bankers practiced usury, robbing the poor village people who walked the
long weary road to the temple with the best intention of making the required
sacrificial offerings in their worship to God. We can then also call it an economic
concern, if you like.

In God’s sight, in order to offer the right sacrifice, it would have been alright for
worshippers to bring along their own birds or animals, or buy them at a cheaper
price from village raisers. But in a conspiracy that favored the temple sellers, the
customs police who were controlling entry of people and things into the temple,
judged anything that was brought in, aside from those officially sold in the temple
market, as unclean, defiled, and therefore, declared as an unacceptable sacrifice.
Worshippers from the village also brought from their meager earnings the standard
money but could not offer it as alms because temple ministers claimed those coins
as idols, being inscribed with Caesar’s image. The bankers had to change the coins
with the prescribed plain coins, at a very high bank fee to be shouldered by the
poor villager. We then can understand why Jesus was so angry with the approved
stealing from the poor, institutionalized and played nicely by the established
“church” at the time.

As youth of the Church, we should act more on this area. Social action. Where
there is oppression, where people are rendered less human, dehumanized, we
should rally to the side of victims and speak out or even fight for people’s rights.
The Church youth can have a prophetic voice that fearlessly speaks on issues and
problems affecting the life and development of our people, whether these are
caused or promoted by any institution like the Church or the Government, or by
culture, or any other movements.

It is sad when our Church, the Anglican Church, says nothing on pressing issues
and concerns of national importance, while other Churches are actively
formulating responses and clearly expressing their positions. The Church as the
Body of Christ in a fast changing and, very often, misguided world has a social
responsibility to proclaim and show the will of God on every event or situation.
We the Youth as vital members of the Church should try to fulfill that prophetic
role.

What can we say, for instance, about the fate of young people who are often
branded as “drop-outs”? Is it the will of God that only a few receive better or
higher education, or, that all should have equal opportunity to pursue education as
a means to a more progressive life, and to have life more abundantly? Or is it only
a question of having the right kind of education for the right people in the right
positions? People observe that education is for a chosen few and does uproot the
educated out of their villages into a few urban centers. Traditional stronghold and
discipline are lost and a completely new culture and foreign influence are adopted.
The education system itself drops out those who are not fit for city life and makes a
greater bulk of people “unemployable.” Is not the Church liable when it has joined
with the system, and act only as a passive partner?

I am glad the events of last night happened right in the middle of our Youth
Congress. The Lord is perhaps reminding us a significant lesson that we must
learn. Given firsthand experience, we encounter an opportunity. It was an active
reminder for us, youth leaders, to think deeply and more creatively about what we
can do for our young people in order to save them from becoming social outcasts
whom the system often labels as “rascals.” Those who held us up at knife point and
grabbed our service utility vehicle loaded with printing equipments and materials
we were supposed to use in this Congress, were fairly educated if we determine
formal education by the way one speaks good English. But they received education
for no purpose in life, feeling useless in society, not seeing a brighter future to
count on and build up. They rather long for needed attention, they assert their
rights denied them by a system, they look for social identity. How many more of
our young people across the country are like them? What can we, youth leaders,
offer to give our youth a ray of hope?

“Jesus grew both in body and in wisdom, gaining favor with God and men.” Only
one verse that describes Jesus as youth, but it is so full of content and meaning
which should ever guide and challenge us and our Christian leadership tasks to
shape and deliver a well-balanced, Jesus-filled, and true-to-Jesus youth ministry.