Jesus as a kid

A good topic for Easter...
My Young Families class has often brought up the topic of “What do we know about Jesus when he was a child?” Standard theological answer is that we know nothing except for his astounding Temple visit when he was 12 found in Luke 2:41ff. But I think we can derive a lot about Jesus from his parables, and the recent knowledge we have of life in the first century. I will warn you however, that I am not of the mind that Jesus simply “knew everything” as if by magic. Many people assume that because he was divine, he was merely omniscient. I am more of the point of view of Phil. 2:5 “he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” Surely Jesus didn’t lie in his manger thinking, ‘well, shall I have a dirty diaper? After all, I know all about potty training already.” No, I think he learned just like you and I, as it alludes to in Hebrews.

First observation is that Joseph is poor. He is by occupation a ‘Tekton’ Greek for ‘builder’. That gets translated “carpenter” in most earlier translations, including Luther’s Bible. (German word for carpenter is “Zimmerman”, so when the other folks in his hometown said “Er ist nicht der Zimmerman”…) Tekton was probably more like a stonemason than a woodworker, although some have suggested a handyman. The tektons found building work where they could and worked for farmers for food as well. They were landless peasants and least well-off of the society of the time. Mary was said by Polycarp, early Christian Father who was the understudy of John, to have been 16 when she had Jesus and Joseph was 40. Figures. Joe had to save up for years to get a decent dowry. Joe was alive when Jesus was 12 making him about 52. Anybody older than 50 was said by Hebrews to be ‘elderly’. So it is likely that Joseph died soon after the Luke 2 story of Jesus in the Temple. Jesus has extraordinary sympathy for families where breadwinner’s died like when Lazarus died (Luke 10)leaving behind two sisters—and women couldn’t earn a living like a man. See Widow’s mite story during last week of his life. This may also explain why such a promising youth as Jesus wasn’t bat mitzvahed at about age 16—he had to earn a living for his family. Bat Mitzvah would have meant that he would have learned to write and been a scribe. But Jesus warns scribes and Pharisees about their attitude repeatedly (See Matt. 23:1). Jesus could read and write of course because he wrote in the dirt when a woman caught in adultery was brought to him. But he was no scribe trained in stylus and ink.
So Jesus had to earn a living for the family as the oldest son, probably at an early age of about early teens. But he worked with his dad since the earliest age. Could he build? You betcha! He knew some builder secrets. In Matt. 7 and Luke 6 he tells about a wise man who built his house on a rock and a foolish man who built on sand. This might not make sense to someone raised in a temperate climate. In the desert the standard surface is the desert pavement which looks like gravel. It is stone that has fractured into gravel by heat/cold and sun but since there is no rain to make chemical action and soil, it is just gravel. But of course no one lives out there. There are boulders and rock outcroppings and then along dried stream beds there is sand and silt. When it rains in the desert it’s usually flash flood, a disaster that would carry over into a semi-arid climate as well. Do people build on the sandy areas? Foolishly they do. Just take a flight over Las Vegas suburbs and trace the dried stream beds. Once every 30 years they’ll get wiped out. Jesus shows in this story that he knows the idiocy of building on sand deposits in a dry land, whereas even today, some builders don’t. In the Rejected Building Stone, he shows that he understands that a rough-hewn stone vs. a cornerstone is just in the tooling.
Could Jesus farm? You betcha! His parable of the sower occurs in all three synoptic gospels (See Mark 4:3-20) wherein he knows what happens to seed that falls into all types of conditions. Then in Mark 4:26-29 he talks about darnels in wheat. In Mark 13 he talks about how to take care of an old fig tree (figs usually bear like crazy so a barren fig is unusual). In the prodigal son story, he knows how to survive on pig feed fodder, the sort of thing a poor family would do in extreme famine conditions. In the Lost Sheep (Matthew 18), he clearly knows all about tending sheep, in the Weeds (Matt. 13) he knows all about how weeds grow, and in New Wine (Matt. 9, Luke 5) he understands the way poor folks made wine—as compared with Greek vats and barrels to age after fermentation. And he knew all about mustard seeds. And how crucial daily bread was.
Thirdly, most peasant farmers farmed their own subsistence land and had no hired men. But Jesus grew up as a hired man’s son and probably hired himself out as well. His stories show a well traveled guy looking for work and understanding of what managers were looking for. He travels from town to town without fear, walking about 2500 miles in 3 years, it is estimated--physically fit as well. Jesus clearly is well-versed on the hiring and firing for not just agriculture, but also in the trades. And he knows debt as shown in the unforgiving servant story of Matt. 18. In the parable of the Wise Master (Luke 12), he understands business and commerce of the time intimately and in that same chapter he describes a rich fool who tries to store what won’t last. And in the parable of the Talents and the Pearl of Great Value, he shows keen insight into business risk-taking, an understanding that is all too lost on many people outside of the business world.
It is written that Jesus had 4 brothers and according to some early Christian writers Mary had as many as 8 children. Jesus’ insights into the parable of the Ten Virgins (Matt. 25) shows he understood well the village weddings and female banter where half the young girls forget to carry enough oil for their lamps. In the Two Sons (Matt. 21) he clearly knows what it is like to interact with an obstinate or devious brother. And in the Banquet (Luke 14) he catches the poignancy of the relief of a life of hard labor by getting invited into the great feast. His love of children and his parable of the kids playing ‘marketplace’ reflects, not a loner, but a child who grew up with many peers, brothers and sisters. As the Wedding at Cana shows, Jesus was well-versed on the responsibility of being the family decision maker, probably from a young age.
So what do we have in Jesus? I think an extraordinarily responsible young man, hard working, and a peasant who understood from life the mysteries of faith. His parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector shows not just his insights into the desperate faith of a tax collector and the pride of a Pharisee, but also his intense heart for the real meaning of Jewish faith. He is the peasant kid who ‘got it’—from God’s judgment in the coming age to His Mercy, from how faith makes your handling of money to the way it affects your prayers. And he was able to transmit his message, not just to other common folks of his day, but right down to us today.