Sunday School lesson for tomorrow, 2 January 2022

Happy New Year and good morning, afternoon, evening, whenever you read this, our online handout for Sunday School class tomorrow, the second of January. I must post this late update that the class will NOT be live-streamed online.

The day is the Second Sunday after Christmas Day, and for our gospel we have three options, three gospel readings from which to choose. As they are relatable, my notion is to do our customary Episcopal style bible study and discussion on all three of them. 

Of the three, two are from Matthew's nativity narrative that the church stretches into Epiphany, the third is Luke's story of Jesus at age twelve in Jerusalem and the Temple. It will be helpful if class members take a few minutes ahead of time, before class, to scan the three stories. The handout also has end notes that I've tacked on for contemplation. 

What I mean for us to focus on is not so much the stories themselves, as remembering what each evangelist's agenda is (which we often discuss in class), and his intended audience; and discovering and discussing how elements of each story support the writer's agenda rather than some modern historian's sense of documentable record. After all, these are holy stories, our Christian holy stories.

Matthew, remember as a Jewish-Christian who is writing, about 80 to 100 AD?, to members of his Jewish-Christian community, to lay out evidence that is credible and significant enough to convince them that Jesus was/is their long expected messiah. Matthew is doing this to persuade them to stay with the Christian movement instead of abandoning it to return to the orthodox Judaism of their heritage, where their families and friends are threatening to expel them from synagogue and disown them from family if they continue as Christians. A literary technique that Matthew uses is "proof-texting": he calls on the Hebrew bible (using the Greek-language Septuagint translation) and quotes verses of "scriptural messianic prophecy" that Matthew says were fulfilled by Jesus' life. Look for this in both Matthew stories below.

Luke. Evidently writing after Matthew, between about 90 AD and sometime in the first quarter of the second century?, Luke is charged by a sponsor to write the very best and most truthful report about Jesus he can assemble from stories and information available to him. Luke is writing for someone he calls Theophilus, who may have commissioned Luke to gather all the facts about Jesus and set it down in writing for the record. Luke understands Jesus as the Son of God and ultimate prophet, and so Luke's story emphasizes Jesus' ties to Jerusalem and the Temple, a prophet's spiritual home. Luke's gospel story of Jesus' life begins and ends in Jerusalem, again, the center of a prophet's life. And Luke alone has Jesus in Jerusalem and the Temple at age twelve, as a precocious and self-aware boy, which is our story from Luke's gospel for this Sunday.  

So here are the three stories to read ahead of time and come to class for discussion:

1. Matthew 2:1-12

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:

`And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.'"

Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact  time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage." 

When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at is rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

2. Matthew 2:13-15, [16-18], 19-23

After the wise men had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son”.

 

[16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

18 “A voice was heard in Ramah,
    wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
    she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”]

When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead." Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, "He will be called a Nazorean."

3. Luke 2:41-52

The parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem every year for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as  usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day's journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 

After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety." He said to them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" 

But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in favor with God and man.

+++++++++++++

End Notes: some things to contemplate for Sunday School class:

1. The Revised Common Lectionary for The Episcopal Church offers three gospel reading options for today: at Holy Nativity whichever priest is the designated preacher for the Sunday (Fr Steve or Fr Tom) makes the choice from the options. Which story do you like best, and why?

2. The evangelists (here Matthew about 80-100 AD, and Luke maybe 85-130 AD) are not writing “history” in our sense of, for example, a historic account from the Allied side (there was a German historic perspective that would be an entirely different documented historic report) of the WW2 D-Day landings on the Normandy Beaches on 6 June 1944; nor like your doctors’ documented medical history about you. The gospels are our religious stories about Jesus that are particular to our Christian religion. A German word that bible students like to use is Heilsgeschichte, holy history, holy stories. As is the case in all writing, the story characters do and think whatever the storytellers write that they do and think; which is why Jesus says and does different things in different gospels, and also Simon Peter! How do we know what Joseph or the Magi dreamed about?! Matthew says! Think of my example of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn doing and thinking whatever Mark Twain writes that they do and think: not history but a great story, and shows the idea of any author's poetic license. 

Or, think of the tribes of Israel sitting around campfires at night during their wilderness travels with Moses, hearing their familiar and beloved community faith stories told by gifted tribal story tellers; some stories serious, some amusing (after twice shamelessly and with his mother's connivance, tricking his twin brother Esau out of everything, Jacob gets what's coming to him: not the sexy fun girl but the ugly bossy one, yuk, yuk) (and two quite different Flood Stories woven together in Genesis like unmatching threads in a carpet!), all campfire stories recalling “God involved with us and God on our side against our enemies and all who hate us”. Each tribe’s storyteller spells the same story differently; and none of the stories can be independently corroborated, because they are not verifiable recorded history but memories and dreams and faith stories about our relationship with our God. 

All religions have these faith stories, a technical literary term is “religious myths”, and ours are part of our Christian identity - - Jesus born of a virgin, Jesus calming a storm, Jesus Christ as the Word of God in Creation. Whether faith stories can be independently verified as "historically true” is not the point: they’re our stories and we love reading them, hearing them, celebrating them, singing songs about them! 

3. Every writer has an agenda and a “target” audience: 

 - what is Matthew’s agenda, and how do the readings reflect his agenda?

 - what is Luke’s agenda, and how does the reading reflect his agenda?

This is what I hope we’ll talk most about in class as our Bible study.

4. A source I read said walking distance from Bethlehem to the border of Egypt would have been about 80 miles, a manageable walking journey of a few days. A bit longer to Nazareth. 

5. For Matthew’s story, Matthew does not say, but we commonly say Jesus would have been two or three years old by the time the Wise Men came for their visit and found them living in a house (not still in Luke's “stable”, a non-relationship, as Matthew seems to have written first, and it is doubtful that Matthew knew about Luke's quite different nativity narrative). In Lew Wallace's 1880 novel "Ben Hur", the angels speak precisely KJV English lines, and the wise men come after eleven days, to the cave stable at the khan, the only place in Bethlehem where the mangers are. Anyway, whether walking from Bethlehem to Egypt or from Egypt to Nazareth, pictures always show the Holy Family as just three people; but the gospels say Jesus had brothers and sisters (Jesus the oldest): might Mary have had another baby or two by the time of the journeys? Could you visualize a larger family traveling from Bethlehem to Egypt and later from Egypt to Nazareth?

6. Finally, a challenge about Joseph traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census: we assume that Joseph was “from” Nazareth, a resident carpenter there. Maybe he wasn't from Nazareth at all? Lew Wallace in "Ben Hur" again, Joseph was born and raised in Bethlehem, and Mary's parents had been prominent Bethlehem citizens. Maybe he was just working there, or visiting Nazareth when he met Mary? Maybe he’d gone to Nazareth to seek a wife? See if you can find in any gospel, especially Matthew or Luke, where it says Joseph was a resident of Nazareth (as Luke says Mary was) before finally settling there to escape the evil king instead of returning home to Bethlehem where his family was.

T