Genius Jesus 

Luke 2:41-52

Bobby Fischer was a teen chess prodigy and a social misfit. 

Two-year-old Elise Tan Roberts can name 35 world capitals and identify three types of triangles. Wait a minute. There are three kinds of triangles? 

Madonnna and Shakira are both divas who make headlines on- and offstage. But with confirmed IQs of 140, each of them just as easily could excel in the boardroom or courtroom. 

South Boston street-tough “Good” Will Hunting was “wicked smart” — just as competent in vector algebra as he was in a playground brawl. 

All these figures are incredibly intelligent. But they’re just as colorful as they are clever. While we value intelligence, we really seem to enjoy people who are quirky smart. 

The mental_floss magazine, committed to the quirky and smart in culture, some years ago chronicled “The New Einsteins” — geniuses who think outside the box to arrive at unimagined places: 

MIT physics professor Marin Soljaãiç was tired of waking up in the middle of the night to the chirping of his cell phone’s low battery alarm.

Our phones do everything else — why not plug themselves in as well? He invented “WiTricity,” the first step toward wireless electricity. Magnetic coils can resonate at a frequency that makes other coils across the room resonate. It’s wireless transmission of energy, similar to how a plucked guitar string makes its neighbors vibrate through harmonics. 

An unnamed Doberman/border collie mix made the Einstein list by performing successful cancer surgery on its owner. The dog was obsessed with a mole on its owner’s leg, sniffing at it for months and eventually biting it off! The woman’s doctor later confirmed that the mole was cancerous and that her dog may have saved her life. Tumors release toxins, and it turns out that those toxins stink enough for a dog to smell them. Today, trained dogs have detected lung and breast cancer with almost 90 percent accuracy. 

Roland Fryer is an innovative yet controversial New Einstein, for making school cool. He created a program in New York that rewarded classroom performance with cell phones. Teachers and students use the phones to text about assignments, while celebrities send encouraging messages through the phone system. In Chicago, his program gives ninth-graders $50 for every “A” they make. These rewards are de-stigmatizing the inner-city notion that learning is uncool.

The boy Jesus astounds many. 

Now imagine the scene in a Harvard lecture hall where a 12-year-old is stunning Ph.D. economists with his understanding of free-market dynamics. Another genius at work? 

The Passover festival in Luke 2 was like a denominational General Conference for us today. People came into Jerusalem from across the land. They shared meals stretching on for hours. Conversations focused on theology, culture, and religious life. 

As the annual event drew to a close, everyone headed out and traveled long distances home. Everyone but Jesus. His parents were a day away from Jerusalem before they realized their son was missing. 

Not exactly Einstein parenting, but far from parental neglect. Joseph and Mary’s clan would have been watching each other’s kids on the journey — not uncommon for how extended family worked in the ancient Near East. 

As it turns out, the only people who actually were watching Jesus were all the best and brightest of Jerusalem’s religious leadership. The Passover conversations kept going on as a 12-year-old asked and responded to difficult theological questions. 

In the temple, Jesus, even as a 12-year-old, taught not only the elders of his own day but us in a postmodern culture today. 

Jesus taught with authority.

UC-Berkeley chemical engineer Jay Keasling is one of the mental_floss New Einsteins. He defines genius as someone who “is extremely bright, extremely creative, and who thinks completely out of the box.” That’s the read on the prepubescent scholar. Jesus was a genius, and his outside-the-box understanding would always mark his teaching ministry. 

Mark uses interesting wordplay on ex-ou-si-a (authority) to call attention to the uniqueness and impact of Jesus’ teaching. Synagogue-goers were “astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (1:22). 

Jesus had an actual authority that was different from those in the role of spiritual authority. His teaching was capable of more impact than theirs (v. 27). He could forgive sins (2:10). He had rule and reign over evil spirits (6:7). It was authority under people, not over them (10:42-43). 

We can personalize the idea of the authority of Jesus’ teaching with spiritually formative questions. 

• Why do we trust the authority of Jesus? 

• What are the most obvious ways Jesus’ teachings have changed each of us in the last year? 

• If not for Jesus’ authority over us, how would our choices look different this week? 

• In what areas of our lives are we not acknowledging the authority that Jesus has?

It’s important for us to pause and recognize Jesus’ authority in our lives. His teaching and authority should have already changed us dramatically and should be changing us right now. If we can’t easily point to those changes, perhaps we aren’t respecting his authority. 

Then and now, Jesus didn’t teach to stun the crowds with new and outside-the-box ideas. He came to fulfill the law — to put flesh and blood onto words they had heard all their lives. He came to model a holistically fulfilling life. 

He came to change people. 

Mary was probably as embarrassed as she was shocked that her 12-year-old son went AWOL for a temple study leave. In response to her surprise, Jesus asked: [49] “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 

The Message paraphrases Jesus’ activity as “dealing with the things of my Father.” Or, as the KJV puts it: “I must be about my Father’s business.” Both of these translations demonstrate how Jesus was different from those around him. 

Jesus was consumed by scriptural education. We know that because the religious leaders were amazed by his [47] “understanding and his answers.” These are two different concepts. Jesus could answer questions posed by the temple rabbis. 46But he also showed understanding, which probably came from questions he posed. 

In rabbinical education, little value was placed on simply possessing information about God and Scripture. Rabbis wanted to know if students had internalized, owned, wrestled with and understood information. This was demonstrated through questions, not answers. 

Could a student understand information enough to show wonder and musing about what he hadn’t learned yet? Could he demonstrate that he had reflected on the Subject of the subject at hand? 

This 12-year-old boy didn’t just know about God. He knew God. Somehow in the education that was part of his divine-human experience, Jesus had personalized and internalized who God was. 

This leads us to questions of our own: 

• What do Sunday sermons feel like to us: more information to acquire? something we patiently wait through before kickoff that afternoon? 

• Which is a more truthful expression for us: “I know about God” or “I know God”? 

• Do we feel comfortable exploring questions about God? 

• Are we in touch with our doubts and disbelief? 

• Do we search answers for questions for which we have no answers yet? 

• Do our questions show the depth and hunger of our reflection about God? 

Jesus said he “must” be in his Father’s house — dealing with the things of the Father — about his Father’s business.

Mustn’t we, too? 

The last Verse in today’s lesson is a beautiful summary that covers Jesus’ life from age 12 to about age 30: [52] “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” 

As Jesus grew older, three things were true of him: He was smart, he was “cool,” and he was loved. The Bible says he “increased in wisdom,” people liked him, and God was pleased with him. 

So, over time, how are we doing? Are we getting smarter? Are we getting “cool”? Are we getting loved? Although it’s hard to measure change over short periods of time, we can look back over the last five or ten years and ask how we’ve changed. 

• How has God made me wiser today than I was five or ten years ago? 

• How have I matured over the last five years? 

• How has my reputation with non-believers changed? 

• Is my reputation with my coworkers or friends and neighbors better, worse or the same? 

• How would my family say I’ve grown over the last ten years?

Christian therapist and author Henry Cloud offers a simple paradigm for understanding Christian growth. 

Growth = Grace + Truth + Time. 

The genius of Jesus is that he is full of grace and truth (John 1). Over time, we should be able to see Christ’s life and teachings changing us and causing us to grow. 

New Einsteins are discovering how to grow organs, cure plagues and help the blind see. These are seemingly monumental and unimaginable tasks. Jesus wants to accomplish much simpler things in us: deepening our souls and changing our lives. 

Are we giving him a chance to change our world? 

That is, are we letting Jesus deepen our souls and change our lives. That is the reason for this season. 

Jesus increased “in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” Let us do so, too. 

Amen. 

Sources: 

Cloud, Henry. Changes That Heal. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2003. 

Levitt, Steven D. “R U studying?” February 29, 2008. http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/r-u-studying/. 

On rabbinical education: followtherabbi.com/Brix?pageID=2753. 

Vance, Erik. “The last of the (new) new Einsteins.” mental_floss, November 17, 2008. mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20428. 

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Children's Sermon 

Invite the children to stand, find a buddy and hold that person’s hand. If there is an odd number of children, you be the buddy to the last child. As you stand there, holding hands in pairs, ask the children why it’s important to have a buddy when you’re going on a group trip — so that no one gets lost! Point out that if you always have a buddy, you will never be completely alone, and you can figure out together what to do. 

Then have them sit, and ask them if Jesus had a buddy when he and his parents went to Jerusalem when Jesus was 12 years old. 

Tell the children what happened: Jesus stayed behind when his parents left for home, and then they had to come back and look for him (vv. 41-45). Ask the children how they think Mary and Joseph felt when they were looking for Jesus for several days — upset, scared, filled with “great anxiety” (v. 48). 

Say that they were very relieved to find Jesus in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening and asking questions. Then they discovered that he had a buddy all along — God. 

Emphasize that Jesus said, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (v. 49), meaning that he had been with God the Father all along. 

Encourage the children to stick close to their parents and their buddies on group trips but also to know that God will always be with them and they will never be completely alone.

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Invocations General 

Jesus, we have just celebrated your birth surrounded by family and friends. We come once again into the church to celebrate your birth as a community of faith. We pray this hour that you move your Spirit in a powerful way among us. Lord, we open our hearts to you, just as in the past we have opened presents — with joy and with a true sense of expectation. Amen. 

Prayers Christmas 

As we continue this Christmas celebration — a season centered on children — we are reminded once again of joy, of anticipation and of a faith that exceeds the bounds of our hardened hearts. Help us again to awaken that child within us. Help us, as we celebrate the birth of a child that has changed so many lives. Help his birth change our lives. Help us break our hearts of stone and become alive again to joy, to expectation, and above all else to a pure and abiding faith. Help us come alive to a faith as strong as “one of these children,” such that the gates of heaven and the power of God will be revealed to us. 

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