And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. – Luke 2:52

Today’s Scripture Reading (August 2, 2014): Luke 2

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas contains fanciful stories about the childhood of Jesus. The stories include an incident in Jesus childhood where he kills another child with his thoughts because the child bumped into him - and it also contains a story of Jesus and his friends making birds out of the mud. The children were having fun forming the mud birds and then throwing them up into the air only to see the lifeless birds come crashing back to the earth, but when Jesus threw his mud birds up in the air, they suddenly sprang to life and flew away. It is a story that is picked up and commented on in the Quran.

Sometimes it seems difficult for us to embrace the idea that Jesus was fully human. We seem to understand the power, we tell the stories of the healing of the sick and walking on water but sometimes it is hard to think of Jesus having a normal childhood – of him growing up like any other child. Yet, if Jesus took on humanity, the idea of learning and growth is central to who we are – not just when we are young, but all of the way through life. And somehow the idea that Jesus was born with the knowledge that he would someday die a horrible death for our sins almost seems to be cruel and unusual punishment. And it is wrong to believe that without sin means without the need to learn.

So Luke makes the assertion that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature; that he started off the incarnation (the act of Jesus taking on our human nature) with the need to grow up – he had to learn and grow, not just get older.

This passage would seem to indicate that Jesus had to grow up just like we do – physically, mentally, socially and spiritually. Jesus who “made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness,” (Philippians 2:7) had to go through the same stages of life that we experience – starting off with the helplessness of infancy, followed by the ignorance of childhood and then the incompetence of our teenage years before he finally became an adult – just like we do.

Luke, who will later paint a beautiful picture of the divinity of Christ, starts off by painting a beautiful picture of the humanity of Christ. Jesus was both fully God, and fully human. And this is the unexpected miracle of the Messiah.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Matthew 2