formation

Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Passover festival.
Luke 2:41 (NLT)

My favourite podcast for a decade now has been On Being with Krista Tippett, and she opens every interview with the same question: “Can you describe the spiritual or religious background of your childhood? (In whatever way you interpret that question).” The answers vary, with probably half describing an upbringing rooted in one of the world’s major religions, and others bringing their own take to how their family embraced love, community, responsibility and perspectives on life. Hearing how those early experiences shape the lives of people is fascinating, and enlightening. Everyone on her show has quite an amazing story in their adult life, and the links to the spiritual and religious background of their childhood makes you think. Especially as a parent of young kids.

This morning I was reading one of the few stories from the bible about Jesus in his childhood¹. There’s only a few things I know about Jesus’ upbringing:

His birth story was pretty unexpected (which we talk about every Christmas. I hear a lot about this one!)
His family left their home and fled to Egypt as refugees
At some point they returned and settled in a town called Nazareth (which had a bad reputation)
When he was 12, he was on a trip to the temple and got left there, and had some big chats with the rabbis.

This morning I noticed one extra detail on that last experience: “every year”. I’m sure there’s a lot I could learn about the spiritual and religious background by learning about what was normal for first century Jews under Roman rule. But even this little detail is fascinating.

Each year as a family they made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Google Maps thinks it’s about a 138km walk. So several days of walking even for an adult. I imagine when you’re travelling as a family it’s even slower. And they obviously knew lots of other travellers – enough that it was normal for a 12 year old to be in the company of other travellers and not his parents. (I think about my annual trips to the Pemberton Caravan Park as a kid, and meeting some of the same families year after year. And then later the annual youth Summer Camp with other high school kids from my church.)

Google maps is also telling me it’s largely uphill on the way there: that’s why the psalms associated with the pilgrimage to Jerusalem are called “the songs of ascent“² – I’m guessing Jesus and the other travellers would have known these and sung them on the way.

This whole pilgrimage – a week or so of travel, a week or so of the festival, and a week or so for the return – I’m sure would have been included in Jesus’ answer to Krista Tippett’s question. How could such a regular, huge, intentional, communal experience not shape the way you see the world?

And then there’s the story of him staying with the teachers of the law and having the big conversations. Where did he learn all this? I think some of the answers I heard as a kid in Pentecostal churches suggest it was all the Holy Spirit and divine insights… and while my experience says God does connect with children directly and they can learn spirituality from revelation and not just from culture – I also have no doubt that Jesus would have soaked in the religion and spirituality of his community and culture. They did this pilgrimage every year, and I doubt this is the first time he’s had conversations with the teachers. It’s just memorable because it’s the time his parents lost track of him. (Terrifying!)

And what about the rest of the time with his family? What was their spirituality like at home? If the birth story was as full on as the gospels suggest then his parents would have been indelibly changed by the experience. They would have had a strong sense of God’s involvement in their lives.

They also would have been forever changed by their experience of fleeing persecution. I doubt anyone can be a refugee and then experience the rest of their life as if that dramatic escape hadn’t occurred. They would have been so aware of the power systems of the empire they lived in, and more culturally aware than many of their neighbours who may not have travelled as far as they had, and may not have experienced other cultures up close.

And once they’re back in Nazareth, and living as Jews in a Jewish culture: did they treat Jesus differently? This verse makes me think not:

And his mother stored all these things in her heart.
Luke 2:51

Combined with other stories from the gospels about Jesus’ home-town community viewing him as “the carpenter’s son” and not particularly special, I wonder if Mary tried to let the kid just grow up, without placing expectations on him. He was in his 30s by the time she prompted him to help out with the lack of wine at the wedding, prompting his first miracle and the start of his ministry. By that point Jesus and Mary have obviously talked about something, because he has a sense of the purpose in his life and it’s timing: “my hour has not yet come”.

It is a beautiful thing to imagine Mary as a mum, holding all the promises she believes for her son, and having faith for them, enough faith to let it happen in its own time.

No extra-curricular religion classes were needed. Nor any messiah training or exposure to zealot groups. Clearly Jesus gravitated to the temple and the teachers all on his own.

And there’s also the experience of being a people living under foreign occupation. And the experience of growing up in a small village with not a lot of people and not a lot of opportunities. So many of these things would have been in the backdrop of his life, shaping who he ended up being as an adult – the things we remember him for.

And all this makes me think about me as a parent, and what I want to impart to my kids.

Growing up as a child of pastors, I had so many beautiful and formative moments. And while the rhythms of a Pentecostal / evangelical church don’t feel as rich as Jewish culture or even liturgical Christian calendars, there were regular rhythms – like the summer camps I mentioned, these were so crucial for how I formed into adulthood.

I love how big the annual pilgrimage was for them. How much it would have dominated their annual calendar. How much it must have been a big thing for them as kids, taking in a little bit more, with a little more independence each year (and then too much!) What would an equivalent look like for our family? And our church community as a whole?

Only as an adult have I started practicing Lent and Advent more deliberately, respecting the whole season rather than just Easter Weekend and Christmas Day. But even then I’m engaging with these seasons mostly through readings and reflections – it’s very cognitive and not often visceral. I’m wondering what kinds of communal rituals would build memories and form character in a more deliberate way.

For my boys definitely. But also for me. And also, the church.

Apparently it is, or was, the Feast of the Holy Family today? I’m having trouble following the logic of the liturgical calendar combined with the timezone differences from the newsletter that alerted me to it! ↩︎
A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson was a formative book for me – it’s centred around these psalms and the idea of pilgrimage. ↩︎

This is post 1 of 12 in the series “Hebrews”

In many times and in many ways, God speaks
We may drift away
It was only right
Where you’ll find God
“Stay soft”: Sabbath rest
The difference between right and wrong
An anchor for the soul
Our great desire
Which promises?
Write it on their hearts
The community’s relationship to God
Everyone will know me already

Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son.
Hebrews 1:1

I was catching up with friends from my church recently and one of them talked about how they’d been struggling to read the bible in any valuable way lately, and I struggled to relate – not because I have a vibrant relationship with reading the scriptures myself, but because it’s been so long since I have that, unlike my friend, I didn’t feel its absence in my life.

Years of daily reading as a teenager and young adult, and years of deep study in preparing to lead a small group or write a blog post or preach a sermon, have meant that the christian scriptures have been deeply embedded in how I think. But as the habit of daily reading dwindled, and the need to prepare for small groups or sermons dissipated, I haven’t found myself opening the book often, and when I did, I was often coming to it with a transactional mindset: looking to find something specific, as if the bible’s main purpose was to be a “proof text” to help me feel better about a position I hold or a life decision I’m making.

My friend mentioned they had been finding something else valuable – a book of readings and prayers for everyday life called “Every Moment Holy“. The bible isn’t the only way to hear God speaking. I know that to be true for me: in the years where bible reading hasn’t been a habit, I’ve still felt God speaking through time in nature, through times of reflection and introspection, through podcasts, through music and art, through friends and family and small children.

In all those I felt a sense that “God spoke”. Not an out-loud voice that moves through the air waves and into my ears. Not even an inner voice with a running dialogue in my head. But a sense that God, the hidden animating force of the universe, the person woven into every moment and every molecule, was somehow imparting and transmitting to me a sense of love, of peace, of strength to live a certain way, of clarity. God does speak in many times and in many ways, and we should attune our ears to hear it in all these ways, not just when we have a bible open.

But, having said all that…

I’ve recently been drawn back into the bible.

It started because our family life has been exhausting, and I’ve been feeling depleted. And a phrase I knew from the bible was ringing around in my head: “enter my rest”. I remembered there’s this whole bit in the book of Hebrews where it talks about entering God’s rest, a “Sabbath” rest, and some people enter it, and some don’t, and we should try to be those who do. I couldn’t shake it from my head, so I wanted to read it. (I had to ask Anna where our bible even was.)

And so I picked up the bible, and have been reading Hebrews, and have been drawn into it. All the ways I described “God speaking” and sending me love and peace and strength and clarity – I found again as every day or two I picked up the bible and kept reading.

And it didn’t feel transactional, like I was coming to check some facts or prove a point. It was different, like I was coming to it open to what it might say to me, what it might do to me.

My Dad also has a blog, and earlier this year he posted something which resonates with what I’m experiencing:

In the age of the printed book and of the internet, modern writings whether blogs or learned tomes are ephemeral, read, perhaps noted, and then discarded. They have no particular authority and different readers ascribe different value to them.

Religious reading, on the other hand, is different for the texts are treated with reverence as an ‘infinite resource,’ as a treasure house of wisdom, etc. As such, the words are read and re-read over and over and in time, tend to be committed to memory. “And as a reader memorizes a text, he becomes textualized; that is, he embodies the work that he has committed to memory”:

“‘A memorized work (like a lover, a friend, a spouse, a child) has entered into the fabric of its possessor’s intellectual and emotional life in a way that makes deep claims upon that life, claims that can only be ignored with effort and deliberation.’ … A memorized text has a peculiarly character-forming effect on the memorizer. The text becomes part of his character; he lives in it and lives it out.” (Wenham, Psalms as Torah, 53, citing Paul J. Griffiths, Religious Reading, 46-47).
On Reading and Memorising Scripture by Michael O’Neil (my Dad!)

And that’s been my experience. Reading and letting it change me, and form me. Chewing on the sentences and the phrases in my mind like you chew on gum, slowly letting its flavour out. Treating it as an infinite resource, and approaching it with reverence, and openness to its character-forming effects.

Some of it engaged me on my usual intellectual-theological level. Some of it felt like a lifeline of support and promises to hold me fast with the life challenges I’ve had going on. Some of it inspired me to carry a different attitude in my approach to life. Some of it was personal, and some of it I want to share. I’ve written down about 14 or so things that stood out that I think would be interesting reflections to share on this blog. So: I’m going to do that, starting with this: God speaks at many times, and in many ways.