The First Sunday after Epiphany – The Renewal of our Minds

Romans 12:1-5      St Luke 2:41-end

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.

Epiphany season – is really an extension of Christmas – the revealing who Jesus is.  It is the drawing out of the implications of God taking flesh.

Our Gospel is our first encounter after Jesus’ infancy, and the only encounter in the Bible of Jesus in his youth.

It is remarkable that we only have this one story of Jesus as a youth, a story St Luke probably learned from Mary.  It was an incident very painful but also very revealing to her, another incident that she treasured up in her heart.  In this story, Jesus is being revealed to us as the Wisdom of God in the flesh.  Let us ponder this moment in Jesus’ life.

We learn of Jesus’ parents’ piety, that they followed the Law of Moses, and travelled every year to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover.  To walk this journey was 3 or 4 days through Samaria, or by the Jordan, which was safer, 5-7 days.  It was a week long religious observance in the holy city.  And this incident happened when Jesus was 12.  On the way home Mary and Joseph thought Jesus was with others in the large group of pilgrims (other family and friends) returning home to Nazareth.  Imagine their panic when at the end of the first day of travel back home they discovered he was not with them.

The Gospel account suggests that Jesus was a particularly precocious child, someone developed beyond his age.  Mary and Joseph found Jesus in the Temple after searching Jerusalem for three days!  They asked him, “Son why have you treated us so?”  His response to his distressed parents was: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?”

The Gospel includes the helpful assurance that afterwards Jesus went home with his parents and was submissive to them!

But the passage raises many questions for us.  How much did Jesus’ know about his status as the Son of God as he was growing up – it seems he knew something about it.  But what precisely did he know at that time?  That will remain a mystery.

The account of this moment became profoundly important to the Church in understanding who Jesus is.  If he is both God and man, then isn’t it obvious that he would know all things? But if that is the case, then how can he really be a human being like us?

But this short account of Jesus, in a moment just before his teen years, also concludes by saying, Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

It states clearly that Jesus didn’t know all things from the start of his life, that he grew in wisdom and stature.  And the conclusion of the early Church Councils, from pondering this and other passages, is that Jesus is fully God and fully man, but in such a way that his being God did not take away from him being human like us.  He had to grow in wisdom.  His divine nature “combined” with his human nature in a way that did not overwhelmed it or replaced it.  The phrase used to capture this in the Church Council was that his two natures – human and divine – remained “unconfused and unmixed”.  The interplay between his natures is not something we can ultimately define – but the story opens up a door to the person of Jesus. [Benedict XVI]  We can see that he learned in the same manner as we learn – by listening to others and asking questions.

Jesus learns like we learn but is seems he learned more quickly – the Gospel says, they were amazed at his understanding and his answers.  Why?

For one thing, his mind was unhindered by sin.

St Paul picks up on this in today’s Epistle reading:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

Paul connects the renewal of our minds with not being conformed to this world, but offering ourselves as a holy living sacrifice, a sacrifice unblemished by sin.  He suggests that a holy way of living, less worldly, will lead to a new way of thinking, our mind will be renewed – made new, restored to its intended beauty and clarity – to have a mind like Jesus.  We will see more clearly, not be so easily tripped up, we will move from understanding to understanding.

Modern studies of the mind tell us that when we act in a certain way, our minds develop certain neural networks, pathways that literally embody our behaviours.  If we follow an unhealthy behaviour it is easier to follow that pathway, that neural network, again and we strengthen the pathway – we literally embody it further – strengthening the number of interconnections in our mind.  If we follow destructive passions – thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think (St Paul mentions this passion of pride as also a hindrance) or always worrying about what others think of us, or always angry or discouraged because of past injustices, or always just trying to satisfy physical pleasures to try to get a taste of heaven – we embody those behaviours and it is easier to follow that pathway again.

Our ways of thinking can be distorted by past traumas, they usually effect how we think about things today, how we relate to other people will be affected, if they are not dealt with.

And when our minds are following those pathways, they are not being lifted up to thinking on the things of God.  Our minds are in need of a renewal!

But one part of the good news, that has been discovered more recently, is that God has made our brains in such a way that we can continue to grow all our lives.  There is, what is called, brain plasticity – neural networks can be dismantled and new pathways formed.  And the good news, spiritually speaking, is that God can give us the grace to break a bad habit and to form new habits, and new neural networks will likewise form in our brains.  So living in a more holy way can become a new habit, and in time holiness becomes more natural for us, easier and easier to follow as it is embodied.  This is the renewal of our minds, both spiritually and physically, the freeing up of our minds for higher things.

And those new habits of mind would surely include – wanting to know our Maker better.  And so habits of prayer and reading God’s Word, and asking questions of others, and habits of self-reflection and contemplation, contribute to this. They are hard habits to form at first, but are easier the more we do them.

Paul also connects the renewal of minds, that is, our ability to think more clearly, with a certain curiosity and acquisitiveness:

be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. 

Our recent Advent Study on Revelation, has opened up for me a whole new vista on apocalyptic thought, and how that affects our understanding of worship.  I’m especially interested in the interpretation through the ages of Revelation 20.  And what do we mean by the whole company of heaven in our prayer just before the Sanctus?  I am continuing to research it and will share my findings with those who are interested, and I will ask for your thoughts.

In the Greek tradition, from Aristotle, they had the idea of an aporia – a kind of internal contradiction in our thinking that holds us back in our progress of understanding.  It is like a knot in our thinking, and it needs to be untied, for us to continue to grow.  As people of faith, we don’t give up when we have a knot in our thinking but face it, speak about it with others, testing our ideas and the ideas of others, that by testing [we] may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect, as St Paul commends.

Jesus asked questions and grew quickly, unhindered in his zeal to know His heavenly Father, and unhindered by distractions from the world and from the flesh.  We can imagine he was not held back so much from the sin of his parents, as most of us have been.  He was not triggered irrationally by fears, but with utter clarity of mind, tested at every moment to discern what is the will of God.  Even in the Garden of Gethsemane he was testing, discerning, to know what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Jesus’ human soul is in the perfect image and likeness of God.  He was from all time the Wisdom of God, but became in time also the Wisdom of God incarnate.  He shows us that our souls can become more perfect images and likenesses of God as we are purified by His Blood, as guilt and shame are dealt with by His self-offering, as we learn more of and experience the depths of God’s merciful love, and as our minds are renewed through a closer following, by grace, of His life.

This morning and every day we are offered this possibility:

Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

Amen +