3 minute read
Christ on Campus: About the Father’s Business
By Rev. Marcus Zill
Have you ever wondered what Jesus would have been like as a college student? Would He have graduated in four years? Was He a bookworm in the classics section of the library? Did He take time out to paint His face and join in with the University of Jerusalem’s version of the Cameron Crazies and root for them to squash the rival Samaritan State Bulldogs?
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Unfortunately, we don’t hear much about Jesus’ youth and life as a young adult. Perhaps that is as it should be though. After all, the Creed moves us from Christ’s birth straight to His passion. Why? Because Jesus, the Son of God and Son of man, was born in the flesh to die for our sin and raise us with Him to new life. He was on a mission to be about His Father’s business.
But we do get one glimpse into the life of the young Christ in the story of His staying behind in the temple (Luke 2:41–42).
St. Luke tells us that Jesus was subject to Joseph and His mother, that He lived under their authority and honored them according to the Fourth Commandment. This points us to His true humanity.Yet while sitting in the temple, He amazed the teachers with His understanding and His answers. He had a grasp of the Scriptures unlike any other child His age. In this, we see His true divinity. And so Jesus “increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.”
When Joseph and Mary finally found Jesus, they questioned Him about what He was doing. So He told them. And in His very first recorded words, our young Lord spoke to them plainly about His divine identity and mission: “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”
Yes, Jesus’ true Father was in heaven. Our Savior was begotten of the Father before all worlds. He is “very God of very God, begotten, not made.” And when Christ became man, it was the Father’s beloved Son whom the Holy Spirit miraculously conceived in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary. That is why it was necessary for Jesus to be in the temple; it was His Father’s house and, therefore, also His.
There amongst the most learned, professional, and pedigreed religious scholars of His day, the young Jesus discussed the Word of God. And why wouldn’t He? He Himself was the Word made flesh, sent by the Father to redeem the world.
Jesus’ response to Mary and Joseph indicates that they should’ve known all along that He would’ve been in His Father’s house. In responding, “Why did you seek Me?” He clearly illustrated how we fallen human beings tend to search for God and seek His presence in the wrong places. Some try to look for God within themselves. Or they’ll seek God in nature, trying to get close to Him by being out in His creation. Or they’ll look for Him in false religious practices and manmade forms of holiness.
While you are at college and away from home and your parents, remember that God is not found in any of those other places. He is found in His temple. The college quad is full of seekers of all ages. The university is a great and powerful search engine. It is a place where the pursuit of good and useful knowledge is cultivated, but it is also an incubator of a lot of selfcentered and wrong-headed ideas, even religious ones.
Jesus reveals to us here that the temple, the dwelling place of God, is not a temporary building. The true and abiding dwelling place of God is the eternal flesh of Christ. Jesus is Himself the new and everlasting temple of God for “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” In Christ, all the fullness of God dwells in bodily form.
So if someone wishes to seek God, they must seek Christ and nothing else. And if they are seeking Christ, they must look for Him according to His human nature, and in those physical, audible, and edible places where He is present for us: in His holy Word, in His holy water, and in His holy Body and Blood. That is why churches are sometimes called the “temple of God.” Christ is present there to make us His dwelling, His very body, that He may fill us with His grace and wisdom.
It is all of this and more that Jesus meant when He said, “I must be about My Father’s business.”
That’s our prayer for you during your college years. So whether you are in college or still looking toward it, we encourage you to be about your Father’s business. Pursue the knowledge and skills necessary for life lived in but not of the world, but seek God where He promises to be found: in Christ.
Prayer “For Young Persons”p.315, LUTHERAN SERVICE BOOK Pew Edition © 2006 Concordia Publishing House. www.cph.org. Used with permission.
Rev. Marcus Zill is the full time campus pastor at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church and Campus Center in Laramie, Wyoming, and serves as the Executive for Christ on Campus.
