First Sunday after Epiphany
Bishop Ray Sutton 

The story has been told about several famous preachers, but it actually happened to Joseph Parker, minister of the City Temple in London. An old lady waited on Parker in his vestry after a service to thank him for the help she received from his sermons. "You do throw such wonderful light on the Bible, doctor," she said. "Do you know that until this morning, I had always thought that Sodom and Gomorrah were man and wife?"  Reminds me of that rural, country preacher. He introduced a guest speaker with the following apt description, "The man we has speaking to us is a man who knows the unknowable, can solve the unsolvable and can screw the inscrutable."
One of the ancient monastic orders in the church is the Cistercian order, founded by Bernard of Clairvaux. There is an old Cistercian motto, “Not to long for progress is to fail in prayer.” One of the longings necessary for spiritual growth is the yearning for knowledge. Even Jesus Christ needed knowledge to grow. One of the astounding scenes in Holy Scripture is our Gospel reading for the First Sunday after Epiphany.

In Luke 2 (vs. 41-52), we have the record of Jesus as a young man learning in the Temple. His parents had been to Jerusalem for one of the great liturgical feasts, Passover. After the festival, the family entourage started on its way home to Nazareth. It was a case of parents and family assuming that everyone else had Jesus. In fact they did not. Christ stayed in Jerusalem to attend training in the Temple. For three days he was there. The priests had accommodations next to the Temple; Jesus had a place to stay. In the interim, the Son of God was engaged in intense learning from the priests. When Joseph and Mary finally caught up with Him there, the text states, “They found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (2:46). “All who heard him were astonished” (2:47). When his mother asked him, “Son why have you treated us so,” Jesus told her, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (2:49). Mary never forgot this scene (2:51). The passage concludes, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man” (2:52).

I referred earlier to this scene as astounding. I speak this way because it is remarkable that even the sinless Jesus in His humanity needed to acquire knowledge for His own growth. Even the Son of God required spiritual training in the Word of God. Thus, if it was necessary for Jesus, how much more is it essential for us!
We need spiritual knowledge for our own soul’s sake. Arthur C. Clarke wrote in his, View from Seredip, “For every man, education should be a process which continues all his life. We have to abandon, as swiftly as possible, the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40--and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been discovered when he was 20?” We all know that knowledge is power. Spiritual knowledge is spiritual power! God’s people desperately need the spiritual knowledge found in the Word of God.
Jesus had to read, study, and learn the Scriptures to grow.  In the history of Christianity, knowledge became an important aspect of Christianity. Indeed, Christianity founded great universities and colleges because the Christian faith did something that no other religion can do. It provided a basis for unifying knowledge, which in turn enhanced knowledge. Christianity teaches that the universe is created by God. Only God, therefore, can help humanity truly understand the world. He provides a unity to knowledge. Consequently, the concept of a “university” was born on the basis of a unified view of knowledge. It was believed that all true knowledge of the universe leads to a deeper knowledge of God. So the Church built schools, colleges and universities everywhere. Once this phenomenon of a university in education developed, the level of knowledge exploded. 

In a similar way, the knowledge of Holy Scripture is as foundational to our spiritual growth as it was for Jesus Christ. We have some wonderful opportunities before us. One, as you may have heard, a number of parishioners are going to read through the Bible together in ninety days. It takes a thrity-minute a day commitment. There is a sign-up sheet in Miller Hall; the readings and study Bible can be purchased through our gift shop, the Silver Chalice. We also have Lent coming up with all kinds of learning opportunities. We have our Lenten series. And we will be studying the prayer book in the Adult Sunday School class starting the first Sunday after Lent. Whatever the case, you have a responsibility to grow spiritually no less than did Jesus. It’s said that a Chinaman once gave a gift Bible back to a missionary, exclaiming, “Every time I read it, it kicks me.” Perhaps, but I think we need to be spiritually kicked to grow into the men and women we should be. Amen.