Historical setting: Remembering the First Century
(*Looking for this post on Tuesday? Saving words digitally is clearly not as reliable as was once an ancient clay pot with papyrus scrolls stashed in a cave. Lazarus-Ink will be back on schedule this week.)
Nic and I have set the conversation between us on my childhood memories of Jesus.
“Did he seem mysterious at the time you knew him?” he asked.
“Like, was he encased in a radiant aura, and was his voice distant, like thunder across the valleys?”
“You’re kidding Nic.”
“I’m just saying what I’ve heard.”
“There was nothing weird about him. And at that time, there was nothing weird about me either. We were just like any other normal Jewish kids growing up in ancient Israel. Can I tell you about our nighttime adventure when we sneaked off to party with the shepherds?”
“How old were you then?”
“We were maybe ten or eleven; an age of childhood that seemed to us complete, but apparently, the shepherds thought we were children and they sent us home.”
“I really want to know about the very first time you met Jesus.”
“I don’t think we actually met. He was just always there as long as I can remember. We were both nearly the same age. Our fathers were good friends with one another already at the time we were born.”
“Do you mean your father was friends with God or with Joseph?”
“My father was a devout Pharisee so of course he was well-acquainted with God – the Law, the Word, the Creator of heaven and earth, but I was thinking of Jesus’s skin and bones father, Joseph. Of course Joseph was also a Pharisee. It seems now, looking back, it was an unlikely friendship. My family was wealthy and Joseph was more from the laborer’s class.”
Nic assumes, “So it is as they say, he was poor?”
“Not really poor, unless we were only seeing from my perch of privilege; I think his family was somewhere in the middle, able to live and also to give, at least while Joseph was living and when Jesus was learning the carpenter’s trade.”
“So, how did your father and Joseph grow to be friends?”
“Joseph, was working as an itinerate craftsman traveling often from his home in one of the villages in Galilee. You know, some of this is written in the gospels, so maybe I don’t need to repeat it. But I do want to tell you about my father because I feel our own family was maligned in misunderstanding by the writer of the Gospel of Luke and Acts.”
“I didn’t even know any of the Gospels but John had anything at all of your family.”
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 