When he was 12 years old Jesus was at the Jerusalem Temple discussing serious matters of the Law of Moses and later went home with his parents and lived with them under their authority. This was after calling God his father and expressing surprise at the anxiety of his parents searching for him when he was lost in the Temple. Here we see that Jesus already gave indications of his function as a priest in teaching even the learned and through detachment from his immediate family falling back on his real father as the source of his authority. Yet he went back home obediently with Mary, his mother, and Joseph, his foster-father, thereby exercising his priesthood as an adolescent. We do not know any thing about Jesus as a grown-up person from the Gospels before his public ministry started. This does not mean that we may assume his function as a priest was dormant during those crucial adult years till he started his public life. We may naturally infer that he was a carpenter following in the footsteps of Joseph whose profession was carpentry. Through his daily work Jesus exercised his priesthood by being dutiful and faithful in whatever he undertook professionally to the satisfaction of his customers. Truthfulness and genuine concern for the welfare of his customers would have constituted the exercise of his priesthood during the period.
Jesus was born and brought up as a Jew and yet did not belong to any group in the Judaism of the day. He was neither a Pharisee nor a Sadducee nor a revolutionary like an insurrectionist nor even an Essene, a monastic sect of the times. Although the New Testament was written in Greek, the language spoken by Jesus and his disciples was probably Aramaic, a Semitic tongue related to Hebrew, but not identical with it. Jesus was a carpenter and the term in Greek is 'tectone' in Mark's Gospel. 'Artisan' may be a better term than 'carpenter' that denoted a lower status in society than that of even a peasant farmer. Jesus used metaphors by means of words like 'farming','land owners','bailiffs', 'courts' 'rich people', 'kings' etc., all of which were appropriate to someone from a small village like Nazareth with about 200 people as its inhabitants at the time. Yet we know that Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee, was a multicultural city hardly 4 miles from Nazareth. But Jesus never spoke of Sepphoris nor did he use metaphors connected with urban centers. He mostly spoke to a rural audience, which was very familiar to him. Sepphoris and Tiberius were the two settlements in Galilee that could be called cities and Jesus seems to avoid them, concentrating instead his activities in rural areas. Cities and towns in those days were where the rich and the mighty lived.They could be government officials, judges, tax collectors, and land owners, etc., whose culture was different from that of the peasants, fishermen etc. and Jesus chose to intermingle with the latter rather than the former. Why did Jesus avoid the rich and the powerful in favor of the poor? The Gospel itself is preached to the poor and does it mean to exclude the rich people from eternal salvation? What we should try to understand from the actions of Jesus in this regard is related to the very substance of the Gospel. The rich and the powerful are so full of themselves that they cannot imbibe the blessedness promised in the beatitudes, which is part and parcel of the Good News (Gospel). Jesus could not have taken the risk of diluting and disfiguring his message at the formative stage itself of its implantation in the Apostles and the disciples. The poor are ready to deny themselves as they are habituated to it by their very life and anyone who is willing, including the rich and the powerful, to deny oneself in its real sense is poor in spirit.
Although Jesus was a peasant craftsman, it did not mean that he was untutored or unlettered. He was brought up in a good and pious family undergoing the normal education of any child of the time. Probably Jesus was multilingual with Aramaic as the spoken language, Hebrew as the scriptural language and Greek as the business language as he had to deal with all sorts of people in the course of his daily work-life. From this brief picture of Jesus' life before his public ministry, we may conclude that his priesthood was exercised in various and manifold ways depending on the situation at hand. He did this when he fulfilled his obligation to his family by working to support them and yet with detachment as his real obligation was to his Father in heaven. He must have been a model to his colleagues and co-workers without even the thought of exploitation of their labor crossing his mind. He would have pointed out to his customers the advantages and disadvantages of their orders for work supplied to him without thinking about enhancing his own profits by hiding facts known to him as an expert in the field. As a result, many a time Jesus would have suffered losses in his business as a craftsman or an artisan because of his honesty and concern for the welfare of his customers. We must say that in doing so Jesus exercised his priestly ministry even as he was trying to cater to the material needs of people who approached him. Besides, the leaning of languages and Scripture prepared him not only to deal with the people around him but also for teaching and preaching in his public ministry This means that the very attempt of learning was an occasion for Jesus to exercise his priesthood even before his public ministry started about which we shall see in the next Post.
Jesus was born and brought up as a Jew and yet did not belong to any group in the Judaism of the day. He was neither a Pharisee nor a Sadducee nor a revolutionary like an insurrectionist nor even an Essene, a monastic sect of the times. Although the New Testament was written in Greek, the language spoken by Jesus and his disciples was probably Aramaic, a Semitic tongue related to Hebrew, but not identical with it. Jesus was a carpenter and the term in Greek is 'tectone' in Mark's Gospel. 'Artisan' may be a better term than 'carpenter' that denoted a lower status in society than that of even a peasant farmer. Jesus used metaphors by means of words like 'farming','land owners','bailiffs', 'courts' 'rich people', 'kings' etc., all of which were appropriate to someone from a small village like Nazareth with about 200 people as its inhabitants at the time. Yet we know that Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee, was a multicultural city hardly 4 miles from Nazareth. But Jesus never spoke of Sepphoris nor did he use metaphors connected with urban centers. He mostly spoke to a rural audience, which was very familiar to him. Sepphoris and Tiberius were the two settlements in Galilee that could be called cities and Jesus seems to avoid them, concentrating instead his activities in rural areas. Cities and towns in those days were where the rich and the mighty lived.They could be government officials, judges, tax collectors, and land owners, etc., whose culture was different from that of the peasants, fishermen etc. and Jesus chose to intermingle with the latter rather than the former. Why did Jesus avoid the rich and the powerful in favor of the poor? The Gospel itself is preached to the poor and does it mean to exclude the rich people from eternal salvation? What we should try to understand from the actions of Jesus in this regard is related to the very substance of the Gospel. The rich and the powerful are so full of themselves that they cannot imbibe the blessedness promised in the beatitudes, which is part and parcel of the Good News (Gospel). Jesus could not have taken the risk of diluting and disfiguring his message at the formative stage itself of its implantation in the Apostles and the disciples. The poor are ready to deny themselves as they are habituated to it by their very life and anyone who is willing, including the rich and the powerful, to deny oneself in its real sense is poor in spirit.
Although Jesus was a peasant craftsman, it did not mean that he was untutored or unlettered. He was brought up in a good and pious family undergoing the normal education of any child of the time. Probably Jesus was multilingual with Aramaic as the spoken language, Hebrew as the scriptural language and Greek as the business language as he had to deal with all sorts of people in the course of his daily work-life. From this brief picture of Jesus' life before his public ministry, we may conclude that his priesthood was exercised in various and manifold ways depending on the situation at hand. He did this when he fulfilled his obligation to his family by working to support them and yet with detachment as his real obligation was to his Father in heaven. He must have been a model to his colleagues and co-workers without even the thought of exploitation of their labor crossing his mind. He would have pointed out to his customers the advantages and disadvantages of their orders for work supplied to him without thinking about enhancing his own profits by hiding facts known to him as an expert in the field. As a result, many a time Jesus would have suffered losses in his business as a craftsman or an artisan because of his honesty and concern for the welfare of his customers. We must say that in doing so Jesus exercised his priestly ministry even as he was trying to cater to the material needs of people who approached him. Besides, the leaning of languages and Scripture prepared him not only to deal with the people around him but also for teaching and preaching in his public ministry This means that the very attempt of learning was an occasion for Jesus to exercise his priesthood even before his public ministry started about which we shall see in the next Post.
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