Sermon Notes: Conversation is how we discover shared meaning. Jesus delighted in asking questions, telling and hearing stories, and the back and forth of conversation.
Carmel was right in her time with children- we get tantalizingly few scenes of Jesus as a child in our gospels- the story of the magi, which is often the centerpiece of the celebration of epiphany, and story of Jesus in the temple, which we focused on today in our readings.
My noticing this time around with this story is that it makes it clear that Jesus is both asking and answering questions. He's not just a fount of knowledge, but also trying to learn and find shared understandings with the rabbis and teachers at the temple.
We passed out the Relational leadership Cards, with Margaret Wheatley's principals and questions on them, and some more things popped up for us (as they should!)
We talked about how leadership comes from unexpected places, how changing who is in the conversation changed the conversation- having a 12 year old Jesus in the room with the rabbis changed what they were all talking about. How could it not?
Unfortunately, we were a little pressed for time, so we weren't able to do an activity that I had wanted us to do, sharing small group discussions with each other. We'll do it on another, non-communion Sunday.