41Now every year [Jesus’s] parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents were unaware of this. 44Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. 45When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48When his parents saw him they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously looking for you.” 49He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50But they did not understand what he said to them. 51Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them, and his mother treasured all these things in her heart.
52And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years and in divine and human favor.
Luke 2:41-52
My sermon from the First Sunday of Christmas (December 29, 2024) on Luke 2:41-52.
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So like I said during the children’s message, today’s reading from the gospel according to Luke is our only glimpse into what Jesus’ childhood was like. Beyond the few words describing Jesus’ presentation in the Temple when he was a few days old or the visit by the magi or when he became a refugee while fleeing from King Herod’s murderous wrath – these words are all we get until Jesus was 30 years old. We never hear about the games he played with his friends on the street, what subjects he enjoyed in school, or how he’d roll his eyes when his parents told him to clean his room. What we get, instead, is a story of Jesus – and his family – living out their Jewish identity and faith in a very tangible way. Every year, Mary, Joseph, and their children would take a religious pilgrimage from their home in Nazareth to explore Jerusalem during the season of Passover. They – along with friends, family, and neighbors – would join together in caravans as they walked more than 90 miles to the city. My hunch is that since this was an annual event, they would visit the same places, stay in the same homes, and hang out with the same people. But this sameness didn’t mean everything remained the same when Jesus was 12. Instead when it was time for everyone – and everything – to go home, Mary and Joseph soon discovered that Jesus was gone.
Now before we call Mary and Joseph out for what happened, I think it’s important to note that Jesus chose to stay behind. Mary and Joseph, from what we can tell, were simply doing what parents and guardians get to do: they cared for Jesus; guided him; cultivated his faith; and would occasionally drag him to places while he groaned and fussed. His parents, though, also trusted him, giving him the space to be independent and to grow. Jesus didn’t enter this world fully formed. He wasn’t going to, at the age of 3, be the adult in the room. Since he was fully human, he discovered what it’s like to live within the boundaries his parents, and others, placed on him. Learning how to live within that kind of structure is one of the ways we discover who we are; But when we learn how to stretch them, we find out who we can be. Jesus, like all of us, knew how to push through into something new. And so that might be why this scene feels incredibly real. I’ve been that 12 year old kid testing boundaries, pushing back, and staying behind rather than rushing off to wherever my parents want me to go. Yet I’ve also been the parent who’s been terrified when, for a few moments, I have no idea where my kids actually are. There’s a sense that, at this point of the story, Jesus and his parents were being very much themselves. Jesus, when he walked away, headed to the place God promised to be. While there, he wasn’t pretentious nor did he act like a know-it-all. Rather, he listened, asked questions, and paid attention to those who had lived deep and faithful lives. When Jesus was 12, he was a kid who got it – and his presence even made those who knew so much grow in their own understanding of themselves and their God. And at the same time, Mary and Joseph were being completely themselves too. When they noticed Jesus wasn’t where they expected him to be, they dropped everything to find him. They looked for him among their family and friends before heading back to the city. I imagine they wandered from place to place, feeling incredibly worried, scared, and hopeful all at the same time. And when they finally found him, that moment was filled with awe, joy, and an incredible amount of frustration. Everyone had been exactly who they were supposed to be yet that didn’t mean that fear, angst, and worry never showed up. That’s why, I think, Mary’s words to Jesus are very full though they’re pretty tame compared to what we might say if we can’t find our kids. Yet Jesus’s response to his mom – and his very first words recorded in the gospel according to Luke – is kind of a riddle. On one level, it feels a bit like what we’d expect a kid who got caught might say; a sort of divine shrugging of the shoulders that says we’re the problem for getting upset in the first place. But the words we translate as “in my Father’s house” aren’t really that clear. Rev. Meda Stamper, in a commentary about this passage, noted these Greek words don’t really specify what exactly they’re referring to. A better – and entirely less workable translation – would be something like “in the undefined-plural-somethings of my Father” is where I’m supposed to be. We often understand these plural somethings to be a kind of place, like the Temple; or a group of people – aka the teachers; or maybe even referencing the religious business going on in God’s holy city. “But it is perhaps most helpful to leave [the translation] open, to think of it as all the somethings—[the] places, [the] people, [and the] doings—that advance the purposes of God’s love for the world.”
And so just like Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did what they’re supposed to do – God was going to reference all God does through the life Jesus lived. The fullness of Jesus’ story isn’t only about how it began or how it ended. Our Jesus also includes his “rebuttals of the devil in the wilderness; [the way he declared his mission in Nazareth that triggered an attempt to throw him off a cliff; everyone of his teachings, the healings, and every parable he ever told.] Always and everywhere, we see all these somethings of the Father lived out in Jesus’ boundary-crossing life [which wouldn’t let the ways we tried to end his story be the limit of what all our lives could be.] The somethings of [God] are not [always easy to accept] and they [often transgress the societal and religious norms]” we assume are holy and right since faith and hope will always burst through our imaginations into something more. Yet these “somethings of God are… not…[only] for a particular person, clan, or [even one specific] nation.” They are for everyone since everyone needs a God who chooses to be with them in the lives we actually live. That doesn’t mean we’ll always know exactly what that looks like nor will doing everything right always give us the end result we hope for or expect. But it does mean that we have a God who will be our God and who will hold us through. The story of Jesus as an almost teenager wasn’t only trying to show us how amazing Jesus always was. It also served as a reminder of who our God is. And the God we have is One who chooses to be open to all that our life will bring so that a holy kind of love can open us to what God is bringing about in our lives and in our world.
Amen.