Does This Speak to You?
“Does This Speak to You?”
Luke 2:41-52
So far during Epiphany, we have tracked Matthew’s account of Jesus’ earliest days (wise men, the flight to Egypt, the return to Israel and settling in Nazareth) and Luke’s account (the family following the cultural and religious customs and the surprising things that occurred with unexpected people.) The accounts are fundamentally different. However, they each serve as prologues for the Gospel’s to come. Knowing that their audiences are aware of things that happened in Jesus’ ministry, both Matthew and Luke say to their audiences, “Look…those things were already happening.”
What I’d like to do this morning is highlight layers of possible meanings to this morning’s text and then ask you, “What speaks to you?” What speaks may be shaped by who you are and where you are in your life. What speaks may speak to you because there is something in here that you need to hear. What speaks could even be a crucial clue to how you might grow.
Here’s what’s happening in the text. Jesus is 12 years old. (This is the only text we have of the time between Jesus’ infancy and Jesus’ life as an adult.). He and his parents, like many Jewish families, go to Jerusalem every year for the Passover festival. It would have been a fun time, traveling with friends and family on the way to Jerusalem. I imagine the sights and sounds and tastes of the city compared to home. I imagine the joy of celebrating their history as a people through sacred rituals. As our text begins, the festival is over. A whole group of people are walking home together when it dawns on Joseph and Mary that they have not seen Jesus for a while. They leave the group and head back to Jerusalem and search for three days for him. Finally, they find him in the temple “wowing” the teachers with his questions and his answers. Mary gets angry and scolds Jesus. Jesus gets sarcastic and says, “Where else would I be than in my father’s house?” Then, they all head back to Nazareth where, Luke tells us that Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and, perhaps, got over his pre-teen sarcasm. Again, the question of the morning is, “What speaks to you?” Here are some possibilities…
Have you ever lost your child? Of course you have…and not because you were negligent. Kids wander. You tell them to stay close, to check in, to make sure that they are exactly where they are supposed to be. However, children are curious. Things catch their eye. They lose track of time. This was true for us, too, and some of our best memories are of being absorbed in a childhood moment. Still, as the adults, those children are our responsibility. When we can’t find them, we panic, imagining all the terrible things that might have happened. Then, when we find them, we want to do something terrible to them because we are so relieved and angry at the same time. What speaks to you might simply be the plight of Mary and Joseph as parents that all of us who are parents share with them: How will we ever keep our children safe? Sadly, in the big picture, we know Joseph and Mary won’t be able to keep Jesus safe, right?, What a heartbreaking bit of foreshadowing. Does that speak to you?
Or…have you ever been absorbed in something—a great walk, a round of golf, a book, a nice drive in the car—and had someone—out of the blue—approach you and be so angry, “Where have you been? I’ve been worried about you?” The joy of whatever you were doing is gone in a flash. You were lost in something wonderful and now you are awash in a mix of feelings. “Can’t I just enjoy my “rabbit hole,” and “I’m so sorry that you were worried,” and “You knew where I was, I told you,” or “You knew where I was…I was just doing what I always do.” There’s nothing better than having someone who cares about you until their care gets in the way of your joy, right? Does that speak to you?
Here’s a third option. This text is, in part, the story of teachers and a gifted student. Take the teachers for a moment. These are temple officials. They have to deal with all the red tape and annoying details of running the temple. One day, this kid shows up—no parents in sight, just the kid. One of you starts trying to figure out how to help this child. Then, the child starts to ask the most amazing questions and even offers a few answers of his own. After a while, all the officials within earshot have found their way over and joined the conversation. It is as if this precocious child has reminded all these experts of what they loved in the first place—talking about God and faith and the law. The mere presence of this child has brought them back to life and made them believe in a future in which the temple might even be led by a kid like this. They weren’t threatened for one second because, hey, he’s just a kid. Still, though, what a mind that kid has and what a breath of fresh air it is to be in his presence. Does this speak to you? (It is sometimes my experience during children’s sermons.)
Here’s the flip side of the conversation. Jesus needed to grow in ways that he might not in Nazareth. He had a loving family and friends. He had a community and a synagogue. They all would have been a part of him learning to love people and recognize other’s needs. He would fall in love with life, itself, in their company. Still, though, when you’re really good at anything, there comes the moment when you meet your teacher, the one who will help you to grow in ways that no one else could. One of life’s gifts is when that teacher shows up at just the right time to push you past your limits. It’s the right teacher in school. It’s the right coach. It’s the older person who befriends you and ends up becoming a mentor. Does this speak to you as a mentor or as a student?
I had a friend who I met when I was twelve. In the middle of a world defined by farms and a meat packing plant and a giant John Deere factory, this friend showed up who was a retired philosophy professor. He handed me two things: a copy of the Sunday New York Times and a copy of Bertrand Russel’s, “History of Philosophy.” He said, “We should talk about these…” An older, wiser person took an interest in me because he recognized something in me. Those are powerful people in our lives. He was a force in mine.
The fourth option is to think about what I’m sure Luke’s audience would have considered. Remember, the temple was the scene of the beginning of the end for Jesus. He would one day kick over the money changers’ tables and grab a whip and go after them. For three years, the priests and the Pharisees would be in constant conflict with him. What brought those officials and Jesus together when he was a child—a passion for God and faith and the law—would set them at odds in the end. When he was 12, he was gifted but he wasn’t a threat. When he was an adult, Jesus was gifted and a danger to the authorities. Knowing that the religious authorities were at the heart of Jesus’ downfall, Luke’s audience would have been struck to know that it wasn’t always that way. Students have ideas about who their teachers should be. Teachers have dreams for their students. Because they all care about one another deeply, sometimes those relationships end with real disappointment and rejection. Does that speak to you? (My friend and I never had that fall out because he ended up having a terrible stroke. I’ve wondered though as a professor, if he would have been disappointed that what I chose to become was a pastor…)
Here’s a fifth option. It is possible to hear this whole story as a foreshadowing of what was to come at the end of Jesus life. In Jewish society, a boy became a man over the course of years 12 and 13. You were thought to come of age and be able to discern right from wrong. At 13, there would be a bar mitzvah. So, this is the beginning moment of Jesus being recognized as a man. The thing is that no one really recognizes him. When Mary finds him, she refers to him, in her frustration, as a child. When he is with the temple leaders, they just think he’s cute and interesting. Unlike Simeon and Anna, they don’t take one look at him and shout out, “Wow…who knew the Messiah was going to arrive today. No one “gets” him—which is pretty much how we all felt at 12 years old, right?
The thing is that almost no one is going to “get” him and really understand who he is for the rest of his life. His disciples would kind of understand but then seem to forget in the next minute. Some people in the crowd would seen interested and lots of people would show up to hear him and be healed by him but almost no one would follow him. Some people would recognize him but most often those people would be the “unsavory” folks whom no one took seriously. He was being who he was his whole life long but almost no one can see that.
Instead, they see what happened to him, especially in his final week—all of which is foreshadowed in this story. Think about it. It’s time for the Passover Festival, the same festival that would be drawing huge crowds to Jerusalem in the final week of Jesus’ life. Many people would have been traveling to Jerusalem in groups. The child, Jesus, would have traveled there with him. The adult, Jesus, would arrive there decades later with his own group of followers, whom he treated as “family.” Now, think about what happens. The child, Jesus, is lost for three days. The adult, Jesus, dies and lies in the tomb for three days. Those who loved the adult Jesus—the faithful women, a few disciples—wonder where in the world he’s gone. The women, are blinded with grief. The men mostly run in fear. Everyone is devastated…until the resurrected Jesus is found again. In varying ways, each of the Gospels tell us that the faithful few, even when they found the resurrected Jesus, struggled to understand: “Where have you been? How did you get here? What in the world in going on?” And Jesus answer rings a lot that 12 year old’s words: “I told you what was going to happen and why. Where did you think I would be but doing God’s work?”
In the end, Luke leaves us with the struggle to recognize Jesus, with a parent’s fears and responsibilities, with the need to grow and the fact that growth takes time, with the need to find the teachers who can help us grow and the truth that parents and teachers sometimes struggle to accept that we might actually grow in ways they did not expect. In the complicated world of relationships—to our families, to the world around us, to the God who is the source of all that is, and to ourselves, there will be misunderstandings and heartbreak along the way, even when we are doing exactly what we are called to do. Does this speak to you?