The Boy, Jesus
The Boy Jesus
Luke 2:41-52
So, last week, we compared Matthew and Luke’s stories of the infancy of Jesus. We acknowledged that they are different in ways that are not easily reconciled, no matter how much some people may want to. At the same time, we pointed to significant truths which each Gospel tells. Luke shows us that Jesus is one of us. Matthew connects Jesus’ early days to the core narrative of Judaism in a way that challenges us to see that there may be certain ways that God works in this world. In the end, the real differences between the Gospels don’t have to be a threat. Rather, they can enrich our perspective and give us multiple ways to search for how God is present and active in our own world.
Only one of those Gospels tells a story of Jesus as a child. In our text for this morning, Joseph and Mary are again doing what the average Jewish family might have been likely to do: they are going to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. They are traveling with friends. At the end of the Passover festival, they are heading back down the road to home with all of those same friends. Somewhere along the way, they realize that they have not seen Jesus for a while. Eventually, Mary and Joseph’s more and more frantic search leads them all the way back to Jerusalem. They find Jesus in the most unlikely of places, doing the most unlikely of things: he is at the temple, lost in a big discussion with the religious authorities.
Let’s unpack this text. First, let’s think about the fact that this is Passover. We reminded ourselves last week that Passover is at the very heart of the Jewish tradition. Passover was the final moment before the earliest ancestors in faith were set free from slavery in Egypt. At Passover celebrations, the Seder meal is shared which involves the retelling of the Passover story. For Joseph and Mary, Passover in Jerusalem would have been one part Times Square on New Year’s Eve and one part going to the Cathedral of Notre Dame for Easter. Jerusalem was the place to be. It was also a very sacred place. Years later, Jesus would share the Passover meal with his disciples and transform it into what we know as the Last Supper.
At the least, what we might carry away from this story unfolding at Passover is the message again that Jesus was steeped in Jewish tradition and that he did what observant Jews did. He was formed in the traditions and practices of the faith, just like everyone else. This would have been significant much later when he would be portrayed as an enemy of the faith.
The other thing to notice about this Passover festival story is that it is already over when the story begins. One might expect that there would have been some description of how the family celebrated or where they had the Seder meal. However, Luke offers none of that. As the story begins, everyone is on their way home.
It’s also worth noticing that the group is traveling together. This matters for two reasons. First, the roads around Jerusalem were dangerous. There were plenty of robbers and thieves, particularly during the Passover festival days. (Again, think of how many pickpockets are in Time’s Square and the surrounding areas on New Year’s Eve.) There would have been safety in numbers. This also may have set expectations for Jesus much later when his ministry began. The “default setting” for how travel worked may have been traveling in a group. Therefore, having a group of disciples to travel with may have been a source of comfort.
The second reason that the group matters is that it gives us some explanation other than pure negligence for how Jesus’ absence could have been missed. If it was just Joseph and Mary and Jesus (and maybe his younger siblings—he had them!) then the headcount would be easy and reflexive. If there is a large group, it is easy to have the consoling thought be “Oh…he’s around here somewhere!
We can contrast both of these things with Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt. They were traveling by themselves to a strange land. They would have been incredibly vulnerable. What if the government had refused their entry? What if the family had been separated at the border? At the same time, there would have been no way that Mary and Joseph might have casually not noticed that Jesus was missing. He was a baby, after all.
Maybe that’s the point, though. Jesus is growing up. He is becoming his own person. He has more freedom, as he should. He’s making his own decisions which, for a lot of twelve year old boys, means getting up to our eyeballs in mischief. (Not that I would have any idea what that would be like…) In fact, I think this is what Mary and Joseph must have assumed was going on. As soon as they realized Jesus wasn’t with the group, they must have assumed that he was up to no good—off playing with other kids, off gobbling up some food, off being a kid.
Mary and Joseph make their way all the way back to the city—the biggest city in the nation. There would have been no problem finding Jesus in their own small town. There were only so many places to hide. There was only so much mischief to be made. This was not true in Jerusalem. They searched high and low and could not find Jesus anywhere.
It wasn’t until after three days that they found him. Three days! Now, in and of itself, that would be a long time to be searching for your child. I think the longest I ever looked for one of mine was about a half an hour and that was pretty much the death of me. When you do find them, you can’t decide whether to hug them or to just lay them out on the spot: “What were you thinking? How could you do this to me? Didn’t you know that I would be beside myself here?”
Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the temple—of all places. What twelve year-old boy on a wild adventure heads to church? Even stranger, instead of playing pranks on people or causing some sort of mayhem or doing any of the other myriad of things a boy might do, Jesus is sitting and talking with the religious authorities. He’s asking them questions. They are asking him questions right back. The authorities are slack-jawed at the power of Jesus’ answers: “Who is this child? Where are these answers coming from?” All of this is mostly lost on the worried parents, though: “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety!” Jesus gives the obvious answer, “Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?” Or, in the words of every other kid who has been found, “I was right here the whole time!” Luke goes out of his way to tell us that the parents did not understand these words at all…
Maybe we can understand. Let’s roll back to the beginning of the text. I want you to hear this story as Luke’s way of foreshadowing the events at the end of Jesus’ life. He does this by telling us the story in reverse. What begins the end of Jesus’ life? Palm Sunday, when a large group of followers approaches the gates of Jerusalem at the beginning of the Passover Festival. Here, we have a large group of faithful people leaving from the gates of Jerusalem at the end of the Passover festival, making their way home.
At the end of the the final week of Jesus’ life, Jesus is missing and nowhere to be found. In fact, he is dead and buried. How long is he buried before believers start to meet the risen Christ? That’s right…three days, exactly how long it took Joseph and Mary to find the child.
At the heart of the events of Holy Week is a set of encounters with the religious authorities. They ask him questions. He gives them answers. He asks them a question or two. This time around, the adult Jesus is not nearly as charming as the child Jesus had been. This time, no one really understands his answers.
Finally, consider the last note of this childhood story. Mary asks Jesus, “How could you do this to us?” I think this had to be one of the enduring questions for Jesus’ family and friends from the moment that he, as an adult, left the safety and comfort of life in Nazareth. A good son would have stayed to take care of his parents as they grew older. A good, oldest son would have shared the load of raising his younger siblings. A good man in the village would have understood that everyone owed it to the whole community to contribute to the good of the whole. The fisherman fed the town. The carpenters kept things in repair. The shepherds made sure that folks were clothed. Sure, he was going to teach people to feed the hungry and clothe the naked but really…shouldn’t he have stayed in Nazareth and done that very work himself? Sure, he would teach people to honor their father and their mother but how was he doing that by running away from those responsibilities himself?
So, Luke shows us that Jesus was raised like a regular guy, that he was steeped in the Jewish tradition, that he was a small town guy. And yet, Luke’s message isn’t really completed until he adds this extra piece. Jesus was raised like everyone else but wasn’t like everyone else. He did the unexpected. He left people shaking their heads. He did things that no one ever taught him to do and offered answers that seemed to come from nowhere other than his own heart. He confused the religious authorities, his followers and his own parents. People asked themselves, “Who was that man?”
This, of course, is what happens when you are there to make all things new, when challenging the people around you is more important than being understood, when you seek to lead the people around you to live differently. The same authorities who were charmed by him as a child would feel mortally threatened by him as an adult. The same city (Jerusalem) that seemed to swallow him whole as a child, would be the scene of his death as an adult. Those who loved him as an adult would search just as hard for him for three days and would feel utterly wrung out with anxiety in the process. Ultimately, they too would be shocked to find the risen Jesus and utterly overwhelmed when he said to them, “I’m right here, just like I told you I would be!”