The Boy, Jesus
The Boy, Jesus
Luke 2:41-52
What I’ve challenged us all to do for a long time now is to listen to an ancient text and ask ourselves, “What is the human connection to this story? When in my own experience have I spent time in the same “zip code” of human life?” I believe that no matter when you lived or where you lived, there are common experiences that define what it means to be a human being. Those common experiences allow us to talk to one another across the centuries. Just like meeting someone today from a different culture can shed new light on our own, when we connect with someone from another time, we are invited to shed new light on our lives.
For anyone who is a parent, there is a giant invitation before us today to connect with Joseph and Mary as our fellow parents. Luke goes out of his way to tell us first of all that Mary and Joseph go every year to the Passover festival in Jerusalem. Now, they are heading home after enjoying the festival again.
As parents, we can stop there and make our first connection. One of the awesome opportunities of being a parent is that we get to decide what the things will be that “we always do.” There will be daily practices: how we share a meal; how we greet each other; how we begin a day and how we end a day. I remember how shocked one of our girl’s friends was when they came to our house for dinner and we all sat together at the table and talked to each other. Apparently, her family didn’t talk. They just ate. I remember when I went to my Italian friend’s house and he and his father kissed each other when he walked in the house. What? There are also the things we do every week or every year. Think of the specifics of a Lake Bluff Fourth of July.
When we make the choices that are ours to make, we create structure for our family. Everyone knows that vacation is out there because it’s always out there to look forward to and this is how and where and why we go where we go on vacation. Some of those rituals may even be us doing the very things that we always did when we were growing up. Some of those rituals may be things we just invented out of thin air. Some of those rituals may be grounded is our most core values. Whatever the source is, our rituals not only comfort us. They define our identity, too.
By telling us that Joseph and Mary went to Jerusalem every year for the Passover festival, Luke is telling us that they were a religious family. They practiced their faith. That faith was built into the fabric of their lives so deeply that every year they made the real sacrifice to go to Jerusalem. They could have stayed home but that’s not who they were. They made the journey—the pilgrimage. They walked with their friends and their friends’ children. There was safety in traveling as a group but there was also some fun and some good convesation. All of those things were a part of who they were.
It’s a part of who Jesus was, too. This built in experience of walking to Jerusalem with people who mattered to him would, in one sense, define the ministry that was years away from beginning. One day, he would take a three year, meandering journey toward Jersusalem, picking up disciples and followers as he went, talking and having a little fun along the way. The whole way, his eyes would be on Jerusalem, the seat of religious and political power. And, not so surprisingly, he would arrive just in time for the Passover festival, just like he did when he was a kid.
Going to Jerusalem for the Passover festival wasn’t some crazy idea that Joseph and Mary dreamed up. Lots of people would have made that trek. Most people, though, if they lived at a distance, might have made the trek once. The roads could be dangerous. It was expensive to travel and stay somewhere and buy food. Everyone who read Luke’s gospel probably would have made this journey once. The idea, though, that they went every year would have made an impression. These people must have been committed, again, sort of like Jesus must have been committed later to take this long journey and face what awaited him in Jerusalem. Luke is whispering with foreshadowing here.
Luke tells us that the Passover festival is actually over in our text. Joseph and Mary are on their way home. Jerusalem acted sort of like a big pair of lungs during this time, inhaling thousands of pilgrims as the festival began and exhaling all of those people back into the countryside. Folks would have been tired and basking in the afterglow of the festival—the crowds, the music, the food—such a different experience that the rest of the year at home in Nazareth.
In a second moment we can all connect with, Joseph and Mary are totally comfortable traveling with their friends. Undoubtedly, they are reviewing all the things that they saw and heard in Jerusalem. They are lost in conversation. All the while, they know that Jesus is “around here somewhere.” He’s talking to his friends. He’s playing along the road. He’s having his own good time. He’s being a kid.
What Joseph and Mary are guilty of doing is letting their guard down and relaxing and enjoying the moment. We’ve all been there and done that and there is something wonderful about relaxing like that. Everything is fine. In fact, life is the way it should be. All is right in the world. Until the thought rises, “Maybe everything is not alright. Have you seen Jesus around here anywhere?” Anxiety starts to give way to frustration which gives way to panic: “Has anyone seen my son?”
Is there anything worse than finally relaxing, finally feeling like, “Oh, I can just lean into this moment and have some fun,” only to have something terrible come your way? “I thought everything was fine. I let me guard down. Then, life hit me with a straight right jab to the jaw.” Is there anything worse than the feeling that you’ve lost your child? We all know what it’s like to feel that rush of worry. We all know how easy it is to turn our own feeling of negligence (“I should have been watching. Why wasn’t I paying attention?”) into anger at our child: “When I find him, I’m going to ground him for a year!” The rollercoaster of intense emotions is just amazing!
Jesus was missing for three days. Let me repeat that: Jesus was missing for three days. At one level, that out to draw a huge amount of empathy and horror from all the parents in the room. I think the longest that I ever had a lost kid was maybe 12 minutes…and it was the longest twelve minutes of my life. Imgagine what it must have been like for Mary and Joseph, one day’s travel back to Jerusalem, two days, looking high and low around the city, asking strangers if they’d seen him, watching the tinge of judgement in the strangers eyes as they clearly thought to themselves, “What kind of parent loses a child?”
The empathy just as fellow parents that we feel for Joseph and Mary as they search run’s deep. However, our stomachs drop when we realize what Luke is also implying. Jesus is missing for three days. What his readers would have known in their hearts was that Luke was foreshadowing another time when Jesus would be missing for three days. He would be crucified and dead and buried. It wouldn’t be until the third day when he would—shockingly, of all things—be seen again. He would be lost and then be found again.
We miss something, though, if we don’t fully see what Luke is inviting us to see. When Jesus was an adult and he was crucified and died, imagine what his parents felt. They thought everything was fine. Then, they lost their son. Imagine how absolutely gutted they must have been. This time, their beloved son was dead.
Of course, Mary and Joseph do find their twelve-year-old son, in the temple of all places, talking to the religious authorities of all things. Pause, though, and think about your children at 12 years old. They have moved into that “in-between” age. They are still a child but no longer a child, all at the same time. They are just beginning to become their own self and make their own choices. And we, as parents, both delight and mourn that moment. We know that they need to grow up but we loved the simple self who they were as a child.
Of course, when we hear the kind of things they say to us as they are becoming their own self, we snap out of the reverie for the good old days. We look them in the eye and, with a look that could kill, we ask, “What did you just say?” In Jesus’ case, Joseph and Mary find him and cry out in exasperation, “Didn’t you know that we would be looking for you?” Jesus just looks them in the eye and says, “Didn’t you know that I would be right here in my father’s house?” Bascially, Jesus sees their worry and responds with one big, “Duh,” which ought to be consolation for every one of us who have heard things come out of our children’s mouths and found ourselves slackjawed and asking, “What did you just say?”
To give twelve year old Jesus the benefit of the doubt, what he’s really saying in the best read is, “If you know me—really know me—then you have to know that this is where I would be. Where else would I be but right here in this sacred place, doing the most sacred thing that I can imagine doing, talking about God and about life with the experts on God and life.” That’s the thing. Twelve year old Jesus is not only asking all the religious people at the temple some amazing questions, he’s also offering some answers of his own. He’s wowing the crowd: “This kid’s a prodigy.”
Of course, the key part of that statement is, “this kid.” Kid’s are cute, especially if they are not your own kid and they have not been missing for three days. A kid who is curious about the things that you care about is really grattifying. What English teacher hasn’t loved the student who got really revved up about that week’s book. They care! How lovely is that? No one ever really sits with an excited and passionate 12 year old and thinks, “Wow…those ideas could be dangerous. This kid could be a threat.” No…you just take it in and enjoy the moment and think, “Maybe the world will be okay, after all.
Of course, this delight will not hold. There will come a day when the religious authorities and Jesus engage in another conversation, one in which the authorities are no longer content to marvel at his answers, one in which they clearly are threatened by him now that he’s a man. They are asking Jesus questions to trip him up, to catch him violating the law. Then, he can be arrested. Then, they can get rid of him once and for all. Still, this moment with the twelve year old Jesus has to make us wonder at the friction, the tension, the vengeance that he would one day receive.
Interestingly, here’s what wasn’t there, even when Jesus was twelve. What adult sits and talks for a couple of days with a child and doesn’t ask, “By the way, where’s your family? Should we help you find them? Can we help you let them know that you’re okay?” Those “authorities” at the temple had to be some clueless, careless adults. Those have to be adults who have lost the sense that faith, in the end, isn’t about having a good discussion. Faith is about caring for our fellow human beings.
The moment passed. Eventually, the memory was all but forgotten. Jesus went back to Nazareth and grew up.