Where to Find Him

Luke 2:41-52

You’ll find that this sermon is a bit more casual (and shorter) than a typical Sunday sermon from me. This sermon was given to the people of Grace Massies Mill and St Mark’s Clifford via combined Zoom worship after some positive Covid-19 cases in our community led us to suspend in-person worship. Thanks to the Zoom platform, I used a visual aid which can be found here.

The episode in the Temple is one of a very few snapshots we receive into the childhood of Jesus. The few Biblical windows into the family life of Jesus always include his mother, and most of them are set in religious spaces. Luke tells us that Jesus’s family faithfully travelled to the Temple in Jerusalem for the Passover each year, like many of us faithfully travel to a homeplace or family landmark for Christmas or Easter or Thanksgiving. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus travelled with friends and relatives and neighbors, and the whole community was responsible for the care of the children among them. This is how Mary and Joseph are able to get an entire day’s journey away from the city before realizing Jesus is not with them. This is not a Home Alone-esque misplacement of the young boy Jesus on the part of his parents. At twelve years old, Jesus has reached the first of many dreaded moments in the life of parent and child. Jesus has a calling, and a will of his own, and has begun to make choices that differ from those of his parents. Perhaps there is a bit of mischief in it, perhaps a bit of defiance. Later in his life, in his adult ministry, Jesus will make much mischief, touching those others deem untouchable and sparring with demons and breaking rules to make a point. Perhaps this first defiance of his parents is the safe first steps toward defiance of Caesar, defiance of Pilate, defiance of Satan, defiance of death itself. This carefully preserved window into Jesus’s childhood in the Gospel of Luke is meant to show us the origin story of our hero, the ways that the swaddled babe became the roaring lion of our salvation.

And, it’s a pretty funny story. I am so grateful that Luke the Evangelist kept this episode when he was piecing together the sacred story of Jesus. It is a story that resonates with every parent who has ever lost sight of their little one at the playground, every sibling separated from their younger sibling when tasked with keeping an eye on them. Anyone who has ever been in the position of looking after another knows the gut wrenching feeling that they aren’t where they’re supposed to be. So too do we recognize the flood of relief and righteous anger when we find our loved one again. Most of us have been blessed to only live in this fear for a few seconds or minutes. Mary and Joseph looked for Jesus for three days before locating him inside the massive Temple. Mary’s words hit the nail on the head. Why have you treated us this way? We have been searching for you with great anxiety. Put another way- You scared me! What were you thinking? When they found him, Mary and Joseph were astonished, and they scolded him. Jesus replied back in what can only be described as sass. It might be easier to spiritualize his response as some sort of lofty speech coming from wisdom beyond his years. But I know too many preteens and teenagers to hear it that way. Mary scolds Jesus for scaring the living daylights out of her, and Jesus talks back with the self-assuredness of every 12 year old who has ever been caught doing something they hadn’t thought through. Did you not know where to find me? I’ve been right here this whole time!

This is a human story, a story of the intersection of divine calling and human relationship and the ways this collision can sometimes get messy. Jesus has perceived a calling to study the scriptures and sit among the teachers and elders of his family’s religion, and this calling has led him to behave in unexpected ways. The community around him is amazed by his answers and his understanding, and they too perceive some special wisdom and vocation within him. Mary and Joseph, in their vocation as parents, have raised him up in the faith of the covenant people, exposing him to the synagogue and the Temple and the scriptures that have formed him and those he will one day teach. Jesus sasses them about it, but he’s right that his choice to stay behind to study in the Temple is the logical conclusion of who he is, who they’ve raised him to be and who he is called to become. It may not look like they’d hoped, and their beloved child will one day face great danger because of who he is. The strong will, the sense of calling, even the back talk will one day define his ministry and culminate in his death. The human beings chosen to raise the Son of God do not always understand him, nor do they do everything exactly right. But what this story shows us is their faithfulness in trying, in treasuring every moment and misunderstanding as the gifts they are. They model for us the gift of growing up in faith, and the opportunities that come with the vocation of raising others in faith. For every misunderstanding and revelation, the people who know Jesus have an opportunity to grow in relationship with him. For every disagreement and frustration, there is an opening to ask questions and strive for deeper understanding. For every seeming failure of parenting or of mentorship or of community discernment, there is a chance to grow in wisdom. And for every moment or season when it seems we’ve lost sight of Jesus, for every time we look around and realize suddenly that something’s missing and for every day that we anxiously search, we ultimately will find him in the same place. Jesus can be found in God’s house, in the scriptures, in the hearts of those who treasure his words. He’s never really lost. We already know exactly where to find him.