Luke 2:41-52
I’ve always loved this story from Luke. This episode in Jerusalem is the only glimpse we get into what an adventure it must have been to raise God’s son. I’ve never been one for the poetic and artistic depictions of Jesus as a child who never cried, who was quiet and obedient and easily governed. The adult Jesus was a disrupter, a debater, someone who enjoyed a good dinner party and an inconvenient nap and a touch of sarcasm. It is hard for me to imagine that such a man would have been anything like the sugary sweet images of the child Jesus sitting demurely with his eyes downcast and his hands in his lap. I bet he fidgeted. I bet he wiggled and chattered and asked questions in the kind of whisper that carries through the whole synagogue during the rabbi’s sermon. I bet Jesus talked back more often than he didn’t, and I bet Mary and Joseph got exasperated with him like any parent who loves a strong-willed child. I can only imagine what he must have been like as a student in Torah class. Was he a know-it-all? Did he push back on every other word from the rabbi’s mouth? Did he get into trouble for reading ahead under the desk instead of listening to the lessons like I did when I was in school? Reflecting on today’s passage from the Gospel of Luke, I like to think Jesus kept his parents and his teachers on their toes.
We learn a few pretty important things about the Holy Family from this short vignette. First, we learn that Mary and Joseph kept time holy by making an annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. Just like many of us have just returned from annual pilgrimages to see family and friends for the feast of Christmas, or have just begun to recover from being the destination of the pilgrimages of others, the Holy Family disrupted their day to day for the holidays. They packed up their children, their essentials, and joined in the caravan from their small town to the big city. These caravans would be full of people, both relatives and neighbors, who looked out for one another and for the children weaving in and out of the throng. The Holy Family were part of a larger community that took care of each other and trusted each other and shared a common language, culture, and faith. Jesus grew up as part of a tight knit church family where he felt safe to be himself, and that sense of safety apparently extended to the Temple.
The twelve-year-old Jesus was missing from his parents for three days, surely three long and terrifying days for Mary and Joseph. The first day, they assumed he was somewhere among his relatives and friends, further evidence of the trust and communal care in which he was raised. The second day, they rushed back into town and searched high and low. On the third day they found him, a strange whisper of foreshadowing for the three days his loved ones will grieve for him before encountering the resurrected Christ. And of course they find him in the last place they look, in the Temple among the teachers, listening and asking questions like any inquisitive student. His reaction to his poor mother’s anxiety and frustration is the most pre-teen thing I can imagine. “What’s the big deal? I’m right here!”
This response doesn’t sit well with the image of Jesus as a perfectly obedient, easy-to-get-along-with, Precious Moments child. That child doesn’t make trouble, or stress anyone out, or do anything strange or mysterious. From what we know about the adult Jesus will become, it is pretty clear that he is not that child. Jesus at 12 years old had already begun to redefine family, had already begun engaging with and questioning the religious establishment. He already had different priorities than the adults in his life, and struggled with being misunderstood by his family and community. In short, he was a normal teenager, testing boundaries and growing into himself. We’ve probably all known a young person like that or maybe we’ve been a young person like that. Perhaps we’ve been in Mary’s position, parenting a young person like that the best we know how even when it’s hard.
Jesus eventually went home with Mary and Joseph, perhaps a little rankled and mopey from being misunderstood. Mary and Joseph likely spent some of the journey processing their fear, their worries, fretting over this boy whose childhood they desperately wanted to extend for as long as they could. Perhaps by the time they got home, Jesus gave his mother a real apology, and they all agreed to do better next time. As she so often did, Mary treasured and pondered and mulled over everything that happened in the secret place in her heart reserved for the dangerous truth of who her son was meant to be. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor. An entire childhood and adolescence summed up in a few words, which are followed by a time-jump straight into the young adulthood of John the Baptist. All that we know of the upbringing of Jesus ends here, and we all know what comes next.
So why does this story matter? Why does Luke take the time to record it, why does the lectionary offer it for our consideration when it seems to be nothing more than a filler episode between the tender miracle of the nativity and the harsh words of John?
Because it is a Christmas story.
The rest of the world is finished with Christmas for another year. Trees are back in the attic or piled up at the curb. Presents have been unwrapped and many families are hurrying to get their lights taken down before the HOA has something to say about it. The CVS near my house has completely turned over from red and green to Valentine pink, with all the leftover Christmas candy covered in sale stickers. But, whether anyone out there wants to acknowledge it or not, today is the twelfth day of Christmas. Today is another opportunity to celebrate the coming of the Christ child, God With Us. Tired though we may be, moved on though the world is, for at least an hour today we consider the miracle of the incarnation. We gave the baby his due. Now we linger with the twelve year old.
This is a Christmas story because it reveals to us the divine humanity of Jesus. We see the family and faith traditions, the dynamics between parents and their child, the delicate balance of safety and independence in childhood and adolescence, the first stirrings of a revolutionary spirit finding solace in the house of God. We see a young person trying to understand the world around him, and two adults trying to understand the person they’re raising. This is an incredibly human story, an incarnate embodied Immanuel story. This story reminds us that God did not simply come to be with us in the sweetness of the swaddled infant but also in the messiness and anxiety of parenting and being parented, the frustrating and exhilarating adventure of growing up, the pimples and the back talk and the missed opportunities. God did not skip any of it, did not ignore any small or strange or ordinary part of human existence, because all of it matters to God. All of us, all of what we are and what we hope to become matters to God. That is the true meaning of Christmas.
Mother A Writes 