Introduction to the Reading: Luke 2:41-52

As you hear these concluding verses of chapter two in Luke’s Gospel….beware: you may experience a twinge of spiritual whiplash… After all, Jim’s preaching recently has moved us along through Jesus’ birth, his baptism as a young man, and last week… his gathering of disciples. So, why look back? Why read TODAY the only story recorded in the Bible of Jesus’ youth?   Well…it seems….Before his parents – or maybe we - are ready to have this boy Jesus leave the nest of the manger and the safety of his family and growing-up surroundings, he leaves. ‘Goes ahead of us, engaging an ever expanding circle of people world, working his agenda.   Later, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus will do expand his reach further, beyond the house of Israel, offering the Good News of God’s embrace to all within the sound of his voice. Curious about his agenda, we step back, today, into this story, “yes,” because it’s a window into Jesus’ youth, but also it instructs us, guides our gaze to where God may be found…

As you listen, ask yourself: With which character(s) do I identify? And, standing in the shadow that character, what catches your eye? What subtly suggests or hints at the nature of Jesus’ agenda? Listen for God’s word in these words.

Reading: 41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 

43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, (Show Lieberman painting) …but his parents did not know it. 44 Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers

48 When his parents saw him they were astonished; (Show Hunt painting)   and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” 49 He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he said to them. 51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.

52        And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

Here ends this reading… may this be God’s Living Word for us this day!

Sermon: … Look a moment more at nineteenth century artist William Holman Hunt’s work. The detail of temple life is wonderful, BUT!! …any parent, who has lost track of a child at the mall or the park, if even for a moment, has lived this story and knows something of what Mary and Joseph might have felt!   And this isn’t it!!

Scholars and commentators agree this single canonical story of Jesus’ childhood is nothing if not subtle and understated. There are no miracles, no prophecies fulfilled or special revelations. Hunt captures that BUT!,, yikes….His portrayal of Mary and Joseph is NOT believable!  They’re not even dusty or untidy or out-of-breath or irrational… which is how I’d be in their situation!! (close down image)   Just contemplating the loss of a child, any child, raises my anxiety level.   Probably yours too!

The contemporary writer Annie Lamott in her book Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (Riverhead, 2005) takes a rather offbeat look at this story from Luke. Mind you, she examines this story just after she’d had a terrible argument with her 13-year-old son, Sam. On that occasion, she had asked a minister friend for some parenting advice. Lamott’s friend quipped, (and remember he was kidding.)  “In biblical times, they used to stone a few 13-year-olds with some regularity, which helped keep the others quiet and at home. The mothers were usually in the first row of stone throwers, and had to be restrained.” He was Kidding of course, but, this leads Lamott to muse on how Mary coped when Jesus was 13: “Here’s what I think, Annie writes, “ She occasionally started to gather rocks.” (pause) 

Lamott isn’t being sacrilegious. She has every respect for Mary as a mother and as a person; she IS though, being incarnational.   Some would call it: “in-your-face-real.”  If we really believe in the Incarnation, this doctrine of Jesus becoming fully human, we have to admit that Jesus was an adolescent once. Speaking as a mother of an adolescent, Lamott recalls how young people of a certain age can present a  REAL---LY different picture to their parents than they do to other adults. Sometimes those other adults have no conception how that polite, well-spoken child could be such a trial to his/her parents. In Lamott’s own words, she asks, “…at the same time Jesus is blowing the elders away, how is Jesus treating his parents? I’ll tell you. He’s making them crazy. They can’t find him for three days. Some of you know what it’s like not to find your kid for three hours. You die. Mary and Joseph have looked everywhere, in the market, at the video arcade. Finally they find him, in the last place they thought to look – at the temple. And immediately, he mouths off, “O, sorry, sorry!! I was busy doing all this other stuff…my Father’s work. Like Joseph, you’re not my real father – you’re not the boss of me. I don’t even have to listen to you.” (pause) And what’s Mary doing this whole time?” LaMott concludes, “Mary’s got a rock in her hand”

But…she doesn’t release that rock or, we’re told, the metaphoric “rock” of her ponderings. She holds on to it…like it were “God, my rock and my redeemer” treasuring…“these things  concerning Jesus in her heart. One wonders, because of the description of this “treasuring” if, as some scholars suggest,  Mary might not have been the source of this story.  

I find it strangely comforting that Mary and Joseph, the earthly parents of our incarnate God, could have lost Jesus in the first place. I realize theirs wasn’t a nuclear family, and that they had good reason for assuming Jesus was among the caravan headed north to Nazareth. We have every reason, as well, to believe they were diligent parents who loved their son…who accidently got missed in the round up before leaving the busy metropolis of Jerusalem. Children, after all, have a knack for disappearing in the blink of an eye.  All a caretaker has to do is pre-occupied with something as small as signing one’s name or large that takes over every waking minute, or even averagely, daily busyness. Without knowing it, Christ slips out, gets left out, only to become missing from our lives…though that was never our intent.     

Indeed, like Joseph and Mary after some distance we realize what is missing. I’ve heard people, as they contemplate or start attending church describe the impetus this way, “it’s just that something’s been missing in my life;” Jesus’ parents’ experience here is instructive…it offers us a useful paradigm for living, intending to be with Christ, but often missing Christ. They literally and perhaps intuitively after a day’s journey sensed Jesus missing from their lives. They change their direction…Repent ….return, seeking Jesus everywhere and ultimately in the temple within the community of faith. Reunited they don’t stay there, but Christ stays…dwells…with them as they go on into the world and lives.   Psychiatrist Gerald May wrote, “I am convinced that all human being have an inborn desire for [the Other, call it “God”]…This desire IS our deepest longing and our most precious treasure.” Could the treasure May refers to be for us like the treasured son of Mary and Joseph was to them?

And during the family’s journey home, we aren’t told if Mary brings up Jesus’ unusual remark to her, there in the temple? Likely she did not…, but it has to have been uppermost in her consciousness. It was not lost on her that this is the first time (Craddock Interpretations.)Jesus had spoken himself of his special agenda or mission. Prior to this, “all signs of Jesus’ special nature or mission were announced through others: the angel, Mary, Elizabeth, Zechariah, shepherds, Simeon and Anna.   Here Jesus says:  I must be in my Father’s house.” Or elsewhere translated: “…about my Father’s business or affairs”, or “among those belonging to my Father, “or, “dealing with the things of my Father”.  However it is translated, what is clear is: As important as filial loyalty is, Jesus considered his loyalty (and hence agenda) to be engaged in the work of God.” (Outlook)

So, where is this work?  Where are the people God works with? 

The Bible is full of hints that announce: for Love’s sake, God engages in the world! Among the people of Milwaukee searching for jobs, shelter, food? In your and my life. With those whose faith tradition is expressed differently. In the suffering and rebuilding efforts in Haiti. 

And, every year when the Annual Report of the church comes out, there are seen a myriad sightings of Jesus! The activities and programs lifted up tell of times and places where the good news of God’s love, justice and hope have been experienced, where Jesus was found. I read less of one Mission committee doing all this and more that God has a mission in the world and uses this and every church to help bring it into fullness. 

You’re part of this … so am I… so are the children in the Sunday school, so are all the places in the community we work in and for. And the story of Jesus’ parents’ realizing Jesus is missing and going in search of him is really our story….as a church. I wonder it’s not also the leitmotif of Luke’s Gospel, this business of  losing, searching and finding or being found: Think about it: Parables of the prodigal son, the lost coin and the pearl of great price, stories of losing sight and being healed, losing life and life being restored….Well, that’s another sermon…It’s as if Mary and Joseph, discovering they are far from the love of their life, re-turn and find. And we, feeling off course, reset our spiritual GPS for the way of being God’s ambassadors . To do that, as we heard in Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, we clothed in Christ-like compassion, kindness, love, humility and patience. We try to wear this clothing well. We attempt to be guided by that spiritual GPS directs us….but along the way “stuff happens”. That’s what happened to Mary and Joseph. They/we get off the track or get absorbed in stuff, wander deeper into our own agenda, get mired in the everyday busyness of getting along.   Sometimes it is a while before the GPS-voice penetrates your living, saying:  “Off course, recalculating….

Jesus is missing!”     Yet, the wonder of God’s love for us is that the Spirit, the small voice…like that of the GPS helps us re-turn, until we are reconciled through Christ with God. God loves us because of who God is and not because of anything you or I did or didn’t do. And our soiled traveling clothes of the journey get shed, are washed clean and we are clothed afresh by God’s welcome, grace and love.

As this goes for individuals, so also it goes for a gathered people as the body of Christ. Our programs, building, our presence at town meetings, our worship and everything we do transmits  messages, like clothes do. And the message we intend is of the good news we experience through Christ and in Christ.  The officers that we elect, ordain and install help us – and we them - to set our collective corporate spiritual GPS as we together travel guided by and for the sake of God’s mission in our world. This is a wonderful enterprise to be part of!   To the Glory of God…..