Luke 2:41-52
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Merry Christmas, on this First Sunday after Christmas.
The Bible gives us just one and only one glimpse into the life of Jesus the boy and to tell the truth people often argue about the meaning of this one story. These questions arise: What is the story’s significance? Why had Jesus not gone with his parents, in the first instance, when his family was leaving for home? Was Jesus breaking the 4th commandment (Honor your father and your mother)? Had he really spent 3 or 4 days in discussion with the teachers in the Temple? Did he sleep, eat, and go to the bathroom during that time? What was it about Jesus that made these teachers so amazed? Was Jesus teaching them or just showing an understanding of what they were saying? Was this event, Jesus’ bar mitzvah? Why hadn’t the adults sent Jesus away after a reasonable time? Why hadn’t they sought after his parents? Unfortunately, we are not given the answers to any of these questions, but what this story does, is give us a reason to think, to explore the life of Jesus, to try to understand just who this Jesus was and what his life must have been like.
There are seven youth in my confirmation class; all of them are around the same age as was Jesus in this story. They are all intelligent and willing to openly express their ideas and yet an hour-long class with me is about all they really want to deal with. That tells me something; Jesus was not just your ordinary, run of the mill, all be it, intelligent youth. And remember Jesus wasn’t there because his parents made him go; in fact, they had no idea where he was. Jesus was an intense 12-year-old. As a kid, I liked asking questions and I could discuss most any issue for hours, but four days, that was way beyond my ability and interest. And as a kid I might have come up with some good questions, now and then, but not of the kind that would keep a group of adults and most of them rabbis (teachers) involved enough to sit with me in discussion for four days. And truth be told, no one seemed amazed by the best of my insights. What we see here (in our Gospel reading) is a 12-year-old young man who was indeed very special, in all the best ways. Speaking now as a pastor, I would love to have been there, as one of the adults, to listen to young Jesus’ insights and experience the discussion (Cathy will tell you I love a good, even a bad discussion). Discussion if it includes good information and creative thought is a wonder to enjoy, but very few people are usually willing to take part in such discussions.
What else do we learn about Jesus? Jesus, very much, understood the Temple, as his Father’s house, both in the theological sense and the familiar sense. There seems to have been an understanding in Jesus of God as his father, in addition to his understanding of God as Israel’s Creator and so Father. And maybe that helps us with the question of whether or not Jesus was breaking the fourth Commandment. While seemingly transgressing his obligation to honor his human father and mother, Joseph and Mary, he was honoring his heavenly Father, by his devotion to the Scriptures and to the Law of God, evident by his discussions with the teachers. His was a unique situation, and it must have been a constant challenge for Jesus to honor Mary and Joseph while also honoring God his Father. Unique, since Jesus was in every way God’s Son, which means, in ways that none of us are, but not so unique in that we are, all of us, called upon to put the Lord our God above, even our parents. Our Heavenly Father’s will, is supposed to supersede our earthly father and mother’s wills. There are times in many of our lives when God’s will, puts us in conflict with our parent’s and even our public officials demands; Luther, for example, disobeyed his earthly father in order to enter the monastery and later disobeyed the public officials and the church leadership in order to proclaim the love of God in Jesus Christ; Dietrich Bonhoeffer disobeyed and resisted the authority of Hitler in order to follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ; there are many examples in history of those who put God and their love of Christ above parents and governments and there will be many more.
And there is this: in our story, Jesus was by his actions and by his wisdom proving himself to be a man; he was certainly standing toe-to-toe with the teachers and earning their respect. (So) Maybe this was Jesus’ bar Mitzvah (officially or maybe unofficially)! An interesting possibility. And if those teachers were anything like me, they were inspired by this interaction and enjoyed it. It sounds like they may have come to the point, where they stopped thinking of Jesus as a boy, and began accepting him as a man.
One of the most interesting things about this story for me is verse 51: “Then he went down with them (Mary and Joseph) and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.” It is obvious that Jesus understood that his place was in his Heavenly Father’s house, but he did not put up a fuss, he simply went along with them, as an obedient son. Tradition tells us that he learned the trade of his father, but as with tradition, and as a good student of his faith, he would have also kept up his studies with the local rabbi. At age 12, it was (just) not yet Jesus’ time; it was not the time for him to go off on his own, to leave his rabbi and gather his own disciples for him to teach. More important Jesus’ ministry needed to wait for John, son of Zechariah, John who would be known as John the Baptist to prepare his way.
Jesus the boy, must have been an extraordinary boy, a challenge and a joy for those who taught him, but otherwise just a boy. He likely would not have stood out in a crowd; look at it this way, Mary and Joseph traveled three days and no one noticed that Jesus was not among the other family members traveling to Nazareth. Nothing more is said about Jesus the boy, but this one story has taught us a lot.