First Sunday after Christmas, 12/30/2012

Sermon on Luke 2:41-52, by John E. Priest

Luke 2:41 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. 43 And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, 44 but supposing him to be in the group they went a day's journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, 45 and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching 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 And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress." 49 And he said to them, "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" 50 And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. 51 And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.
52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. (ESV)

Not Losing a Kid

Here's a good thing. You take your family down to the city to see the Christmas decorations. For good measure, you take a few of the neighbors' kids too. You get down there. You gaze at the tree in Rockerfeller Center. Other things too. You come back home. This is the good thing: you still have all the kids you left with. You didn't lose a single one. Because losing a kid in the crowded after-Christmas city - that would be a nightmare, no?

Some Significant Passovers

So Joseph and Mary went to the city and lost Jesus in the Passover crowd. Except Jesus wasn't exactly a kid - not any more. At the age of twelve, he was considered a man. Which made this Passover celebration a particularly significant one. Joseph and Mary had been taking him up to Jerusalem every year. This time, though, when they went to the temple, Jesus for the first time was able to accompany his guardian father Joseph out of the court of the women and children and into the court of Israel, where only the men could go. And maybe this time it was Jesus himself, who carried in his arms on behalf of his family the lamb for the Passover sacrifice.

The Passover lamb - you know what that was about? It goes back to when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. But God was going to get them out of there. So he decided to send an angel of death to slay the first-born of every Egyptian family. But he didn't want the angel to slay the first-born sons of the Israelites. So he told them to slaughter a lamb and paint some of its blood on their doorposts. That way, when the angel saw the blood, he would pass over their houses. Their eldest sons would be saved by the blood of the lamb.

All this took place to point ahead to the time when God would sacrifice his own only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, whom John the Baptist identified as the Lamb of God, who would by the shedding of his blood save us all from sin and death. And wouldn't it be a delicious irony then if Jesus himself, at the age of twelve, carried the Passover lamb in his arms and presented it to the priest for the slaughter?

We don't know if that happened of course. What we do know is that, at the Passover some twenty years later, less than a week before he was crucified, Jesus would enter the temple precincts again - this time with a whip, which he used to drive the animals for the sacrifices out of there. "No more of this," he was saying. His sacrifice would take the place of all that.

But that, as I said, was some twenty years hence. Jesus, at the age of twelve, we're told, instead took a special interest in those who were teaching in the temple and, when it was time to go back home to Nazareth, unbeknownst to his parents (this is how they lost him in the city), he stayed in Jerusalem to spend more time with the teachers. St. Luke tells us he listened to them and asked them questions.

Jesus' Questions

Jesus was very good at asking questions. Take for instance the time - and now we're back to the thirty-three year old Jesus - take for instance the time when Jesus asked the teachers in the temple a good one. "What do you think of the Messiah, the Christ? Whose son is he?" The teachers gave Jesus the standard answer. "The son of David," they said. At which point Jesus quoted Psalm 110, a Psalm of David, which says: "The Lord (that would be God) said to my Lord (that would be the Messiah, the Christ): ‘sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.'" And then Jesus asked another question to drive the point home: "if David calls him Lord, how is he his son?"

That one stumped the temple teachers. But Jesus' point was clear - that he (the Messiah, the Christ) had to be more than the son of David. Indeed that he was the Son of God.

Back to the Twelve-year-old Jesus

But back to the story at hand - the one about the twelve-year-old Jesus.

Once Joseph and Mary figured out they'd lost their son, they went back to Jerusalem and searched for him frantically for three whole days, at the end of which they found him in the temple, sitting amongst the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And when they saw him, they were astonished. Mary in her distress said to him: "Son (she called him ‘son'), what are you doing here?" And Jesus said: "Did you now know that I must be in my Father's house?"

And there you have it again. Jesus calls the temple, which is God's house, his Father's house. Which would make God his Father and he his Son. Which of course is who he was. And if you've been following the Christmas story from the very start, that will come as no surprise to you, that Jesus is God's Son.

But still there is a surprise here. The surprise in the story is that Joseph and Mary didn't get it. As Luke puts it: "they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them."

Now here's a question for you. Who could have possibly been in a better position to understand this than Joseph and Mary? They knew the extraordinary circumstances of Jesus' birth, not the least of which was that Mary was a virgin when she conceived him by the power of the Holy Spirit. They'd heard the messages of angels, shepherds, wise men and prophets about who Jesus really was, that he was the Son of God. But now they don't get it?

When We Lose Perspective

But you know what? It's easy to lose perspective on things like this after you've changed hundreds of diapers and watched your baby crawl, then take his first faltering steps. After you've schooled him in his aleph, beth, gimels (the Hebrew equivalents of our a b c's), and chuckled over his first feeble attempts to make something with hammer and saw in the carpenter's shop, who else could Jesus be but your son? Your son - not God's. Twelve years had gone by since Jesus was born. And things weren't as crystal clear as once they were.

We know how it feels. The eyes of faith can grow dim. The vision of faith gets blurred. As time goes by our faith is tested and tried. Life gets the better of us. And it can be easy - oh, so easy - to lose your grip on God. We look around us and can't help but notice that there's not a whole lot of that peace on earth and good will amongst men the Christmas angels sang about. Families fall apart. People we love get sick. They die. And things don't seem as crystal clear as once they were.

And what do you do when it happens to you? What do you do?

Finding Him in His Father's House

Well - like Joseph and Mary, you can find Jesus when you've lost him. And where? Where is he? In the same place Joseph and Mary found him: his Father's house.

For us, his Father's house is here - this place. Not because this building is special, even though it ought to be for us. Not even because the people who come here are special, even though they are. No - we can find Jesus here because of his promise to be here for us.

We find him here by listening to his Word, by paying attention to what he has to say to us through the Holy Scriptures, through the words of his preachers, and through the Holy Sacraments. We should learn this lesson well! When we're losing our grip on Jesus and on our Christian faith, this is the place to come.

When Jesus was twelve years old, he astonished the teachers in the temple. We should be no less astonished today.

Does it not absolutely astonish you that Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem - for you? Is it not even more astonishing that this same Jesus died - for you? And is not the most astonishing thing of all that he is risen from the dead and lives even now - for you? This is true. It's wisdom from above. And by the grace of God and the power of his Holy Spirit, you can believe it, that he is your Savior and your Lord.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Rev. John E. Priest
Delhi, New York
E-Mail: jpriest2@stny.rr.com

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