Runaway Jesus?

J.J. Anthony

Year C • Sermon • Submitted 5 years ago

Luke 2:41–52

Father’s House

Young Jesus visits the temple

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Parents, I apologize in advance for the narrative I am about to set forth here, so keep that in mind before you revoke my license.

It’s a midsummer’s afternoon. You and your family, immediate and extended, are enjoying a day out on the lake. There’s food and fun and revelry abound, and the day is going off without a hitch. You are there for what seems like minutes, but hours later, the sun goes down, and you begin to pack up and head for home in a caravan of minivans and SUVs as night falls. You are three hours into your drive home and the caravan stops for gas and food just outside your hometown. As you file through the bathroom and fast food lines, it hits you like a ton of bricks:

One child did not make it into the caravan.

In a flurry of panic and emotion, you come to realize that you left your child out on the lake. You have this overwhelming dread wash over you, and try as you might, you cannot help but to have your mind start to wander:

Is she safe?

Is he scared?

Are they… you cannot bear to finish the thought, so you rush the caravan back toward the lake. Tiredness and hunger no longer exist, even the laws of the road seem to be suggestions for you and nothing more. Some of the family remain strong, providing comfort to the others who are inconsolable. Three hours in a car has never felt like a longer or shorter amount of time.

Let’s pause here for a second. I’m rather confident that, although I do not have a child of mine own, I can imagine the feelings and responses of some of you in this room. Feelings for which I’m not sure words even exist. Three hours in a car wondering where they are, how they’re doing. Now, take that dread and worry that exists for those three hours, and make it over a twenty-four hour journey by foot. Then, from there, remember that the child missing just happens to be the Son of God, God incarnate, who is supposedly destined to the small task of saving the world.

I’m not a gambling man, but I would bet that Mary and Joseph had better days than this one.

This is a unique story in our Bible. Of the four gospels in our New Testament, three of them are written with similar styles and timelines—Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Of those three, only two of them spend any time on a narrative of Jesus before John the Baptist—Matthew and Luke. Of those two, there is only one story where Jesus is presented as a child, not an infant. This is that story.

All of our Biblical gospel writers include nothing on the formative years of the life of God in human form, save for these twelve verses. Knowing what we know of the writing process in Ancient Israel, even twelve verses in a scroll can take time to write down, and takes up space on rather expensive parchment. So this story is, for the writer of the Gospel of Luke, not some trivial, fun anecdote that was tossed into the mix to add some narrative flair.

For the gospel writer, this text was of paramount importance in understanding the nature of Jesus as God on Earth, and the tensions that exist with Jesus being fully man and fully God.

Verse 41 beings “Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 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. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him.” (2:41-45)

Notice how Luke begins by portraying Jesus as a devout Jewish boy in a devout Jewish family. Every year, they make the trip to Jerusalem for Passover, which was estimated to be a five-day trek at this time in history, and that’s if the road was not flooded or obstructed. By the time he was twelve, Jesus was joining the family on this journey. They stayed the duration of the festival, and then began the five-day journey home. But not Jesus, for Jesus stayed behind, contrary to his parents’ knowledge.

As we read, we have to wrestle through the possibilities here. How on earth could this have happened? Mary and Joseph headed for Nazareth for a full day before noticing that their child, the child that the Magi said was to be “the Messiah, the Lord” earlier in Luke, chapter 2, was missing. Are we to blame Mary and Joseph and condemn them as bad parents? Given the church tradition that recalls Mary taking very seriously the idea of her son being the Messiah, I doubt very highly that Mary would be so flippant as to be at fault here. Or Joseph, for that matter; one can only imagine the scrutiny and pressure that Joseph was under, which we heard about on Christmas Eve in Nicole’s sermon—surely Joseph cannot be to blame here, either.

Nevertheless, there still demands an explanation to this event, which in our context, seems to be so shocking. How could Mary and Joseph been missing their twelve-year-old boy?

A similar question runs through your mind on that three-hour frantic car ride back to the lake. You have this overwhelming dread wash over you, and try as you might, you cannot help but to have your mind start to wander:

Is she safe?

Is he scared?

Are they… you cannot bear to finish the thought...

You finally arrive at the lake. Your 8-passenger van screams into a spot like a Formula 1 driver. You run out of the vehicle. Your feet seem to just glide across the ground. You get to the spot from earlier, and… The spot where your family had set up for the day is empty. You howl the child’s name into the dark expanse of the lake and surrounding wood, your voice carrying over the still water with no return call of “mommy” or “daddy.” You have no choice but to either search in the darkness or wait until daybreak a few hours away and sit with this dread and all of its emotion. Not content with waiting you set out into the wilderness under the cover of night, and after hiking for hours you come across a small cabin in the woods, the soft glow of a fire in a hearth illuminates the surrounding wood. You rush up to the door, burst in, and find your child, alive and well, talking to the owner of the cabin about politics and current events as if they planned a dinner months ago without you knowing.

The story continues in Luke in perhaps a similar fashion, in verse 46: “After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished...” (2:46-48a).

At this point, I think your theoretical response to finding your child in the cabin may or may not align with Mary’s response in the second part of verse 48—I know mine sure would—essentially, “Kid, whatta ya doin’ ta me?! Your father and I have been worried sick!” I can easily picture Mary here channeling a beloved character in my favorite TV show, The Office, who screams, “Boy, have you lost ya mind, ‘cuz I’ll help ya find it!” I know maybe I’m putting drama into places where there really isn’t any, and maybe that’s my fault, but I’m at the pulpit, not you, so I’m going to do it anyways.

We already ruled out the possibility that Mary and Joseph could be at fault, so maybe the fault was with Jesus? Perhaps Jesus was wrong for not telling his parents where he was going and sneaking off to the temple without them knowing? Well, given Jesus was without sin, I’m quite certain that this could not be the case, because that sounds like deceitful behavior, and that sounds a lot like transgression to me, which is simply a fancy word for breaking trust with someone. Since the trust between child and parent would certainly be damaged here by all other standards, transgression seems to not fit as the solution to blame.

Or maybe Jesus just got caught up in the affairs of the teachers in Jerusalem and absent-mindedly missed the caravan, so it was a mistake? His response to Mary’s scolding here could be as equally as shocking as Mary and Joseph discovering that he was missing. Verse 49 reads, “He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’”

It’s funny that my parents are here today of all days. I was quite a difficult child in my teens and preteens, something I’m sure my folks would strongly agree with. And so, having been a child that would make a remark that erred on the sarcastic side, I can tell you with certainty that if I had said what Jesus just said to Mary, I would either have a red set of cheeks or I would probably not see the world beyond my room for a few days, at least. My parents rarely used physical force to discipline me, but again, I might bet that this would qualify as a potential candidate for a good ol’ 90’s spanking.

And yet, as this fascinatingly weird encounter continues, what I would be expecting to happen does not. Jesus shows no signs of remorse at this chastisement by Mary. Jesus responds in a way that would get any kid—past, present, or future—in some serious trouble, but Mary does not punish here. In fact, we don’t get any solid resolution to this. The passage simply concludes, “But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” (2:50-52)

So the story ends and we are left in this tension. Who is to blame for this incident? Why is Jesus not wrong to do what he did here, when any other young girl or boy would be? Most importantly, why did the writer of the gospel find this story to be worth retelling? I can think of think of three reasons why this text would have been relevant to the writer of the gospel, as well as to us today.

Firstly, I think this brief and unique narrative points to both the divinity and humanity of Jesus, who was God in the flesh on earth, fully human and fully divine. There is a great tension at play within this text. Jesus is bound by his divinity to be in service at his Father’s house. A more appropriate translation here might be that boy Jesus, in his retort to Mary, implies that she should know his location because he “must be involved in my Father’s affairs.” Nowhere else does Luke record Jesus claiming the temple is his Father’s house, and Luke’s focus when discussing Christ’s ministry is not location but action.

Therefore, being involved in his Father’s affairs points to the theological conversations that are taking place in the temple; the text tells us that the crowd was amazed at his answers, which suggests that even at a young age, Jesus was teaching the teachers, a significant point of concern for the later, adulthood ministry of Jesus with the Pharisees.

On the other hand, Jesus is bound by his humanity to remain obedient to his parents and family. Luke does not undermine this here. If Luke was concerned only with Jesus as God then the reference to Jesus’ apparent submission at the end of the passage would most likely not have been mentioned.

Secondly, I think this story points to the importance of growth. Just before this passage, reads that Jesus “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” This is the transition given from infancy to adolescence. It is the same transition given in verse 52, when the writer transitions from adolescence to adulthood for Jesus. Jesus required growth in physical, mental, spiritual, intellectual ways. Had Jesus not been fully human, he surely would have simply appeared on the earth and began to work miracles. But for twelve years as an infant and toddler and boy, Jesus grew up, has this encounter in the temple, and then continues to grow up for eighteen more years until he was nearly thirty, and John the baptist baptizes Jesus, and the ministry begins.

In a culture swarming with instant gratification and two-minute news flashes, three-minute meals, and eight-minute abs, we have lost the concept of growth and patience, and by extension, grace and forgiveness are lost as well. If Jesus had to take nearly thirty years to be ready to fulfill his divine purpose as God on earth, why do we expect people to come to church and instantly be well-behaved and sinless and all put together? That is why I appreciate our Nazarene doctrine of sanctification. It signifies both a grace-filled moment where we have been granted freedom from the burden of sin so we can enter into a lifelong process of maturing and becoming more and more Christlike in our faith. It is not a ticket to sin, but the only way we have any hope of living out our faith in obedience to God.

And third, I think that this passage can point to something of importance when describing the relationship between a parent and a child. I don’t mean that children should just be able to run buck wild away from their parents, because “obviously the parents should know where the kid is.” Nor do I mean that every parent will be measured against the likes of Mary and Joseph. What I mean is that the relationship between a mother and her son, or a father and his daughter, is fragile, and it will continue to grow fragile as the kid grows up and begins to live into the calling that God has given on their life. There will even be moments of confusion and astonishment, as we find here. But, if you notice, Mary treasured all of these things in her heart, in verse 51. I don’t think she was thrilled with the way Jesus showcased his giftings, but Mary was still able to look beyond her frustration and confusion, and continue to try and support her son.

For us, this story in the season of Christmas can provide us with further connection with the humanity of Jesus, because this story is highly identifiable in many ways to common human emotions of fear, dread, anger, and even a little cheekiness. It can also connect us with the divinity of Jesus, because Jesus clearly demonstrates a vested interest in what is being taught at the temple—after all, the teachings are about him and his Father. It can connect us as parents with the sometime painful realization that, occasionally, God calls people down paths that could be uncomfortable for us and our families, and that will include our children as well.

In a season that celebrates God’s arrival to earth in the human of Jesus, let us also be aware that this text forces us to be weary of the tension that is Jesus being fully man and fully God. The tension seems to force us into a place where all we can do is try and respond to God’s will for our lives. A task that does not come easily, even for Mary and Joseph, parents to the Son of God himself.

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