"This Child Is Different" (Luke 2:41-52)

"This Child Is Different" (Luke 2:41-52)
Preached 12/30/2018 by Sam Locke at St. Peter’s United Church of Christ (Carmel, IN)

Audio File

The Boy Jesus in the Temple

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, 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; 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.

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I was on vacation a couple of summers ago with my kids in Florida. It was a rainy afternoon, so instead of spending the day by the pool or beach we went out and took in some of the indoor activities in the area. On our way back, we stopped at one of those trinket-loaded souvenir shops you might find in any vacation town. It wasn’t super big, but big enough and, with rack after rack of t-shirts and other things you just have to have but really don’t need, it was a place easy to get lost in. And that is exactly what happened. You can picture the scene - little kids running around everywhere, “Daddy, can I have this?” “Mommy, I want that.” Amid the shuffle I looked down, and my son Spencer wasn’t there anymore. I didn’t worry about it at first, he was probably nearby deciding the next thing he just had to have. But a few seconds passed - seconds that felt like minutes -  and he still wasn’t there. I wasn’t too worried but started to look around with a little more swiftness in my step. The panic grew inside of me every couple of seconds until I was finally met by a crying four year old. Intellectually, there was likely never any real danger, the entire scene unfolded in less than 5 minutes. But within this short amount of time, so many emotions were felt - the pain and panic of fear, images of worst-case scenario running through my head, the joy of being reunited and, with those outstretched little hands, feeling needed and being reminded as to a purpose I have in life. I felt guilt for having let him get out of my sight. I felt judged by another parent giving me that side-eye glare that says, “I’m better at this than you.” I felt angry - “You wouldn’t be crying if you had just listened to me in the first place.” But mostly, I felt relief and I felt love - for the ability to be a family and to simply move forward.

Unless that other parent giving me the side eye was right, I suspect many of you have been in similar situations at some point or another. Our passage today puts Mary and Joseph in such a scenario. Again, my story unfolded from start to finish in under five minutes. The narrative we get from Luke unfolds over three days. Imagine the feelings Mary and Joseph must have had. At first, no big deal, they were traveling in a group, Jesus is just probably with another family or playing with some of his friends, no cause for concern. But then a few minutes turn into hours and then days and still, this almost teenager is nowhere to be found. They probably were mad for awhile and then panicked, and then became frantic. They probably blamed themselves. With the voices of angels still engraved on their hearts the may have thought, “This was a big deal, and we’re messing it up.” Imagine a kid in our congregation missing for three days today - we’d have search teams, the police would be involved, there would be facebook pages and maybe even a reward. Read from the perspective of Mary and Joseph, this is a scary, scary story.

Like any good parents, Mary and Joseph don’t give up. They keep looking and eventually they find Jesus - at church. Now, being pastors-kids in training, my kids like church more than average I suspect but, if they went missing, St. Peter’s would not be the first place I looked. Nor the second. Not even the third. Not only has Jesus gone missing to hang out in church, he is there as though it should have been assumed, learning and teaching as though it were another week in Sunday school. Oblivious in a way only a twelve year old can be, Jesus is simply unconcerned with the range of emotions Mary and Joseph just want through because of him. With all of this in focus, Mary’s reaction seems rather measured from my perspective. She says “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” I suspect Luke cleaned this up a bit. I could forgive Mary had she used some more colorful language in expressing her anger and frustration toward this pubescent Messiah. And, Jesus, if you can believe it, has the teenage guts to say back to her, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Mary and Joseph, like I suspect I may have been, were left speechless. They had no idea what Jesus was talking about.

We have the benefit of two thousand years of backstory. We know what this child is going to do. We know what he is going to stand for. We know about the healings and the miracles. None of this made sense at the time. Except the extraordinary events surrounding his birth, Jesus is not yet the great teacher we know him as today. Mary and Joseph are just discovering that this child really is different from the others. I mean, he wants to hang out at church. At this point in time, Jesus is just a child that doesn’t know his place.

Or does he? After all, this child is God. And God is in the temple.

This child is different all right, and on this day in the temple, we can’t possibly fathom who Jesus will become. Our opening hymn this morning exalted us to come and worship. God with us is now residing. Come and worship, worship Christ the newborn king. We need look no further than across the temple to do so, and yet we don’t. Do we?

Just as we admire Mary and Joseph for their patience with this young boy, perhaps, too, we must admire Christ for his patience with us as well.

This is God. Alive. With Us. And we have the audacity to question why Jesus left a pack of travelers to go to the temple? And yet, God, in God’s wonder, finds patience. The young Jesus knows we don’t understand. Jesus knows we don’t get it yet. And he waits. Not because he must. But because we aren’t ready. Jesus could have spilled the beans. He could have performed an epic miracle. He could have started his ministry. But, he didn’t. He waited. A teenager with patience. He must be different. He must be God.

God waits because we aren’t ready but us not being ready is not the same as God not caring. The last verse of our passage today tells us that. Luke says, “Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” While we are busy running the courses of our perfectly reasonable emotions, God is preparing. Christ is leading our way.

In the midst of our lives, we forget about God. We forget that Jesus lives among us. We forget that the twelve year old boy with a silly idea is the face of God. We forget that the twelve year old girl who has the courage to believe she can do anything that twelve year old boy can do is the face of God. We forget to see the face of God in the homeless, the immigrant, the disadvantaged. We forget to see the face of God in our loved ones sometimes. And, more often than not, we forget to see the face of God in ourselves.

God always knows God’s place. But we often forget ours. It’s easy to forget our place in the aftermath of an Advent season that promises us so much. Hope. Peace. Joy. Love. Those words lead us to believe that we have it all. But, we are given these amazing words and then we are flung back out into the world like a lost kid in a souvenir store. We are back to reality so quickly we don’t even get a chance to reflect on what those words mean. We aren’t ready yet. But God is.

We think hope means that everything is always going to turn out okay. God never promised us that. The young Christ in the temple teaches us that hope is the belief that things could be okay. If we are patient. If we put the work in. If we wait for the right moment. Our hymn this morning tells us that brighter visions beam afar … we are hoping for something we cannot even define. Something we have never even seen. We are hoping to see God in the temple.

We think peace means the absence of any disagreement. Peace is what happens when someone else believes what I believe. The young Christ in the temple teaches us that real peace happens in the midst of continued disagreement. Jesus and his parents find peace after a tumultuous situation. It wasn’t warm and fuzzy, but they moved forward together as a family.

We think joy means a never-ending stream of smiles and laughter. We weren’t promised that. The young Christ in the temple teaches us to find smiles in tough moments. To embrace those moments when you recognize that your kid is different, that your kid is special. This kid’s idea of defiance was going to church. What an image of making us smile in the midst of emotional pain.

We think love means Valentine cards and right swipes on Tindr. The young Christ in the temple begins to show us what true love means...accepting each other in all of our differences with all of our faults. No matter what. No exceptions.

Part of the Christmas story is tough. It means accepting that your family - your child - might be different. And finding joy in that. Jesus let his parents down because he went missing for a few days and had a bit of an attitude about it. But he also gave them an opportunity to come down from their attachment to the old world - a world dominated by trying to live up to expectations, a world where you travel on the same path with everyone else. In this scene, Jesus gives us a taste of God’s new covenant - a road that might not lead back to Nazareth, but a road filled with new, unexplored possibility.

Again, we have the advantage of knowing how the story ends. We know Mary and Joseph are there for their son until the ugly, bitter end. I’m sure this wasn’t the only time they questioned this child’s wisdom, but they saw God and went along for the ride. May we dare to be so courageous. May we dare to be so risky.

May we be forever be thankful that we have the model of this brave - if annoying - twelve year old Jesus to remind us that the promise of Christmas is so much deeper than four empty words. May we be thankful that there are angels from the realms of glory reminding us to come and worship so that we, like Jesus, can increase in our wisdom.

I don’t know this but I suspect Spencer wandered away from me in that souvenir store because he simply wasn’t interested in the t-shirt I was looking at. It wasn’t a lack of love, or a deliberate attempt to be disrespectful. Something else caught his eye. Something different, something more colorful, maybe it wasn’t a t-shirt at all. He had his own perspective. But, new perspectives are sometimes scary for everyone involved and give us a chance to regroup. A little bit of the old world, a little bit of the new. But the new world is coming and, like Jesus, we must prepare.

Thankfully, as we prepare, we have these new tools to work with - hope, peace, joy and love. And our teacher is here. Right here in the temple. Maybe in the form of a know-it-all kid who is clearly different than everyone else. I can’t wait to see what they do. Amen.