Luke 2:41-52
41Every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. 42When he was twelve years old, they went up to the Feast, according to the custom. 43After the Feast was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. 44Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. 45When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. 46After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you." 49"Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" 50But they did not understand what he was saying to them. 51Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
INTRODUCTION:
Did you ever wonder why God made adolescence a part growing up? Adolescence is difficult to understand and let’s face it, adolescence is hard. It’s very hard on everyone.
A teenage girl had been talking on the phone for about half an hour, and then she hung up. "Wow!," said her father, "That was short. You usually talk for two hours. What happened?" "Wrong number," replied the girl.
Did you know that teenage girls send an average, average now, of 100 text messages a day?
Today, we are going to look at a passage of scripture that is a difficult one: Jesus when He was twelve years old. Luke must have interviewed Mary as he was writing this gospel yet this is the only story from Jesus’ childhood that we have. So it must be significant. Jesus came to show us the Father and by doing so, to give us the faith and the hope that we need to be able to live our frail human lives to the glory of God. Now, that doesn’t mean that Jesus was an abnormal adolescent. If anything, he would have been more normal, closer to what God intended. I apologize. The words adolescent and normal should never be used in the same paragraph never mind the same sentence.
Once when I was counseling a teenager who was having difficulties with his parents, I asked him what he thought the role of parent actually was. His reply says it all: “They think,” he said, “ that is their job to make sure that kids don’t have too much fun.”
SERMON:
I want to welcome Jack to our Christian fellowship and thank his parents for the privilege of being able to baptize him today. This sermon is somewhat for the parents but it’s not about what your job is today. Jack is cute. Jack takes his naps. Jack doesn’t yet have an independent voice. But don’t worry. He’s going to be a teenager someday. A lot of you folks have had teenagers, right. So you know what’s coming for John and Meghan.
A teenager is a person who can't remember to walk the dog but never forgets a phone number.
A teenager is a person who can operate the latest computer instinctively but is unable to make a bed.
A teenager is a person who is so well informed about everything that he never has to study.
Some psychologists say that parents should get advice for raising teenagers from veterenarians . This is because teenagers are so much like cats. For example, Neither teenagers nor cats turn their heads when you call them by name. You rarely see a cat walking outside of the house with an adult human being, and no teenager in his ever wants to be seen in public with his or her parents. Cats and teenagers can lie on the living-room sofa for hours on end hardly breathing and without moving . True? Cats and teenagers yawn in exactly the same manner, communicating a sense of complete and utter boredom. Remember though that cats and teenagers when they make up their own minds, will eventually come to you for some affection and comfort, and it will be a triumphant moment for everyone concerned.
I think our scripture today reveals that Jesus was a real, human teenager. There is so much that happens in this passage of scripture that is just plain adolescent thinking and behavior. Scholar after scholar explains away what Jesus does here as cultural or because Jesus was God incarnate or this and that and the other but, and I could be way off on this but I don’t think so. Yes, some of what goes on in this portion of scripture is indeed cultural. Jesus was twelve years old. Almost a man by Jewish standards but not quite. He and his parents and his relatives, friends, and neighbors have traveled 80 miles from Nazereth so they could celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem. We are told his parents did this every year. What a fun thing, right. Every year, a bunch of people get together and make what would have been a four to five day journey to Jerusalem. They stay for the time of the Passover feast and then make the return journey back to Nazereth.
The return journey is where things go wrong. Jesus disappears. You ever have a kid disappear? It is one of the scariest things that can ever happen to a parent and it happened to Mary and Joseph. If you were going to make a five day trip with your child, wouldn’t you make certain that he left at the same time you did? Even if he was going to travel on a different camel than you, you would still make certain that he was leaving with you. Wouldn’t you? Yes, me too. This is like the original home alone movie. That’s the movie where this ten year old kid gets left home all alone while his entire family travels to France. That was by accident. Jesus stays in Jerusalem on purpose and he doesn’t tell anyone that he is staying.
A teenager stretches their boundaries, right, usually till it hurts somebody. A teenager asserts themselves as a human being, right. It’s not constant, but teenagers certainly push the limits with their parents over who’s in charge. This is where there can be a lot of problems with the humanity and the divinity of Jesus. Because of his divinity, we cannot conceive that Jesus would have given his parents any trouble, yet because of his humanity we know that can’t be true. But Whoever said that an adolescent giving their parents a hard time is a sin? We’re not talking about a pattern of rebelliousness, that’s different. We’re talking about a kid stretching their teenage oats, pushing the boundaries, stretching the limits. Being an adolescent!
Now, Jesus is missing for three days. Does that not surprise you? He doesn’t tell his parents that he’s leaving. He doesn’t tell them where he’s going. And on top of that, it takes them three days to find him. What an enigma this story is! Can you imagine not being able to find your twelve year old son for three days? Personally, I would be absolutely frantic. The problem we have with this story is that this is no ordinary twelve year old, not that any of your children are ordinary, I’m not saying that. But if I told you this story and it wasn’t about Jesus, you would say that that parent had every right to smack that kid silly for causing his parents so much distress. Wouldn’t you say that? I know you would. You would say that kid is inconsiderate and needs to be taught a lesson.
Even when Mary and Joseph finally find Jesus and they confront him with what he’s done, he doesn’t apologize. No. Not at all. He responds in typical teenage fashion. You can almost hear Him say it, “Well duh? Where did you expect me to be? You should have known that I had to be here, in my Father’s house.” Of course, Mary and Joseph thought Jesus had been kidnapped. Scripture tells us that they were astonished because they found him in the temple calmly talking theology with the priests while they were frantically looking for their son. Three days, he was missing and they find him in church. I’d kill him. C’mon you would, too. You know you would. But because we are talking about Jesus here, we automatically rule out the obvious. Jesus would be getting ready to celebrate his bar mitzvah when he turned 13. Scripture makes a point of telling us he was 12. That means that the law, the ten commandments with all its rules and regulations did not apply. A 12 year old Jesus was not bound to the law. His bar mitzvah would change all that. Bar mitzvah means “man of the law” because that’s when a young man would take on the responsibility of being a law abiding, God fearing Jew. Scripture reminds us He was 12.
Jesus also gets to do another thing here that adolescents love to do: he embarrasses his parents in front of everybody with what amounts to something of a put down. “Didn’t you know I’d be here? In the temple? You are the most ignorant parents in the world.” Mark Twain said that when I was 17, my father was the dumbest man that ever lived but by the time I turned 23, it was amazing what the old man had picked up.
Now was Jesus right, of course he was. Was Jesus God’s Son? Of course He was. Could He have done this differently? You’ll notice a dove did not come down upon Him at this time and a voice did not proclaim this is Jesus with whom I am well pleased. I don’t care how smart a kid you are or how much understanding of scripture you have, if you’ve caused your parents incredible grief needlessly for three days, it’s time for a trip to the woodshed.
I think one of the points of this story is that just like every other person alive, Jesus had to learn how to be a human being as God wants us to be. The verse right before today’s scripture lesson, verse 40, reads, “the child grew and became strong: he was filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him.” Compare that to verse 51: “Then He (Jesus) went down to Nazereth with them and was obedient to them.” There is definitely an implication that he had not been obedient. This is not blasphemy to think of Jesus in this way. By being born, Jesus accepted the limitations of being human. One of those limitations i
Now that does not mean that Jesus was not supposed to be in the temple when he was. Very likely, he was in the right place but could have gone about getting there in a better way. One that caused less pain to his parents
We assume that Jesus did not struggle with being human the way we do. We assume that Jesus’ humanity had no impact on his divinity. If Jesus humanity had been swallowed up by his divinity, then he would not have been able to accomplish the purpose that he came to accomplish. His mother Mary, more than anyone else, knew who Jesus was, the living Son of God, yet even Mary did not know what Jesus said she should have known, that is, that He can be found in His Father’s house. Jesus needed to learn that real obedience is not just following the letter of the law, real obedience involves consideration and thoughtfulness. Real obedience involves knowing what parents would want and doing that. Adolescents only do what they are told, if that, right? How many times has a teenager said to a parent, “You didn’t say that” and the parent has replied, “You knew what I meant.” Jesus had to learn that real obedience knows what is meant and does that.
Jesus didn’t get that trip to the woodshed that we know of. The reason is that he sees His parent’s pain and at that point understands obedience. Real obedience. Not the letter of the law, but the meaning of the law. Not what God said, but what God means. Jesus spent the three years of his ministry trying to explain that to us that God is not to be found in the rules and regulations laid down in the Old Testament. Jesus was very clear that a person can keep the entire law and still not be obedient to what God intended. It is not the law or any laws that bring us into a loving, lasting relationship with God, it is the obedience of Jesus, learning from his earthly parents Mary and Joseph and then doing what God intended.
