December 27th, 2009
Luke 2:41-51
The Boy Jesus in the Temple
41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44Assuming 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. 45When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48When 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.' 49He said to them, 'Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?'*
50But they did not understand what he said to them. 51Then 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 favour.
Wow. What a story right? There is a lot of detail in this story that we in the modern age can relate to and many areas which are problematic as well. What do you hear in the story?
A lost child?
A frightened parent?
Wondering why did it would take so long to notice his absence? In an age where cell phones and family car trips are the norm, three days just seems so long! But this was the time of caravans, and no technology for communication.
Or maybe this is just an impertinent 12 year old stepping out on his own?
Where did the intervening years go?
All of these questions and so many more are posed by this week's reading. For me, it brings memories of just how much we can learn from the children and youth that surround us. I have spent most of my life working with children. My first job was as the attendant of a drop off place for kids while the parents shopped. For the 6 years before coming down to Berkeley, I worked at the YMCA with children from age 4 through grade 5. My partner was a stay at home nanny for three wonderful children who came to be part of our family. Children have ALWAYS been a large part of my life. But, I am not yet a parent. The pain of finding a child missing, was a constant fear of mine when working with children, but it doesn't come close to the fear of realizing that YOUR child is missing.
I remember once when a parent had picked up their child from care, and left. Ten to twenty minutes later, she came running back into the room, frazzled and dazed. She asked me if I had seen the child return. No I had not. Desperately, I got my entire group looking for the lost child for 10 minutes, to find he had wandered off to talk with the lifeguards at the pool when the parent didn't notice. Fear, anxiety, terror marked this parent's face until we found her son. I imagine the same would have marked Mary and Joseph's faces for much more than 10 minutes as they searched for their lost child, Jesus, for three days. In my experience, like in our gospel reading today once the child is found, the response seems obvious, of course I was right here, mom and dad, where else would I have been?
The lost is found. And all that anxiety seems unfounded. But parents know better. There are dangers out in the world, and much that could go wrong. In raising children, allowing the room to grow can be the hardest task. Protecting and sheltering just seems so much more satisfying. At the end of our passage today, we hear that Mary, treasured the experience in her heart. I'm sure that she never forgot the experience of fear and anxiety as well. Jesus, however, was found not just chatting with the lifeguards about Pokemon, like my lost child, but in the temple, listening and asking questions of the religious teachers. Not just that, we are told that everyone who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. Here is where Mary's treasure lies, in seeing her child going toe to toe with scholars. This is an odd line in the story, though. We are told that Jesus is listening and asking questions, but everyone gathered is amazed at his answers. So which was he doing, giving answers or asking questions? In a time when children were not respected to have any answers, this is an important element of the story. If he was asking questions, that might be one thing, but if he was providing answers, that would be very different. That others listened to him enough to see he understood the conversation is significant. Those gathered, might have felt that they shouldn't be bothering with this little upstart kid who thinks he is equal to the sages!
This is the cornerstone of the story in fact. The preaching in the temple, as it is commonly called, is the only story of his childhood and only told in the gospel of Luke. Before this single story, Jesus was 8 days old and being blessed in the temple. After this story, he grows up in a sentence. We can see how this story is set a part, by the two similar phrases it is bookended with. In verse 40, it says, And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. While in verse 52, it says, And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
Okay, so it is important, so what? Why this story? What is so significant here? Is this the only story that was preserved of childhood? Is it because it involved adults that it is deemed important? The story provides a peek at the home life of the holy family, and why it is used on this Sunday that celebrates the Holy Family. It highlights the Jewishness of the family. They make the pilgrimage to the temple each year for Passover, which is a long trip as they were still on the way after a day's journey when they noticed him missing. Jesus is trained in the faith and understands much about it, however, he breaks the social rules of engagement with the religious authorities. Here is our first instance in which Jesus's obedience to Judaism is contrasted his own reinterpretation of the Jewish laws. Some scholars have noted that the three days he is lost and then found are a foreshadowing of the resurrection and the Easter story. For three days, Jesus is lost to us, but after this, we find him in His Father's house, resurrected. This interpretation makes a lot of sense for the context of the Lukan gospel. Luke's gospel is especially full of allusion and foreshadowing to give a better context for the upcoming ministry of Jesus and the acknowledgement of the divinity of Christ that is in him.
But I think there is also another reason to include this story. I see this story as foretelling the ways in which Jesus would turn the world's expectations upside down. The expectation of those in the temple would be that the child would be silent, but he is very verbal and he is interested. The expectation of the savior of the Jews was to be a king, yet in Christ, the savior is revealed in a poor child from a complicated family. The expectation was that lepers and tax collectors were unclean yet Jesus later eats and ministers to these outcasts. Jesus, was a revolutionary, and that revolutionary flavor begins early in his life, with his questioning in the temple. He proves there is much that we can learn from children.
The Gospel According to Biff, tries to tell the story of those years we do not have here from his 8th day of life until adulthood, other than this one story. In humor and with tongue in cheek irreverence, author Christopher Moore creates the story of Biff, the childhood friend of Jesus, or Joshua as it is told. Through the childlike point of view of Biff, we see Jesus as a confused kid with a lot of the same issues as regular kids. He too, will have to figure out what to do for a career. He too navigates the world of bullies and adults. And there are many pearls of wisdom in the story of Biff as he tells about these lost years.
Biff says, Children see magic because they look for it. When I first met Joshua, I didn't know he was the Savior, and neither did he, for that matter. What I knew was that he wasn't afraid. Amid a race of conquered warriors, a people who tried to find pride cowered before God and Rome, he shone like a bloom in the desert. But maybe only I saw it, because I was looking for it. To everyone else, he seemed like just another child.
I think this is true of my own experience as well. Chilren certainly do see some things we as adults ever remember to look for. I believe as well, that when we listen, really listen to the children in our lives, we hear a truth about our relationship to the divine presence around us. That divine presence that Jesus tapped into, that presence which Jesus grew into in his ministry.
We have been talking a lot about Building the Village in this church this fall. We've asked for volunteers to tell life stories or share activities with the Sunday school, we've begun bringing the kids back for communion. We've found ways to involve youth and children in service and the mission of this church. But we have more to do. To raise these kids up as blooms in the desert, to use Biff's phrase, ready to question the Pharisees in the temple means that we continue our efforts and that each of us make a commitment to the children in our lives to provide space for their questions. There is much we can learn from these questions. We must continue to leave room for it.
Learning from children is not a foreign concept here, as the commitment to children's programs over the last year can attest. Children many times have ways of speaking a truth we cannot articulate as adults. But it takes a lot of listening. A different way of listening, really. That different kind of listening and looking that led Biff to see that Joshua was divine. In that temple that day, maybe those gathered also found that way to listen and look at the impertinent 12 year old carpenter's son who understood and questioned the scholars and theologians.
In every Christmas season, the world's expectations are turned upside down. We recognize the small child as divine and we welcome a new way of living into our lives. I hope that this season, and into the new year, we continue to challenge our assumptions about what kids know and what we can learn from them. I also hope that we can continue to grow and support our Skyline children into caring adults with knowledge and respect for the tradition they are a part of.
May it be so!
