Luke 2:41-52

To read about Jesus’ childhood, we can turn to this passage in Luke 2, or we can choose from a handful of apocryphal stories: Jesus makes birds out of clay and sends them flying; Jesus resuscitates a childhood playmate who fell from the roof, and so on. There are good reasons these more magical stories were not made part of the canon of Scripture. They were written too long after the events they describe by people who couldn’t have been there to see them; they describe a Jesus who doesn’t sound fully human.

Is this story in Luke about the twelve-year-old Jesus any more reliable than those other stories? It made it into the canon, after all, but it is the one and only story about Jesus’ childhood in the four gospels. Mark and John don’t even need a birth narrative; in both those gospels, Jesus bursts onto the scene as an adult. So perhaps a better question is, “What is Luke trying to tell us with this story about the twelve-year-old Jesus?” In other words, what does this story mean?

It’s easy to get distracted by the fact that it takes Mary and Joseph a whole day after they leave Jerusalem before they notice Jesus isn’t with their caravan, and another couple of days to find him. We can’t imagine parents heading out on a several-day journey without knowing exactly where their child is, and with whom. Commentators point out that life in ancient times wasn’t nearly as individualistic as it is today. The “nuclear family” we take for granted was invented centuries later. Extended families, distant relatives, and members of the local village would have taken this pilgrimage to Jerusalem together. It’s possible that in this kind of setting, every child had multiple parents and every adult looked after whatever children were nearby.

When they finally find him, Jesus responds to his parents’ concerns like many a preteen before and since.  He asserts his identity and independence apart from his (human) parents. From his perspective, he was never lost. He was where they should have expected him to be: accomplishing God’s interests. While the NRSV translation says, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” there is a footnote providing an alternate translation: “…I must be about my Father’s interests.” This better captures the sense of the Greek, because the Greek doesn’t actually use the word for “house.” Although Jesus is in the Temple, God’s “house,” so to speak, Jesus’ point is that, as God’s Son, he must tend to God’s affairs, not those of his human parents who are eager to return to their lives in Galilee.

Luke wants us to notice a handful of important points:

1) Jesus is twelve years old. By the time Jewish boys were five, they would have begun to read the Scriptures aloud.  By the age of 12, they knew the Psalms and were instructed in the basics of Hebrew law and history. So at 12, Jesus is old enough to study Scripture, and on the verge of adulthood. But he is still a child. He will become an adult at thirteen. Luke is telling us that Jesus claimed his calling and purpose as God’s son even as a child.

2) His family’s annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem and his conversation with the teachers tell us Jesus was raised in a faithful Jewish atmosphere. He speaks to his audience of contemporaries, to the readers of the gospels, and to us, as a Jew. Luke assures readers that Jesus and the church do not reject Judaism. Rather, Jesus interprets Jewish traditions and laws through the lens of what he later described as the Kingdom of God, through the lens of God’s hopes for all of Creation.

3) When we search for Jesus, we can find him doing God’s will, concerning himself with God’s interests. The King James Version translates this, “about my Father’s business.” What that looks like is found in the rest of Luke’s gospel, especially in Jesus’ first sermon in Chapter 4: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor … Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:18–19, 21).

4) As Craig Satterlee writes, “Mary and Joseph find Jesus alive and well after three days in a place they didn’t expect. This sounds like Easter.” Likewise, our searching will come to an end in new life, meaningful life, the life God intends, but perhaps not the life we expect.

  It’s a hard text to preach because it is so deeply symbolic, and the lesson is highly christological.  But one angle might be to ask, “Where are we looking for Jesus?”  On the Sunday after Christmas, are we still looking for Jesus in the sentimental glow of a nativity scene?  Would we prefer that he remain an infant?  The baby Jesus is certainly less challenging than the adult who tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.  Do we prefer that Jesus conform to our images and expectations, perhaps because of the way we have understood or related to Jesus in the past?  Do we give our own faith room to grow, or to surprise us? Or are we looking for Jesus in the justice work, the “Kingdom work,” God’s interests as he describes them later in Chapter 4 and in the rest of his adult ministry?  And are we, like Mary and Joseph, surprised to find him there? 

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.