We all know the story that is the focus of today’s Gospel lesson. The last time that Jesus was mentioned in any of the Gospels, he was a toddler who was rushed off to Egypt so that King Herod couldn’t kill him, and then – probably a few years later – He and His family went back to the Promised Land, when they settled down in northern Israel in the small town of Nazareth, roughly 65 miles north of Jerusalem and safely outside of the area ruled by evil King Herod’s equally evil son Archelaus.
The next time we hear anything at all about Jesus he is 12 years old and is making the annual family trip to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. When the family leaves Jerusalem to head home some days later, Jesus stays behind. The problem is that Mary and Joseph don’t know that Jesus stayed in Jerusalem – they make the reasonable assumption that He is somewhere in what was probably a very large group of friends traveling together. It wouldn’t be unusual for the children in that group to get together and play games as they walked, and they might walk first with one family and then with another. Mary and Joseph probably assumed that Jesus was somewhere in the crowd with his friends or brothers or cousins
It’s only after an entire day of traveling, as the family is setting up camp for the night, that they realize that Jesus has gone missing. And you can only imagine the panic they must have felt. After all, as many as three million people crowded into the streets and hills surrounding Jerusalem at Passover – so just imagine how you would feel if your child was missing in a crowd of millions of people. You would be scared to death – scared that something had happened to your son, scared that you might never see Him again.
Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph turned around and headed back to Jerusalem, and when they got there they spend three frantic days looking for Jesus. Probably looking for Him where they had stayed. Where they had eaten their meals. Where they had walked from one place to another. And finally, after three days, they find in the last place they expected to find Him – debating theology with the teachers in the Temple.
At this point Mary expresses two emotions that any parent would express when a lost child has been found, safe and sound. She says: “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” She is relieved that her son is alive and safe and well – but frustrated at Him for creating the situation in the first place.
Jesus responds, and His reply is one that challenges Mary, Joseph – and us – to rethink our priorities. He said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Do you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Put into the words of a 12-year-old boy in 2011, Jesus is saying that if they really knew Him and understood Him, the Temple would have been the first place they should have looked. If they really knew Him and understood Him, they would have found their son as soon as they hit town.
If you think about it, Jesus, even at age 12, must have had a voracious appetite for Scripture and theology. Luke writes: “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.” Two thousand years ago in Israel, the teachers sat and the students stood. The fact that Jesus was sitting among the teachers indicates that the most learned men in the country had accepted Jesus as their peer, as their equal in His knowledge of God’s Word. He was actively participating in the discussion as one of the teachers and not just as 12-year-old student.
At this point we might be tempted to say something like, “Well, of course Jesus was good at talking theology. He’s God! He’s the one who talked to Moses and the prophets in the first place. It’s not too hard to know the book if you’re the one who wrote it.” And that would be perfectly correct if Jesus – right there in the Temple at age 12 – were to call upon His divine nature. But that’s not what he was doing.
Remember that Jesus was in what we call a “state of humility” from His conception in Mary’s womb until His friends laid Him in the tomb. What this means is that during this entire time Jesus never used His divine powers for His own advantage. When Jesus was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, he said: “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” He could have, but He didn’t. When Jesus was on trial before Pilate, He told the Roman Governor: “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.” When Jesus hung on the cross the crowds mocked Him, saying: “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” He could have, but He didn’t.
Even as a boy, Jesus never used His divine powers for His own advantage, and that includes His education. That means that he learned His Scripture and His theology the same way that every young Jewish boy learned: by studying. In Deuteronomy chapter 6, God tells His people: “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Jesus was simply following the command of His Father. Mary and Joseph should have realized that the first place to look for Jesus was in His Father’s house – the Temple – where the Word of God would be taught and proclaimed.
Jesus said, “I must be in my Father’s house,” but a better and more literal translation of those words would read like this: “It is necessary for me to be among the things of my Father.” No matter which translation you use, Jesus’ words confront us today just as much as they confronted Mary and Joseph 2,000 years ago. The sad reality of modern Christianity is not just that so many people today look to earthly security, wealth and power – but that so Christians really want no more than a Jesus who peps us up, who makes us feel good. Who tells us that deep down we really are good people who deserve a great life now instead of the truth that we are anything but good and we deserve nothing but death.
Even rock-solid Lutherans are sometimes guilty of fulfilling St. Paul’s prediction to Timothy that “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” We wander around so many false teachings – and then wonder why we don’t find Jesus.
Jesus said, “It is necessary for me to be among the things of my Father.” What are the things of His Father? The things of His Father are the things His Father sent Him here to do: living a perfect life; taking our sin onto Himself; carrying that sin to the cross; dying in our place. These are the things of the Father. It is among these things that we find Jesus.
Unfortunately, the disgust of these things prevents us from looking there. The cross is gruesome, messy, obscene. It is bloody. The cross proclaims the penalty for sin. It shows us the punishment we deserve for our sin. It shows us the justice of God. It is a place we cannot look, for it is a place that reminds us of our sin. We cannot look among the things of the Father on our own and so we will never find Jesus on our own.
The Holy Spirit must take us among the things of the Father. He does this as we hear God’s Word and He uses that Word to produce faith in us. By God’s Word He must show us the shame and the filth of our sin. Then He must show us the cross. As the Holy Spirit shows the cross to us, we see the place where we should hang and there is Jesus hanging for us. We could not find Him, but the Holy Spirit has gathered us to Him. There – at the cross – the Holy Spirit has showed us Jesus among the things of His Father. By taking us among the things of the Father, the Holy Spirit works faith in our hearts and makes us people of the Father.
Now that the Holy Spirit has gathered us to Jesus, we see that the things of the Father do not end at the cross. Beyond the cross are more things of the Father. Beyond the cross is an empty tomb. After Jesus died on the cross, His friends laid Him in a tomb, and it was there that Jesus shrugged off the state of humiliation and entered the state of exaltation. He left the tomb. He proclaimed His victory to those below in hell and then He proclaimed His victory here on earth. He rose from the dead and showed Himself alive to many witnesses. Jesus’ resurrection promises us that there is a resurrection among the things of the Father. Jesus’ resurrection promises the people of the Father that they will rise to enjoy the things of the Father that the Son has earned for us.
In today’s Gospel, we might be tempted to say that Jesus was lost. In fact, Jesus was exactly where He was supposed to be. It was really Mary and Joseph who were lost. In a similar way, we are also lost – lost in our trespasses and sins. It is God who finds us and places us among the things of the Father. There the Holy Spirit works faith and makes us people of the Father. Since Jesus said, “I must be among the things of my Father,” that means we are with Jesus. That is exactly where we are supposed to be.
Sooner or later, every pastor is asked if he is bothered by crying babies or unruly children in church. My answer, in complete honesty, is “no.” I am not bothered when a baby cries in church. I am not bothered when a child is unruly. What bothers me is when a child of any age, for whatever reason, is not brought to church. Is not fed with God’s Word. Even the best-behaved child in the world will never be perfectly well-behaved in church every Sunday, but I don’t care. That’s not what matters. St. Paul wrote that “faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” That’s what truly matters: being exactly where we’re supposed to be, right here, among the things of our Father.
Note: Some thoughts and phrases in this sermon were developed from materials originally appearing on www.pericope.org.
Return to Pastor page
