SERMON FOR THE FIRST SUNAY OF CHRISTMAS, DECEMBER 26.2021     TEXT: LUKE 2:41-52
     One minute the kid’s a baby and the next he’s an adolescent doing his own thing and giving you heart failure. Suddenly the constant physical demands and endless sleep deprivation of early parenthood seem like the good old days when you had some control. The moms and dads among us know the feeling. Thanks to Luke we get those two snapshots of Jesus and his parents, and thanks to the lectionary they show up back-to-back in the Christmas season. 
     Preachers and scholars commenting on this text focus on various aspects of the parent-child relationship revealed here. Some express concern that Joseph and Mary took off for home without ascertaining that Jesus was present and accounted for. For example: “Jerusalem was packed with Jewish worshipers from all over the world to celebrate the Passover. Usually this celebration takes about one week. The Jews also traveled in groups to avoid danger on the road, such as thieves. The entire group had to watch over each other — particularly the kids. Mary and Joseph had relatives and friends in Jerusalem. They might stay with them during the festival week. At the end of the celebration, Mary and Joseph started to return. They went a day’s journey without checking on their son assuming he was in the group of travelers. Were Joseph and Mary irresponsible parents? Was there a reason they could not check on Jesus to make sure he was doing okay? This is weird.” 
     On the other hand, Joseph and Mary show themselves to be very responsible parents in that they clearly are attentive to their son’s religious upbringing. They take Jesus to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, and one assumes that Joseph has instructed him in the Torah. Otherwise how could Jesus have amazed the teachers in the temple with his understanding? He was wise far beyond his years, but he must have started somewhere. The most likely place is in his own home under the guidance of his father, as was the Jewish custom. Ultimately, all those commenting on the text, at least the ones I read, agree that Mary’s and Joseph’s parenting is not Luke’s real concern. His subject is the 12-year-old Jesus and what we learn about him in this story. If Mary and Joseph had been at the top of their parenting game, if they had made sure he was among the caravan departing Jerusalem, then there would have been no story to tell.  
     Luke’s account of the boy Jesus in the temple is similar to ones found in biographies of other famous figures in antiquity, such as philosophers and rulers. Their distinctive qualities and accomplishments as children were understood to foreshadow their character as adults. And so here is Jesus at age 12, on the cusp of adulthood as defined in the ancient world but still a child, revealing something of the extraordinary man he will become. The angel told Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.” Now Jesus embraces that relationship for himself and its meaning for his life. 
     “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” These are the first words Jesus speaks in Luke’s account. Luke uses the same word meaning “it is necessary” (and translated here as “must”) throughout his gospel to indicate that whatever particular thing Jesus is doing or saying at the time is essential to the accomplishment of his saving work. Here for the first time he self-consciously steps up to the plate and embraces his destiny. I know a small dose of fun facts to know about the original Greek text goes a long way, but please bear with me. Because the wording is ambiguous, and that is important. Jesus announces, “It is necessary for me . . .” and the phrase that follows could as a whole be taken to mean “to be in the house of my father,” which would fit with the temple setting, or “to be among the people of my father,” which would make sense in reference to the teachers with whom Jesus converses, or “to be about the things of my father.” For example, the King James Version of this verse reads, “And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?” 
     When Jesus’ distraught mother asks her son to account for his behavior, “Child, why have you treated us like this?”, he answers her question with one of his own, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be . . .” And the first two options “in God’s house” or “talking to God’s people’” might cut it with his parents. “I mean, gee, Mom and Dad, isn’t it obvious? Where did you think I’d be?” “Okay, son, but next time tell us before you take off like that.” But his answer that is a question is more challenging than that. For Jesus the house and the people are not just God’s; they are his Father’s. And according to the professor who provided the analysis of the original Greek, in the wider narrative of Luke’s Gospel “the answer points to Jesus accepting his messianic mission to be about his Father’s business even as an adolescent with wisdom yet to gain.” That’s the point of the ambiguity. That’s the part that Mary and Joseph did not, indeed could not, understand at the time.
     The boy Jesus returns with his parents to Nazareth. He steps back into the realm of the ordinary and disappears from our view. But we have been given a foretaste of what is to come. The seed planted in the temple continues to grow out of the public eye. His hour has not yet come to be about his Father’s business, but when it does, our Savior will come searching for us. Amen.