When Jesus Was Left Behind

A sermon by Dr. Jim Somerville, Pastor
Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
December 27, 2009

The First Sunday after Christmas Day

Luke 2:41-52

Children grow up so quickly, don’t they?  Take this morning’s Gospel reading for example.  It seems like only yesterday, or maybe the day before yesterday, that we were celebrating Jesus’ birth and now look at him: he’s twelve years old!  But when we begin to look for stories about Jesus that take place after his birth and before his baptism we don’t have a lot of options.  In all of Scripture there is only one story about Jesus’ boyhood—this one—and the way the lectionary works it comes up only once every three years, on the first Sunday after Christmas.  That means there are a lot of regular churchgoers who don’t hear this story very often, and preachers who take the Sunday after Christmas off don’t preach on it very often, which makes it possible that some of you have never heard a sermon about the boy Jesus in the temple. 

Well, today that’s going to change.

There are other stories about Jesus’ boyhood, of course.  Faced with that thirty-year silence between the day of his birth and the day of his baptism some ancient authors tried to fill in the gaps.  They invented stories about the boy Jesus playing with his friends and doing all sorts of minor miracles.  In one of those stories Jesus makes little birds out of the clay from the riverbank and then waves his hand over them and watches them fly away.  In another story he wants to play in the clouds, and so he climbs up a sunbeam while his friends try to follow along behind.  And in another one a dying child who is dipped into Jesus’ bathwater is miraculously revived.  It shouldn’t surprise us that none of these stories has made its way into the canon of Scripture, but it is a little surprising that in all those years between his birth and his baptism, this is the only story we have: the story about the boy Jesus in the temple.

Let me invite you to turn to Luke 2:41 and follow along because there are some things you might miss if you weren’t looking carefully.  First of all, notice that Luke says Jesus’ parents went up to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover every year, and when he was twelve years’ old they went up again, as usual.  The Passover was one of three annual festivals held in Jerusalem that every Jewish male was supposed to attend.  Most of them couldn’t get away for all three, but they all seemed to make it to this one, the biggest festival of the year.  So, I can imagine a few people staying behind in Nazareth to keep an eye on things but everybody else traveling together, down to Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, and then along the Jordan River south to Jericho so they would have plenty of water along the way.  At Jericho they would begin the long, twisting climb up to Jerusalem, singing those Psalms of Ascent along the way, like Psalm 122:  “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’”  And as they came up over the crest of the Mount of Olives and caught their first glimpse of the Holy City, gleaming like a pearl in the afternoon sunlight, they might sing from that same psalm, “Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!”

Can you imagine how exciting all of that would be to a twelve-year-old boy?  I’m sure it was exciting for everybody.  This celebration of Israel’s deliverance from its slavery in Egypt—this festival of freedom—went on for more than a week, and even at the end of it there were those who weren’t ready to go home.   Apparently Jesus was one of those.  Assuming that he was in that large group of travelers his parents started toward home without him and it wasn’t until they made camp that first night that they realized he had been left behind.  We sometimes blame them for being negligent (how could they forget Jesus?) but think how it must have been for them!  The guilt they must have felt; the panic!  I would guess that they didn’t sleep much that night and that they were up and on their way before daybreak the next morning. 

It would have taken them all day to get back to Jerusalem, and by the time it was light enough to start looking the next morning it would have been the third day since they’d had any contact with him.  They must have been frantic, looking in all the places they had visited together until they finally found him there in the temple, sitting among the religious authorities, listening to them and asking them questions.  You’ve probably seen the pictures in Sunday school—Jesus, the center of attention, as the distinguished looking rabbis stroke their beards and marvel at his understanding.  “All who heard him were amazed,” Luke says, but his mother, Mary, has a completely different response.  When she has pulled him aside and asks, “Child, why have you treated us like this?  Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety!”  Any mother who has lost a child in the mall, even for a moment, knows this feeling.  Your first response is to want to hug the breath out of him now that he’s been found; but your second response is to want to choke the life out of him for wandering away.  “Why have you treated us like this?” Mary demands, and Jesus, who seems surprised by her reaction, says, “Why were you looking for me?  Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”  I love the way the King James Version puts it:  “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”  If Mary hadn’t wanted to choke the life out of him before she probably did after that.

The usual take on this story is that Jesus, at age 12, was completely self-aware, that he knew who he was, and what he was going to be.  “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” he asks, as if Mary should have known all this.  Hadn’t the angel Gabriel told her who he was going to be?  Hadn’t Elizabeth called her the mother of the Lord?  Hadn’t the shepherds told her what had been made known to them?  Hadn’t old Simeon and Anna confirmed the prophecies about Jesus?  Mary should have known, shouldn’t she, that when you bring the Son of God to Jerusalem he’s going to want to spend a little time with his father.  Or at least that’s the way Jesus makes it sound.  One of the reasons this story has been kept in our Bibles, certainly, is because it suggests that from a very early age Jesus was aware of his true identity. 

But there is something else going on here that is equally important.

When my brother Scott was twelve years’ old he loved books more than anything else on earth.  We had a bookshelf in an upstairs room that went from wall to wall, and from floor to ceiling, and Scott had read every book on the shelf.  He had even read Hawaii, by James Michener, that huge novel that goes on for 960 pages.  It made it easy for the rest of us to pick out a book; you could just ask Scott and he would give you an on-the-spot review.  But it made it hard for him.  Having gobbled up everything in the house he was desperate for something new.  And so our monthly trips to the public library in Charleston, West Virginia, were always an occasion for joy.  I could imagine my brother Scott quoting the psalm, “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go to the Kanawha County Public Library.”  But we all loved that library.  It was three stories tall, right downtown, a sturdy classical building with a modern bronze water fountain in front.  We would take empty cardboard boxes with us when we went, go up to the stacks on the third floor (the children’s floor), check out as many books as we could, and bring them all home where they kept the rest of us entertained for weeks, and Scott—for days. 

It was one of those times, when Scott had read everything we had brought home and the rest of us were just getting started, that it happened.   My dad was getting ready to go to an all-day meeting in Charleston and Scott asked if he could go with him.  “I won’t be any trouble at all,” he said.  “You can just drop me off at the library and I’ll stay there all day.”  It seemed like a reasonable request, and so they packed a lunch for Scott and the two of them headed off to Charleston.  Sometime just before supper Dad came in through the back door whistling and Mom asked, “Where’s Scott?” “Oh, my goodness!” Dad said, and he ran back out the door.  As he told the story later he made what was usually about a 45-minute trip in 20 minutes, trying to get to the library before it closed for the evening.  He parked in front of the building, ran up the front steps, on up to the third floor and began searching frantically up and down the stacks where he finally found Scott, sitting on the floor, surrounded by a pile of books and looking up at him as if to say, “Wist ye not that I must be in the public library?” 

Scott was passionate about books.  It’s what he loved more than anything else on earth.  If he had run away from home in those days we would have known just where to find him.  And I wonder if Jesus’ presence in the temple didn’t have more to do with that than with anything else.  Do you remember that time on the road near Caesarea Philippi when he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me Satan!  You are not thinking the things of God, but the things of men”?  What if Jesus—from a very early age—loved thinking the things of God?  What if it was his passion, as books were for my brother Scott at that age?  Do you know how 12-year-olds can get obsessed about things, about major league baseball or dinosaurs or skateboarding, and how they can amaze you with their knowledge?  Just suppose, for a moment, that it was that way with Jesus, that what he loved most of all were the things of God, that those things were all he wanted to talk about, so that he wore his parents out with his constant questions, and a trip to Jerusalem, and to the temple, would have seemed to him like the most exciting thing in the world.  If you can imagine that then you can imagine that when his parents scolded him for disappearing he might have said (with all due respect), “Where else would I be?”

I say all that to ask you this: if you turned up missing in the next 24 hours, where would people start looking for you?  And when they finally found you and you asked them, “Where else would I be?” where would you be?  What is the place that calls to you, what is the passion that drives you, what do you spend all your time thinking and talking about?  Is there any chance at all that someone would find you here, at First Baptist Church, thinking the things of God, and if not why not, what has become more important to you than that?

We’re getting ready to start a whole new year here.  I won’t see most of you again until 2010.  I think it might be the perfect time to freshen up some of the old promises we have made to God, to “renew our covenant” with him, if you will.  Time to resolve that in this new year we will spend more time thinking the things of God, more time talking about them, more time doing them, so that if we turn up missing no one would be too surprised to find us in church.  I like what John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, used to do.  At the beginning of every new year he would urge his congregations to “wholly give themselves up to God, and to renew at every point their covenant that the Lord should be their God.”  And then he would lead them in the renewal of their covenant. 

I have a copy of the litany Wesley used to use and I wonder if I could read it to you and let you decide: if it’s something you can agree with then say “Amen,” and if you can’t, don’t.  But let me warn you: these are strong words.  You shouldn’t say “Amen” if you don’t really mean it.  But if you do mean it, and if you can say it, then say it with all your heart.  Let this moment be one in which you renew your vows to God and pledge to live by them in this New Year.   Imagine how 2010 might unfold for you if you could only keep this covenant. 

It begins like this: 

In the old covenant, God chose Israel

to be a special people and to obey the law.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, by his death and resurrection,

Has made a new covenant with all who trust in him.

We stand within this covenant and we bear his name.

On the one side, God promises in this covenant

to give us new life in Christ.

On the other side, we are pledged to live

not for ourselves but for God.

Today, therefore, we meet to renew the covenant

which binds us to God.

And then the people would stand and Wesley would say:

Friends, let us claim the covenant

God has made with his people,

And accept the yoke of Christ.

To accept the yoke of Christ means that we allow Christ

to guide all that we do and are,

and that Christ himself is our only reward.

Christ has many services to be done;

Some are easy, others are difficult;

Some make others applaud us,

others bring only reproach;

Some we desire to do because of our own interests;

others seem unnatural.

Sometimes we please Christ and meet our own needs,

At other times we cannot please Christ

unless we deny ourselves.

Yet Christ strengthens us and gives us the power

to do all these things.

Therefore let us make this covenant of God our own.

Let us give ourselves completely to God,

Trusting in his promises and relying on his grace.

And then the people would repeat the words of the covenant, saying:

I give myself completely to you, God.

Assign me to my place in your creation.

Let me suffer for you.

Give me the work you would have me do.

Give me many tasks

Or have me step aside while you call others.

Put me forward or humble me.

Give me riches or let me live in poverty.

I freely give all that I am and all that I have to you.

And now, holy God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

You are mine and I am yours.  So be it.

May this covenant made on earth

continue for all eternity.

If you can say “Amen” to that, will you say it now?

Amen!

So may it be, and so may we pray:

Dear God let these be for us more than words, let them be vows which we intend to keep as seriously as any vows we have ever made.  Let this new year be one in which we think the things of God and do the things of God as we live into the example of our Lord Jesus Christ.  And if we should get lost at any point along the way, help us remember that this is the place where we may not only be found by others, but where we may also find ourselves.  We ask these things in your name, Amen. 

 —Jim Somerville © 2009