Luke 2:41-52 “Left Behind and Loving It”
We all have that story…the “left behind” story. In it we are either the one left behind or we’re the one that did the leaving…either way these tend to be moments that grow in family lore in such a way that they wind up being hilarious stories that only get better and more elaborate as years pass. For example there’s a story that Rev. Nora Vedress shares about the time her mother left Nora at school. In her telling she says: I have a distinct memory of feeling very alone and VERY free. I recall being on the school playground swings when suddenly my mother’s giant green Pontiac came tearing into the parking lot, gravel flying everywhere. She leapt from the car frantically calling my name. I remember that she ran towards me. My mother never ran.
As the story goes she’d made it all the way home and was busy fixing a snack when the phone rang. One of the teachers had happened to look out the classroom window and saw me. I was four. I wasn’t even IN school yet. My mother had brought me with her when she’d gone to volunteer in my sister’s class and had just gone home without me. Naturally I took advantage of the unexpected freedom and gloriously empty playground and lived my best life for a while. The funny thing is while I do remember the vast feeling of being alone and the great joy of being on the swings, I don’t remember being afraid.
As my mother came rushing to me, however, I do remember thinking that she was afraid. And isn’t that how it goes? Years later the story is now a funny one, but in the moment there was only the frantic fear of finding the one who was lost, even when the lost one didn’t feel particularly lost themselves.
We don’t know a lot about Jesus’ childhood…in fact today’s story is the only one the Bible offers us. And to be honest I can’t help but appreciate that out of all the things they could have told us, this is the story they chose. This one that has two panicking parents and one eye rolling preteen. I mean it’s just so utterly human. And yet, in spite of its seemingly simplistic nature it is in truth a story seeped in meaning, foreshadow, and hope.
According to Luke, who is the only gospel writer to even hint at Jesus’ childhood, the family has traveled to Jerusalem for the Passover. This was an annual trip, something they did every year with the people from their village. It would have been a week of visiting, celebrating, worshiping, eating, connecting with extended family from all across the country, all while enjoying the sights, sounds and excitement of the great city.
Once the festival is over the entire company from Nazareth begins the 143 Kilometer trek home, it would be like walking to Winnipeg from Falcon Beach. I imagine it’s around supper time when Mary starts to worry. They are a day into their journey and have stopped for the night. Tents are being set up, cooking fires lit, mothers who had likely spent the day walking with friends visiting while their children played, are now rounding their brood up for the evening meal…Mary calls, she whistles, she starts walking from fire to fire… not worried at first: “Have you seen Jesus? Hi, is Jesus here with you?” But soon her walk turns to a run as the sinking feeling settles like a rock in her stomach: he’s not there.
Imagine for a moment, the conversation Mary and Joseph would have had on the trip back to Jerusalem. “What do you mean it was my job to keep an eye on him? I thought YOU were keeping track of him?” “Me? That’s never been my job, you know he doesn’t listen to me, never mind tell me where he’s going!” Back and forth until with nothing else to say they face their common reality: “Oh good Lord…we’ve lost the son of God.”
I mean it’s such a great story. Jesus slipping away unnoticed, Mary and Joseph rushing against traffic to try and get back to him, the feeling of relief that must have washed over them when they finally found him. Relief that quickly transitioned into anger “Child why would have you treated us like this? Look your father and I have been searching for you with great anxiety!” By the way there is nothing in me that believes this is actually what Mary said nor that what she did say would have held any level of calm composure. I figure her words burst from her mouth in a blind rage as she grabbed hold of him, pulling him into a vice grip of a hug, the kind that Jesus would have to squirm against in order to breathe. The kind my mother gave me when she pulled me off the swings.
But more than just an incredible story that offers considerable respite from our own parenting failures (I mean if Mary and Joseph lost Jesus for a few days we can certainly cut ourselves some slack), it also offers some amazing questions. What would it have been like to parent Jesus? It’s quite likely that he wasn’t the easiest human to raise. Maybe he asked a lot of questions, maybe he had an answer for everything, maybe it was hard to get him to sit still, maybe he was constantly getting into trouble. And as he got older maybe it got harder and harder to understand him.
On the other hand, maybe everything had been kind of normal up to this point. Craig Saterlee wrote maybe “things been so blessedly ordinary for so long — no more angels, no adoring shepherds and Old Testament prophesies — that the mystery surrounding [Jesus’] birth had begun to fade like a dream? … maybe Mary and Joseph were aware of what their son would do and become, but figured that was years away [so had just gotten on with regular life]…. maybe [they had] simply failed to see that their baby was growing up.” (workingpreacher.com).
Understandably my tendency is to focus on Mary in all of this…I wonder about how she “treasured all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51)…other translations say she “pondered” them, or “stored” them, I think the point is she never forgot. No doubt it all came flooding back when years later she again lost her son for three days.
Joseph has my heart too. This is the last time he’s referred to in Luke’s Gospel and while he takes more of a supporting role here I have no problem picturing him. Running into the temple alongside Mary, he then holds back, as she rushes forward. He stands there, the silent one, guarding, protecting, watching, kept at an arms distance due to the circumstances and yet fully invested anyhow.
And then there’s Jesus. Naturally I side with his parents on this one likely because Jesus’ snarky “where did you think I’d be?” hits a nerve. This is the first time Jesus speaks in this gospel and it’s to talk back to his parents. And yet, while unintentional I’m sure, it does remind me of what it was like to be 12. Funny, isn’t it, how we so often fail to look at the world through the lens of our young people. We tend to forget how jarring it is to shift from childhood to adulthood, being expected to accept a world and a life that we have had very little power in creating. Being told to conform, shape up, keep it together, it’s a lot. And yet here young Jesus is finding his way, even if it did cause his parents a nervous breakdown in the process.
In the end we simply don’t know much about these so called “missing years” of Jesus’ life. One short story is all we get. But what if these 11 verses could shift our perspective just a little allowing us to wonder what kind of child he was? Was he perfect and well behaved? Or was he, like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas would suggest, an absolute handful. Did he consider himself special or was he frustrated because he felt so different from everyone around him? Did he know all along that he was destined for greatness? Or did he feel small and alone a lot of the time and so the sense of belonging he found when in God’s House was just something he had to go back to? Did he feel so at home in that temple, so utterly “himself’, that he just had to linger there a little longer?
We are told that in the end Jesus goes back to Nazareth with his parents. He is obedient to them and grows in wisdom and Divine and human favour (Luke 2:51-52). I mean maybe he was obedient, I like to think that maybe he wasn’t obedient all the time.
What we do know is that he’ll return to the temple in Jerusalem fifteen years or so later. Going there to pray he will instead find thieves and money changers have moved in. His mother’s temper will rise to the surface as he drives them out…whip in hand, tables turning…It’s another great story. But what I’ve not thought about before is that maybe he was so upset that day because what he’d wanted was to claim just a little more time in God’s house. That place where he’d found his sense of belonging. That place where he felt heard and understood for the first time. Maybe he needed to linger there a little longer, in that place where he felt at home in God’s presence, before he turned to face what lay ahead.
It’s a feeling I long for too. I long for it for myself, for my kids, for all of you. That we might feel so at home in God’s presence, be it here, or standing under a vast prairie sky, or at the edge of the ocean, or in a quiet moment where you just know you’re not alone, I mean the Holy Spirit, she can grab our hearts anywhere anytime. But I also know that our loud and rushing world tries to pull us away from those moments so fast it makes our heads spin. The outside world is very good at moving in and it drowns God out and we have to fight to hear the Holy One. I guess it’s what makes this space so special…in here we get to keep the outside chaos at bay for a little while. Let’s not take it for granted. Let’s linger for a while.
Amen.
