Luke has an ear for such stories and he shares one with us today. It is a great story with something for everybody.
Luke 2:41-52
December 29, 2024
Dr. Todd R. Wright
Family stories are funny things. You mix a few relatives together at this time of year and there is no telling where you will end up. You know what I mean:
My dad used to tell how his mother expected everyone to gently unwrap their presents and fold the paper so it could be used again.
My mother tells of wanting a signet ring for Christmas and unwrapping all the smallest packages only to be disappointed again and again. It turns out her parents had hidden it inside a huge box!
Maureen and I still treasure a memory, from when we were serving a church at the beach, of the kids making snow angels … in about ¼ inch of snow!
Luke has an ear for such stories and he shares one with us today. It is a great story with something for everybody. Parents will understand Mary and Joseph’s parade of emotions from joy, to relief, to anger. Children will enjoy that Jesus held his own with the adult teachers in the Temple. And adolescents will delight in the fact that Jesus challenged his parents’ authority and asserted his own identity.
The story is poignant and playful: Parents hearing the story after the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD must have mourned that they would never have a chance to take their children to that holy, drenched-in-history, awe-inspiring place. At the same time, we listeners are invited to chuckle at Jesus’ excuse – he was not out getting in mischief with friends or pursuing a girl who had caught his eye; instead, he was talking with the teachers in the Temple.
I suspect this story grabs us because we want to know about the life of Jesus. We want to know what he was like, about his personality. We wonder if the fact that he was the Son of God was always so obvious. With little information we are hungry to fill in the blanks. There are a lot of stories out there that try to satisfy our appetite – tales of Jesus as a young magician creating clay birds and then bringing them to life and of raising a playmate from the dead, but the gospels tell us nothing, except for this one story. It is as if Mary kept a scrapbook of the things she pondered in her heart, her memories of Jesus, and Luke managed to obtain a single page.
Ah, but what a story it is!
It is set at the Temple – that place where major religious festivals occur, where the community of faith gathers to remember and anticipate and celebrate who it is and how God works. Luke reminds us that it is where children are offered to God and incorporated as part of the community of faith. It is the place where old men and women gather to remember the past and long for the future. It is where offerings are brought, where people submit themselves to God, where prayers are offered, and where songs are sung.
Every year the holy family travels there for the Passover festival. Mary and Joseph are doing everything they can to nurture their son’s faith. So every year the young Jesus hears the story of Israel’s liberation – a tale of God hearing his people’s cries, of the sacrifice of a lamb, of blood marking the doorposts, of a people learning to trust a God who loves them.
It seems that something about this story touches him – a boy on the edge of becoming a man:
maybe a growing identification with the lamb that is sacrificed for others, [1]
or a yearning to explore the meaning and mechanics of deliverance,
or a bubbling up of questions that lead him to ask the teachers …
“Why do people wander away from God?”
“Where is the love in your teaching?”[2]
“Does death hurt?”
It would be easier to keep him in the manger: the child in his mother’s arms on the Christmas stamps, the image of a thousand Christmas pageants, the infant of the carols, like:
“Away in a manger, no crib for his head the little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.
The stars in the night sky looked down where he lay, the little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay”
But the baby cannot stay a baby.
Do you remember Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights praying, “Dear Lord Baby Jesus, or as our brothers in the South call you: ‘Hey-suz’. We thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Dominos, KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell ...”? His wife objects, “You know, sweetie, Jesus did grow up. You don't always have to call him baby. It's a bit odd and off puttin' to pray to a baby.” But Ricky Bobby is unmoved, “Well, look, I like the Christmas Jesus best when I'm sayin' grace. When you say grace, you can say it to Grown-up Jesus, or Teenage Jesus, or Bearded Jesus, or whoever you want ... I like the baby version the best, do you hear me?” And so he goes on praying, “Dear Eight Pound, Six Ounce, Newborn Infant Jesus, don't even know a word yet, just a little infant, so cuddly, but still omnipotent ...”[3]
We laugh, but by including this story, Luke forces us to move Jesus out of the manger, out of Mary’s arms, and into the world. Jesus moves out of the circle of his parents’ control – though he will continue to obey their earthly authority. He is drawn to the real authority in his life – his heavenly Father – and gets a taste for his life’s work.
In this way the Messiah – predicted, sung about, and prayed over – begins to be revealed. This story foreshadows future conversations between Jesus and the teachers that will not go so well, and hints that while Jerusalem is a place where God dwells, people asking uncomfortable questions, (whether they are prophets or 12 year old boys), are not always welcome.
Jesus cannot stay in the manger. He must go out into a world filled with sin and death and desperate need to encounter powerful people who will oppose him and anxious people who will turn to him for life. This passage is a first step toward the cross.
The story of Jesus in the Temple makes us take his identity – and his claim on us – seriously.
He calls us to outgrow the manger and follow the one who comes to set his people free.
He calls us to ask questions and engage in conversations; maybe to even break away from the group or linger with the teachers in order to discover who we are called to be.
He calls us to ponder all these things in our hearts, like Mary did, until we understand.
May this passage be a starting point for all of us. Amen
[1] This idea is from “Stirrings of Divinity” a sermon by Peter Storey in The Christian Century, 12/13/00
[2] This question comes from a poem by Stephanie M. Crumpton
[3] From “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby”
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