I love this story about Jesus and his parents and am astonished by the author’s deep understanding of the human condition. Mary and Joseph were facing the adolescent years with a most unusual child, and yet we have only this one glimpse in scripture of that time in their lives. The story is common and primal. A young, gifted boy is growing up and beginning to assert his independence against his parents.4
Times like that always make me smile and remember what I was told to do as a little kid if I got lost in the State Street store of Marshall Field’s where he worked. My Uncle Herb’s first rule on becoming separated was that I was to “stop and stay”.
The theory behind this is simple: If two people are looking for each other it becomes like Brownian motion - two people just wandering around and perhaps even passing each other without either one knowing it. If one just stops and the other does the searching all the searcher has to do is retrace his or her steps and allowing for a reunion to take place more quickly.
This is exactly what this story about Jesus and his earthly parents is about.
But before we dive too deep into this, I must warn you that I have read countless sermons and articles on this reading and most of them have missed how very human the whole business is while they focused on the divine.
The facts are simple. Mary, Joseph, Jesus and a whole group of relatives, friends and Neighbours from back home are making their annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem in a first century tour group for the Passover.
The city is as crowded as Marshall Field’s used to be at Christmas and somehow, someway, Jesus becomes separated from his parents. The text says only that he remained in Jerusalem but whether it was by accident or choice remains unclear. What is clear is that the whole party was a day’s journey out of town before it was discovered that Jesus was missing.
Anyone who is a parent or who has ever been charged with the care of a child knows all about the mixture of fear and anger Mary and Joseph must have felt. The overwhelming fear that some harm may have befallen their son mixed with the anger of a parent who says: “I hope he’s okay because when I find him, I’m going to kill that kid!”
That last option was not open to Mary and Joseph because of the divine nature of this story. While they were frantically searching every wagon and asking every relative and friend if they had seen Jesus. Mary was remembering the visit from the solitary angel named Gabriel, the shepherds, and finally the multitudes of angels who hailed her son’s birth.
Joseph was remembering his visit from that same angel, and later, the wise men. All of his doubts must have come rushing back into his head, perfectly expressed in a song by Michael W. Card:
Father show me where I fit into this plan of yours
How can a man be father to the Son of God
Lord for all my life I've been a simple carpenter
How can I raise a king, how can I raise a king?5
I cannot believe that at this moment Mary and Joseph were serene people of prayer with hearts and minds at peace. No, they were remembering, and they were worried because it was not just their son but the son who had been entrusted to them by God who was missing.
There is only one thing to do but make the long journey back to Jerusalem. Two exhausting days of travelling and worrying. Two sleepless nights spent tossing and turning. Then another day searching in shops, and markets, and anywhere else they could think of asking everyone they had met if they had seen their son. Frantically they searched for Jesus.
Finally, they try the temple maybe to look and maybe to pray. And when they do, lo and behold, there is their son sitting among the teachers asking questions and amazing eavesdroppers with his understanding.
Mary is not as impressed as the others and instead expresses her relief and frustration in one loaded sentence: “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”6
Do you hear the guilt in that question? It is almost as if she is saying: “Why have you done this to us? Why have you made us suffer so?”
Mary piles the guilt on in one paraphrase “Your father and I have been half out of our minds looking for you.”7 Now she is bringing Joseph into it. “Its bad enough you have done this to me but look at what you have done to your father. You know he was never sure about this whole business in the first place and now you’ve made him a nervous wreck.”
This is real family dynamics at its best. Not just Holy Family dynamics but real family dynamics because all of us in this room have been involved in the same type of situations and conversations.
Every child who has ever stayed out too late or forgot to call home to tell his or her parents where they were or that they had arrived safely has heard, “We were so worried.”
And every parent has had to endure the kind of answer Jesus gives. “Why were you searching for me?”8
You can almost hear Joseph, can’t you? “Why? Why? I’ll tell you why! What did you expect us to do? Were we supposed to go home and wait for you to show up? You’re twelve years old pal!”
To add fuel to the family dynamic fire that is now raging Jesus says: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house. But they did not understand what he said to them.”
And neither do we because we load so much theological baggage onto this encounter that we fail to see the reasonableness of his response.
What was he supposed to do, check into an inn? He was a little young for that and besides, his previous experience with inns and innkeepers had not been that pleasant.
No, when he was separated from his parents he headed for the safest place in town, the temple. Here is would be sheltered, secure, and cared for until his parents showed up.
This is the only story we have of Jesus between the time of his infancy to his adulthood. So, it leaves one to wonder why it, above all others, is remembered.
I have no proof of this, but I think that, as he grew, Jesus told this story to any who would hear to remind himself just how much his earthly family loved him. That even though his family may not have always understood what he was up to, or even approved of what he said or did, they still loved him enough to search every nook and cranny of Jerusalem until they found him.
And I think he told it to remind us that there wasn’t anything in this life that he did not experience. He told it to remind us that now God knows that even the simplest of family outings can turn into disasters of frustrations and frazzled nerves.
That is what Jesus taught at twelve and teaches still. There will be times when we feel like we have been left behind. There will be times when we feel like we are living in a home where all sorts of family dramas are breaking out. But it is just there where Jesus has promised to be with us.
Jesus came to remind us that we are part of a family - his family confusing and confused; his wandering and wonderful family; his bemusing and blessed family - all wrapped up in the love of in Jesus, our Lord, who came to be family with us.
Jesus came to make a home with us and be family with us.
That is the best news for all of us who have ever been caught us in the same crazy family dynamics that the Holy Family was on their annual outing to Jerusalem and found that even in the midst and family drama that played out in our home Jesus is present teaching us that, if we let it, our love, and our capacity to forgive is bigger and stronger than all of our arguments put together.
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