Luke 2:41-52; Romans 1:1-5; 1 Kings 8:6-13
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
It takes the incarnation to make sense of what is happening in today’s Gospel. By this I mean that the Word of God did not simply drop out of heaven for us to interpret with no context. Rather, the Word was conceived, spoken, written, and interpreted within individual prophets, apostles, and evangelists; within a nation, a people, and a church. The Word of God is not a stand-alone magical incantation. It is a living Word, conceived and born from, and enfleshed in, a living people: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Therefore, if we are to understand today’s Gospel – about the boy Jesus in the temple, His parents losing track of Him as they begin their pilgrimage home to Nazareth, and their finding Him three days later in the temple, inexplicably the last place they look – we need to know something about these people, their culture, traditions, customs, and ways of life. Indeed, this historical and grammatical approach to the Scriptures is what protects us from the mutual errors of fundamentalism on the one hand and higher criticism on the other.
The Law of Moses required Jewish men to appear before the Lord at the temple in Jerusalem for the feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. In practice, most men did not do this regularly. It was therefore a sign of serious piety that Jesus’ parents went up to Jerusalem for Passover every year and remained for all seven days, though that was not required. One such journey likely cost a typical Galilean family several weeks’ wages.
Jesus was about twelve years old, on the cusp of being recognized as accountable under the Law. He had already made this journey many times, and it is not at all surprising that Joseph and Mary granted Him a certain freedom and responsibility. Families traveled in large caravans of extended relatives and neighbors. It is easy to imagine their initial calm when they realized Jesus was not immediately with them. Surely He was somewhere among the group, capable enough to manage for Himself, or so they thought.
When they did not find Him among the caravan, they returned to Jerusalem. Taken together, this searching took three days: the day of departure, the day of return, and the day of searching. Given the miraculous nature of Jesus’ conception and birth, the words of Simeon and Anna, and the visit of the Magi with their gifts, it is striking that the temple was not the first place they looked. Only on the third day did they search the temple courts. And there, to their amazement, they found Jesus among the teachers.
The rabbis sat together in the temple colonnades, teaching and answering questions. Joseph and Mary found their son seated in the midst of them, listening and asking questions, participating in their discussion. When they expressed their astonishment and distress, Jesus responded with amazement of His own: “Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house?”
This discovery of Jesus in the temple is a discovery of who He is and what He has come to do. To find Jesus is always to find His work and His ways together. There is no true knowledge of Christ that is not also a knowledge of what He does and how He acts. We cannot love Him while rejecting His work or His ways. And His work and His ways are always to be found in the things of His true Father.
It seems that Joseph and Mary, at least for a moment, had forgotten these things and therefore did not understand His words. Yet those words will later ring clear and true when the Father’s will for the Son is revealed more fully. Here we see the first hint of the alienation that would arise between Jesus and those closest to Him until they finally understood and confessed that He truly was God’s Son. Mary treasured even what she did not yet understand in her heart. We are not told when she finally came to full understanding. For Jesus’ brothers, that day did not come until after His resurrection.
Yet God’s Son was submissive to them. Biblically speaking, to submit means “to enter into God’s order of things” out of love for Him. God has instituted various orders for life in this world: husbands and wives, parents and children, pastors and congregations, rulers and citizens. It belongs to the saving work of Jesus that He willingly placed Himself under these orders and obeyed His parents, even though He was the eternal Son of God.
In this sense, He is a model for us, but more than that, He is our substitute. He obeys where we fail. He submits where we resist. He fulfills righteousness not only at the cross, but throughout His entire life.
Joseph is mentioned here for the last time in Scripture and likely died before Jesus’ public ministry began, around the age of thirty. What did Jesus do in those intervening years? Presumably, He lived an ordinary life as a first-century Jewish man, working, praying, learning, loving, and obeying, while He “increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.” None of this was wasted time. All of it belongs to His saving work for us.
Before the incarnation, the glory of God dwelt above the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle, and later the temple. In the incarnation, the glory of God was transferred from the temple to the womb of the Virgin Mary and took on human flesh in the person of Jesus. In today’s Gospel, we celebrate the return of God’s glory to the temple, not as fire or cloud, but as flesh and blood: Jesus, the Son of God.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
At His baptism in the Jordan, the Father declared Jesus to be His beloved Son, with whom He is well pleased. At His transfiguration, the Father repeated those words and added the command, “Listen to Him.” At Christmas, we celebrated that God became man. Now, in Epiphanytide, we confess and rejoice that this man is God for us and God with us.
Jesus’ work is His Father’s work – the work of God – for us and for our salvation, at every stage of His life. Thanks be to God for His love, grace, and mercy.
In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
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