Lost

Luke 2 The Boy Jesus at the Temple 

41 Every year Jesus' parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. 42 When he was twelve years old, they went up to the Festival, according to the custom. 43 After the Festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. 44 Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you."
    49 "Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" (Some translations say “about my Father’s business?”)
  50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
    51 Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And as Jesus grew up, he increased in wisdom and in favor with God and people.

This passage from the Gospel of Luke strikes me as one of those family stories, You know, the kind every family has, stories that get told again when everyone gets together. One of the stories from my family is about my great grandfather, coming to this country from Germany. He was fairly young and the story is that he got so excited as the ship came into New York Harbor, trying to see the Statue of Liberty, that he got his head stuck in a porthole!

as I said, this passage seems like a family story. Luke says at the beginning of his Gospel that he set out to write “an orderly account” and that he “carefully investigated these things” So he isn't just repeating stories that were floating around 30 years after Jesus’ life. He talked to the sources as much as he could. Scholars believe that Luke interviewed Mary, mother of Jesus. This is the only story we have in the Scripture from Jesus’ life from the time between his infancy and the beginning of his ministry. Maybe this was one of those family stories that got told every so often. And it shows us some interesting facets of Jesus’ formative years.

The family had gone to Jerusalem for the annual Passover festival. This was, and is, the most important of all the feast times for Jewish people. The Passover commemorates the escape from enslavement in Egypt. Going to Jerusalem for the Passover was one of the things that a devout Jewish family did every year. So we see from this story that Mary and Joseph followed their faith well, raising Jesus in their proper traditions.

In Biblical times, traveling was a challenge. Most people walked most places. And when making a lengthy trip, they traveled in groups.-extended families, neighbors. A trip like this, going to Jerusalem for Passover, would have had a lot of people going at the same time, so there could have been quite a contingent of people together.  Women and children traveled together, the men together. So we can see that Mary and Joseph were not bad parents for losing him! Mary and Joseph would have each assumed that Jesus was with the other group. Families traveled during the daylight hours and made camp at night so they wouldn’t discover Jesus missing until then.

So - the Passover festival was over, they walked for a day back toward Nazareth, Mary perhaps thinking Jesus, at age 12, almost a young man, was traveling with the men. Joseph, possibly thinking Jesus still a kid at only 12, was with the women and children, probably to help with younger kids. And at the end of the day, they realized that Jesus was not with them at all. He was lost. Knowing, as a parent myself, how anxious they must have been, they probably slept out of the exhaustion of travel, but wouldn’t have slept well! So the next morning they walked back to Jerusalem to look. And on the 3rd day, they searched through the city of Jerusalem. Finally they find him at the Temple! He is talking with the rabbis. This was one of the customs of the day. The rabbis, teachers of the faith and Moses’ law, would welcome men to join them in the Temple courtyard. The rabbi would sit to teach, the men could stand and ask questions and discuss points of doctrine. So here is Jesus, 12 years old, sitting with the rabbis, discussing and answering! And they were all astonished at the depth of his knowledge. I think this point is one of the main reasons we have this story in Luke’s Gospel. The next piece is why scholars believe that Luke got this story right from Mary. We see her reaction is very much the parent of an adolescent! “Why have you treated us like this?! Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you!”
And Jesus reply is, “Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" (Some translations say “about my Father’s business?”)
Ouch! Mary says “your father and I” Jesus says “my Father’s house”. Reminding them of his divine parentage! And ‘they did not understand”

Had they forgotten the miraculous birth? The angels, shepherds, Magi? The Gold, frankincense and Myrrh? Or were they just so caught up in the duties and details of daily life, that they didn’t think about it?!

Could it be they were caught up in minutia of daily life, of their traveling, of work, of dealing with a family and all this….forgetting to put God first. Now we know they were devout people! but perhaps Jesus is saying that God is at work all around us, in big ways and in small! God is in the details! That we become lost in our day-to-day busyness. In our feelings about what is going on around us, in our families and in the world. And we forget to put God at the center. Jesus seems to be saying that *he* was not lost, it was Mary and Joseph who were lost! and they didn’t understand.

Jesus says we are lost when we do not put God first, even in the minutia of daily life. Joseph and Mary were people of strong faith, yet Jesus seems to be saying that they did not have God at the center of themselves all the time. And God can help us even with the seemingly trivial. Scripture says more than once that He knows the number of hairs on our heads as well as he knows the number of stars in the sky! And that not even a sparrow will fall to the ground without God in heaven knowing!
So how much more can *we*, who are created in the image of God, be of interest to him? in every way--In big and small

As I said, this story is the only one we have from Jesus’ formative years. And this story of Jesus’ life is the last mention of Joseph in the Gospels. Through the Gospels we see several mentions of Mary, of Jesus’ brothers and sisters, but no more mention of Joseph. The traditional belief is that he died some time before Jesus began his ministry. And since this was a fairly typical family of the times, most likely Joseph was several years older than Mary. Men followed their father’s trade and often would not marry until they were earning enough on their own to support a family. And generally marry a younger woman. Women were not citizens; they belonged to men-first to the father, then the husband, then if widowed, to the eldest son. So a young woman’s role was to marry and have children. The women were married off fairly young.

So we learn from this story that Jesus’ family was fairly typical. They followed the customs of their faith; they were parents who were anxious about their son. And at the end of this story, Luke writes that “as Jesus grew up, he increased in wisdom and in favor with God and people” This shows that Jesus grew intellectually, spiritually, and socially. So this was a healthy enough family for him to grow to a well-grounded adulthood.

And as I have thought about this incident, I find myself, as a parent, as a Mom, thinking about it from Mary’s perspective.

It seems to me Mary would have remembered this incident often, maybe each year as they traveled again to Jerusalem for the Passover, certainly on the way home from there! “Jesus, are you with us?” “Yes Mother!” She would remember the terrible anxiety of believing her son was lost, and how lost she felt as well!  And the joy of finding her Jesus! 

And I am positive she remembered this incident many years later, on another trip to Jerusalem for the Passover. Another morning when she had to go to look for Jesus, on the 3rd day.  This time with a group of women, and for a much different purpose. This time they were going to a borrowed tomb, to anoint his broken body. How terribly lost she must have felt that morning!

We are often lost. We are frequently so busy we don’t look for Jesus in what we are doing. We fail to see how He can be at work in large ways and in small details. We may go for days without him, as Mary had to. We may go nearly a lifetime without him. But we don’t have to! When we look for Him, he is there. We have only to ask. “Seek and ye shall find, ask and it shall be given.”

I have learned myself that God works in our lives in small ways as well as big. I didn’t used to believe that, but I have seen it myself over and over. And I pray that you will see it as well. Let me share a story with you. One day a while back I was in a bad mood. One of those grumpy ornery moods that I could not shake. I put on my favorite music, didn’t help. Ate chocolate, didn’t help. (this was a SERIOUSLY bad mood!) Finally started to pray. “God, My family will be home soon and I don’t want to be grumpy like this. I hate to bother you, I know you have more important things to do….but I don’t know what else to do. Can You Help me out of this ugly mood?

So I was sitting in my desk chair. And in just a couple minutes I heard a familiar cheeping sound. Looked out the window and on the railing of the deck, just outside that window, was a pair of cardinals. Male and female, each perched on a post and chirping away to each other. Maybe it sounds silly, but I just knew that God sent those cardinals just then. To remind me that he is even more beautiful than the loveliest of birds. To let me know that His love is so deep that he cares about everything in the lives of His children, even little things. 

I am not sure how it is that God can manage the universe and care about something as small as a bad mood and a pair of cardinals. But he can do it! And he wants a relationship with each of His children, in which we can bring everything to him. And he showed us this, thru the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Today, right now, ask Jesus to come once again into your heart and your life, more than ever before. Ask him to be with you now and all during your week. Ask him to guide you in all your busy-ness. He is about his Father’s business, and can help us with all of ours!