Losing
Jesus
By Griff Martin
On Luke 2:41-52
For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
On The First Sunday of Christmas
December 30, 2018
Luke
2:41-52
Now every
year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up
as usual for the festival.
When
the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind
in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming
that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day's journey. Then they
started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to
Jerusalem to search for him.
After
three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening
to them and asking them questions. And
all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.
When
his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, "Child,
why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching
for you in great anxiety.” He said to
them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in
my Father's house?"
But
they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and
came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these
things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine
and human favor.
Incarnate
and Resurrected God, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it
into a living and breathing new reality we can all together experience. Make us
aware of your presence here in this space and in these words God, for if we are present to you then nothing else will
matter, but if we are not present to you then
nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Christ and the
Comforter. Amen.
One of
the privileges of this job is that I get to study Scripture and then stand to
speak on it, on behalf of our community – which means
that often I get to struggle with and say the things that we are all thinking
when it comes to Scripture, but that we are scared to say aloud.
For
instance, I can study the account of Abraham and Isaac and I can ask, “What
kind of God asks a father to sacrifice his only Son? What do we do with that
God?”
I get
to read the Parables and then point out that, as much as we
all want to put ourselves in the hero spot in the parable, more often than not we are the one who needs saving
– or even worse, the
one who is standing in the way of salvation.
Or, I can look at some of the really difficult accounts of
violence (on behalf of God, nonetheless) in the Old Testament
and I can say, “How do we deal with a God who commands us to go and kill? How
do we fix this problem between this God and the God who commands us to love our
enemies and be peaceful in the New Testament?” (…all questions we will soon address at our weekend retreat
focused on God and violence).
I can
look at some of the sayings of Jesus and ask the questions we are all thinking:
“Wait, we turn the cheek how many times?,” “What do you really mean by neighbor?,”
and “When you say to give away all we have, you don’t actually mean all we have
– do you?”
So
with this text today, let me ask the question and make the statement that
probably a lot of us are thinking: Are Mary and Joseph really that great of
parents?
To be
fair, please know I do not consider myself a great parent; I really struggle as a parent. Some confessions: I did not
like nighttime feedings. Abby will tell you I could have won an Academy Award
for how I faked sleep when Blake and Jude cried. There are days that I come
home tired and I would love a little bit of time to myself or even days where I
hide behind work because I can’t deal with untying another shoe or playing one
more round of catch. And one time I drove all the way home from the store and
forgot to snap the buckles on Blake’s car seat. And to Abby’s dismay, I don’t care nearly as much as she does about what a movie
is rated, and I am more than willing to go for
neighborhood runs and leave the kids alone. So, I am not the model parent.
But
you know what I have not done? I have never lost one of
my children.
Especially
on a trip, and especially for a few days. This is Home Alone-type parenting.
So,
the question this morning: Are Mary and Joseph
ideal/good parents?
They
start off by doing the right thing.
Scholars
debate if Jesus had to attend the Passover at 12 years of age, and the consensus seems
to be that a young boy was not required to attend such pilgrimages of faith
until they were of 13 years of age and had celebrated the bar mitzvah. So,
Jesus and Mary did not have to attend Passover;
only Jewish males were required by law to attend the Passover celebration. But
Mary, Joseph, and Jesus all attend Passover in Jerusalem.
They
take the trip, which was a considerable task. For someone from Galilee to
attend Passover would have required 4 or 5 travel days, traveling at the pace
of 15 miles a day. So counting traveling days, this journey took a little over
half a month. It’s quite a commitment. Thus, it seems that Joseph
and Mary take faith and faith rituals quite seriously; raising Jesus in the faith is important to them.
They
make the trek to Jerusalem and they attend the Passover festivities and
then they head home. Or at least, Mary and
Joseph head home.
Jesus
stays in Jerusalem in the Temple. The text does not venture a reason why Jesus
stays. Perhaps Jesus lost track of time, a typical teenage mistake – he was told the caravan was leaving the next morning at
5:00 a.m. and
he oversleeps. Or, perhaps Jesus is ready to
be done with childish things. Something has happened at Passover and he is ready to stay
here and not return to the ways of a child. Perhaps Jesus has had some sort of
encounter during the week and he is beginning to realize the answer to that
eternal teenage question: Who am I? Perhaps we are the only ones who think Jesus is lost. In this episode, the truth is that Jesus might not be lost.
What
we know is that Jesus stays, and his parents go.
Now, to give Mary and Joseph a little bit of slack…perhaps the caravan was quite large, and they simply assume
he is with the rest of the teenagers who are probably bringing up the back of
the group. (Of course, with that said, I must also say that I once traveled
internationally with 74 teenagers and I think that if I had come back one
short, well…I think people would have noticed
that more than the 73 that I did bring back… just saying).
They
begin to travel home, and they go for a day’s journey, on
foot about 15 miles. And when they stop to rest that night, Mary and Joseph
begin to look for Jesus and they quickly figure out that he is not with them.
So,
they return to Jerusalem and after 3 days travel time, they find Jesus sitting
in the middle of a now empty temple with the Teachers and Scribes around him.
He is in the middle of a deep and wise conversation about a theological matter.
The
text tells us, “they were astonished.” And I don’t know about you, but I have
always taken this as a positive compliment. But maybe it’s not. I mean, I know during my
teenage years my parents and a few other good adults more than once told me
they were astonished I could act in such a way – and they did not mean ‘astonished’ as a compliment.
Mary
speaks first: “Son, why have you treated us this way? Behold your father and I
have been anxiously looking for you.” And Jesus responds right back, “Why is it
that you were looking for me? Did you not know that I had been in my Father’s
house?” (and it’s said in the exact tone you would expect a 13-year-old to say
that…. Meaning, the tone that makes your blood boil over).
Mary
and Joseph don’t understand, but the text tells us that Jesus returned home
with them. And then the text concludes with two quite amazing verses: Mary
treasured these things in her heart and Jesus continued to grow in wisdom,
stature, and in favor with God and men.
Back
to the question of the morning: are Mary and Joseph really good parents? I mean, come on, they lose their
son, actually God’s son, on a trip and for an extended time.
They
lost their child; I have never lost my child.
They
lost Jesus…. now, this gets tricky, because I have lost Jesus and not just
once. I have lost Jesus over and over and over in my life.
I’ve
had seasons of my life that were so dry and empty, as one mystical father
beautifully termed it,
“a dark night of the soul.” It was a two-year desert
time period, as dry as my soul has ever been. And not only did I think I had
lost Jesus, I was getting close to thinking I had never even found Jesus in the
first place, that this was a made-up place like the land of Oz.
Other
times, I have been running so fast in my life and so certain that I was doing
exactly what I was supposed to be doing, assuming the whole time that Jesus was
running next to me, that when I finally stopped and realized I was on the wrong
path, I had no idea where Jesus was anymore and was more than a bit surprised
to find that Jesus was not right next to me where I thought he had been, and that I was miles from home.
I have
gone through seasons of rebellion where I intentionally turned away from Jesus.
Seasons where I wanted absolutely nothing to do with this Jesus and his
teachings. Seasons where I pushed Jesus as far away as possible.
I have
seasons of spiritual laziness, where I have taken for granted that Jesus was
right next to me and then looked up to find him nowhere near and to find myself
completely lost.
I have
gone through seasons of life so full of difficulty and question that I had no
idea where Jesus was anymore. Times of theological questions that left me
totally lost, times where my limited knowledge of God was questioned, and I was
deeply alone.
So,
the question this morning I want to ask, and have asked, is not fair. I can’t judge Mary and Joseph for losing Jesus because I, too have lost Jesus.
And I
don’t think I am the only one. I would venture every one of us here this
morning at some point or other in our life has lost Jesus – or at least, we have felt
like we lost Jesus.
Maybe
the better question this morning is this: What are we supposed to do when we
lose Jesus? And maybe here Mary and Joseph serve as the perfect example of what
we are supposed to do.
They
notice the absence (because the language needs to shift here – Jesus is not lost, we are lost), and they go straight back to the last place they
encountered Jesus.
Although
the text does not tell us this, I think Mary and Joseph immediately returned to
Jerusalem; I don’t think they set up camp for the night. I think they
turned around and high-tailed it back to
Jerusalem, to the last place they had seen him. Because when we truly realize
we have lost Jesus, everything else that
seemed to matter suddenly matters a lot less.
And we
need to pay careful attention to where they go in Jerusalem – they return to the Temple.
The
temple, or as Luke defines it in his writings, “the house of God, the church.”
When
Mary and Joseph have lost Jesus, they return to the house of God.
That
is not a bad place to start. As one of our brilliant church fathers Origen
writes, “If you ever seek the Son of God, look first in the Temple, hasten
thither.”
I have
mentioned it before: there are a lot of people right now that say the church is
dying. We can’t let that be true. Those saying it have to be wrong, if for no other reason
than this: the church is the place that helps
us find Jesus. The church has to continue to exist, and it has to be for this
reason: it’s here we find Jesus.
It’s
one of my favorite stories Anne Lamott tells… a story of a little girl in her
neighborhood who is so lost and can’t find her way
home. She finally sees two policeman and explains that she is lost, and she
knows she lives close but can’t find her way home. They put her in the car and
begin to slowly drive street by street until eventually she yells out, “This is it.” The officers
look at one another quite confused because they are not at a house, but at a church. They explain to her, “This is not a home.” To which she says, “Of course it’s not, I know that. But this is my church
and I can always find my way home from church.”
I know
that place.
When I have lost Jesus either by way of rebellion,
laziness, spiritual drought, and a host of other reasons, part of returning to
Jesus has always been the Church. Maybe it’s because here people want to remind
me that God loves me, God includes me and that my story is this story. Or maybe
it’s just that they accept me. Maybe it’s the songs and the Scriptures which
remind me of the bigger story we are playing a part in. Maybe it’s more about
the space, almost like the Rothko Chapel in Houston: a very sacred space for me, a place I can just go and be
both lost and instantly found. Maybe it’s that this place is home for me, and I believe in it and I trust it and it always calls out
to me. What I know is that church has been a constant for me.
And if
it hasn’t for you, I am sorry. Please join us in doing the work to try and reclaim that.
Now I
can’t promise that finding Jesus has always been as easy as simply returning to
church. There is often soul work that needs to be done, repentance, prayer,
confession, mediation, worship. Often it takes a bit of time in church, and sometimes it starts with the simple knowledge that others in this place have found Jesus, and that gives me the
encouragement I need to go on. And if nothing else, at least here I can encounter
God’s story, and that seems to always be able to help me find Jesus.
Like
Mary and Joseph, I’ve always eventually found Jesus here in His Father’s
house.
It’s
not something we talk about often, and it should
be – we lose Jesus, we go through periods of
spiritual drought and rebellion…this seems to
be our very nature. We need to talk about this more, so that we share this
glorious testimony: I found him (or he found
me), go back to the House of God and start looking there. If we have anything
we need to share each week, it’s this: you can
find Jesus here.
Let’s
rest a moment in that promise: we can find Jesus here.
*artwork: The Loss of Child Jesus in the Temple, Painting by Raul Berzosa, raulberzosa.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment