Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom. After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking 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. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them, and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man. (Luke 2.41-52)
Traditionally, the first Sunday after Christmas is set aside to honor the Holy Family of Nazareth. All things considered, it makes sense. With the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, the family unit has been formed and henceforth Jesus will be known either as the carpenter’s son or the son of Mary. The selections for the feast vary from year to year. Matthew provides the text for Year A with the new family fleeing to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod, a definite nod to the story of Moses in the Hebrew scriptures, the first evangelist intent on presenting Jesus as the new Moses.
Year B borrows the Lucan text of the purification of Mary in the Temple as well as the presentation of the child Jesus, introducing us to those two Temple figures of Simeon and Anna, both of whom rejoice at the sight of the newborn Savior of the world. Our current liturgical year, Year C, uses another Lucan story for the feast, this one the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem after the Passover is done, his parents unaware of his not joining the caravan for the return trip to Nazareth.
As a point of interest, this specific text is the only gospel text that offers any story of Jesus that tells of him between his birth and his baptism. It is peculiar to Luke, although there are several non-canonical texts that are quick to fill in the blanks, their stories often fantastical and unhistorical, such as the boy Jesus turning clay birds into alive creatures or restoring the life of a playmate who has fallen from the roof of a house.
By comparison, Luke’s story of the adolescent Jesus is mild and stands a greater chance of having some historical basis, although Luke has invested it with many of his favorite themes that will continue to show up in the subsequent pages of his gospel or in his second volume, the Acts of the Apostles. For example, the theme of that which is lost being found shows up with regularity, found in the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.
In the latter instance, the father of the lost son says to the older son, “Your brother was dead and is alive; he was lost and is found” (15.32), the parable carrying many of the same marks as the story of the boy Jesus lost for three days and found at last by his parents who have worried themselves sick with fear of what has become of him much the same as the father in the story of the prodigal son.
Of course, we truly would be thick-headed if we passed over the fact that the twelve-year-old Jesus is lost for three days, failing to see a foreshadowing of the resurrection story in which Jesus was lost to the world by his death on the cross and who is resurrected, found again on the third day. While others feared he was lost, he was only doing his Father’s will as he had done years earlier in the Temple in Jerusalem.
In a similar way, the argument could rightly be made that even the story of the Emmaus disciples found at the tail-end of the gospel (24.19-34) has the same theme at work. As the pair make their way toward Emmaus after the death of Jesus, they bemoan the fact that their leader is now gone from them, lost forever, when suddenly he stands before them, found again when he breaks bread with them.
All of this is not to say that the story of the parents of Jesus losing him for three days has no basis in fact. It has a familiarity and a similarity that almost every family can attest to as an historical event in their own lives, the Christmas movie “Home Alone” only the Hollywood representation of a common enough experience of many parents who miss the absence of a child for a period of time.
Still, at the end of the day, only Luke tells the story, the other evangelists choosing to be completely silent on the so-called “lost years” of Jesus’ life, those decades between his birth and his baptism, leaving unanswered the many questions about Jesus’ days in the interim. Luke, a master of sequential storytelling, provides this one episode that serves as a bridge or transition between Jesus’ birth and his baptism by John, allowing us a glimpse into his early life.
Aside from all these interesting and intriguing elements in the story, the one thing that stands out the strongest, at least for me, is the question that the twelve-year-old Jesus asks his parents when they find him in the temple. He says to them, “Why were you looking for me?” (2.49) These are the first words that Jesus speaks in the Gospel of Luke and, as with his first spoken words in any of the other gospels, they deserve special attention and study.
On the surface level, it seems an odd question for him to ask. Of course, his parents would be looking for him. He belongs with them. But the question belies a deeper reality that those around Jesus do not comprehend. There is much more to him than meets the eye. It is no coincidence, I daresay, that the angel at the tomb of the resurrected Lord says almost the same thing to the women who have come to minister to the corpse of the crucified Jesus, asking them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (24.5).
Here as before, the question suggests a much deeper reality than that grasped by the fearful women who fall to the ground in stupification. Based on their understanding of the world and the way it works, they cannot grasp that someone who has died can be risen from the dead. The boy Jesus hints at a much wider worldview when he asks the same question of his parents, “Why were you looking for me?”
He allows them a glimpse into his broader understanding when he follows the question with a second question, asking them, “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (2.49). Both questions puzzle his parents, Luke telling us that “they didn’t understand the saying which he spoke to them.” Already at that point, as he is on the cusp of leaving behind his childhood and entering his adulthood (Jewish boys were considered adults at thirteen), Jesus knows in his heart that he has a greater calling.
That calling will be clarified once and for all at his baptism when a voice from the heavens pronounces, “You are my beloved Son. With you I am well pleased” (3.22). But Luke is telling us in this story that Jesus’ self-understanding was already moving in that direction years before his baptism. Much the same as the ancient prophets of Israel who received their call from God at an early age, Jesus had an awareness that the Almighty was calling him for a specific purpose and for a specific reason.
That fact is underscored in his use of the word “must.” Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house? The word literally means “it is necessary.” Put simply, the word allows no options. An obligation has been placed upon him by the Most High God, a task or a mission that is his alone to fulfill. As he grows and matures “in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men,” Luke’s descriptive ending of the story, Jesus assumes the obligation and goes with it.
We will see his carrying out the obligation as his mission begins. “I must preach the good news of the Kingdom of God,” (4.43), he says at the start. Later, he tells his followers that “the Son of Man must suffer many things” (9.22). Still later, when heading towards Jerusalem, knowing what awaits him there, he explains, “I must go on my way for it can’t be that a prophet perishes outside of Jerusalem” (13.33). As the end draws closer, he says, “First, I must suffer many things” (17.25).
Luke allows us to see, then, in this story the nascent duty that later will direct the path of Jesus of Nazareth as he fully embraces his call and his mission as placed upon him by the Most High God whom he calls his Father in heaven. Already here, he understands that he has been set apart for a specific purpose that he must do. Nothing, neither the dodges offered by the devil nor the demands of his disciples to take the easy way out, will dissuade him from his destiny or his destination–Jerusalem.
It does us well, then, to ponder the importance of this story not only in terms of Jesus’ awareness and acceptance of his duty to the Most High God, but also as a reminder of our own duty as disciples of the Crucified Lord, persons who claim to be called to walk in his ways. Like Jesus, we also have been chosen for a task, or as he says to his disciples in the Gospel of John, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you to go and to bear fruit that will remain” (John 15.16).
The question for us to consider is whether or not we have accepted our duty as disciples with the same clarity and clear purpose as Jesus did when he says “I must be in my Father’s house.” As we make our way through this world, walking alongside the sick and the sinner, encountering the poor and the persecuted, do we feel the same moral imperative that Jesus did when he came face to face with the least and the last, with the lost and the lonely?
Soon enough, we will hear Jesus say to his critics, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord” (4.189-19). He inaugurates his public ministry with those words and they carry a clear recognition on his part that he must do what he has been commissioned to do.
That bud of awareness that we already see in the story of the young boy Jesus in his Father’s house has become a full bloom in adulthood, having taken root in the years between and growing into a strong and sturdy plant that does not wither under the heat of the day or wilt under the attacks of his enemies. He knows what he must do and he will do it.
Hearing the story again, we look into our own hearts, examining closely our own sense of duty to the ways of the Heavenly Father, and determining exactly when and where it is that we feel we must do something, so strongly convinced of our calling that failure or faltering is not an option. The answer we give to that question tells us everything we need to know about meeting our obligations.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 