The Teenager Jesus

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.--Luke 2: 41-52

It's not usual for us to hear the story in Luke about the young Jesus. Especially when we have the option to have more stories about his human father Joseph continuing to take guidance through dreams to move his family out of harm's way and finally settling in Nazareth, the Newark of the Middle East. But it was the story of the 12 year-old Jesus that was the gospel lesson this morning at St. John's.

A couple things strike me in this story. I'm amused by Jesus' response to his parents, who are worried to death looking all over for their son who they thought was traveling with them. You can hear the boy whose voice hasn't quite changed yet, and is speaking with certainty and absolute understanding that he knew where he was, "What's wrong with you, mom and dad?" He is twelve, almost the age of his bar mitzvah. And perhaps this scene is his opportunity to show the rabbis he is not only ready to read the Torah, he has an intrinsic understanding of the text that rivals and surpasses their own. When his desperate parents show up, Jesus is wowing everyone with what he asks and what he knows. And even his mother is impressed despite her own irritation that her son had left them wondering and worried.

And that's the second thing I heard in the story. Once more, we hear that Mary "treasured all these things in her heart." Mary ponders and treasures a lot in Luke. She did the same as she sat in the manger, no doubt exhausted from the ordeal of childbirth. She is surrounded by barn animals and now a bunch of shepherds, in from the fields, and declaring the glory to God in the highest as they greet her baby. It's a lot for this young girl to take in. She's already been blown away with the announcement from Gabriel that she is pregnant, and this is God's doing. She could have said, "No", but she is a prophet in her own right and submits to God with a "Here am I". My sense of Mary is that as all these things are happening, she is quietly piecing it together for herself. "This is my son? I'm both proud, and utterly in awe of this child!" In many ways, Mary reflects an approach to God that is similar to the Mary, sister of Lazarus. And in her stillness, she is knowing, quietly, that her son is the presence of I AM.

That, I think , is the test for many of us: to be quiet, and ponder in our hearts, the presence of this child born on Christmas. If Christ is born in us, we, too, will grow and ask the questions and raise the doubts that stretch our faith in God.