“…But they did not understand what he said to them” (Luke 2:50)
Luke 2:41-52 (Year C: The First Sunday of Christmas/The Holy Family, 30th December, 2018)
This is a story about a family, custom and tradition, festival and gathering. It is a story of a journey back home. A child goes missing, Worried parents. Do the cousins know where he is? Worry... Hell for a time. Found him. Amazement, relief and anger for a while. This story has all the hallmarks of one told by Mary to Luke. “O I remember the time he was 12. It was unbelievably difficult for me and Joseph. We were beside ourselves. All the extended family searched for three days in Jerusalem. There were 10,000s of pilgrims from different parts of the world there like us. Much of the time we could not understand passers-by and they could not understand us. Some of them thought we were in the city to buy and sell our son! When we did eventually find him there were words…. He was cheeky and said something about his ‘Father’. I didn’t understand then but I do now. I only wish Joseph were still alive today to understand what happened then. Neither of us could understand what was going on. He was so worried and it had an impact on him for the rest of his life. But, we gradually began to understand more and more over many years that this child was very special not in a way that all children are special. The temple officials, theologians and priests even suggested that our son might have a special calling in the Temple given his precociousness and wisdom. But, Jesus had different ideas.”
Dealing with incomprehension was Jesus’s lot in the Temple and it was Mary and Joseph’s lot with the neighbours and cousins ever since Mary was found to be pregnant while not yet with Joseph.
Images of the ‘holy family’ abounded and still abound in religious imagery, poetry and liturgy. Mary, a spotless mother with a Northern European look about her, Joseph carrying a staff or a flower everywhere he goes and Jesus a meek, mild and obedient child as it says in some Christmas hymn. In truth we know very little about Jesus and his family. What little we know is set in the context of Jesus’s ministry, mission and saving power. Family background together with the selection of events uniquely recounted in the first two chapters of Luke and in the first chapter of Matthew is hugely significant for what was to come afterwards and what was foretold according to later Christian faith and understanding of ancient Jewish history and prophecy. Everything fits, somehow, into a story that makes sense of the story of wandering nomads in the desert escaping captivity and seeking out a promised land somewhere. Jesus, Mary and Joseph are in that story as they were on the move while seeking refuge in Africa. How ironic – this Christmas time – that God did not prioritise Europe!. God placed his only son in the Middle East and then Africa among a pilgrim people and a family literally ‘on-the-run’.
We can only image what stresses, tensions and challenges such a way of life entailed for this holy family. It is not the plastic image we so often see and hear about. It is a very flesh and blood and very human family. The latter-day emphasis on celibacy, other-worldliness and Euro-centric culture and power games may have robbed the story Luke is trying to tell of its vigour and surprise. Luke was recounting (probably with the help of Mary) a real story about a real family in a real political mess that was and is the ‘Near East’ (note my language here reflects a Euro-centric world view). Some twelve years later we revisit the family as it undergoes the trauma of losing Jesus for a few days only to find him ‘at his Father’s business’ as some English-language translations have it. Was trauma ever far from the lives of Mary and Joseph? The little we know suggests that life was a roller coaster of trauma from a potential row over how Mary became pregnant in the first place to fleeing in terror from state terrorists in the ego of Herod Antipas all the way up to Jesus’s crucifixion and the growth of a subversive religious movement that would see Judaism split (but not by intention) and Rome compromised in the fullness of time. And, at the age of 12, we have another trauma-story.
Some films like ‘Saving Private Ryan’ labour the point that ‘war is hell’. The story behind Luke and the other gospels is quite different. Yes, war is hell and life can be ‘hell’ at times for some people but over and beyond this ‘hell’ there is a new life and new hope that is born in families and communities across the world. Organisations like churches need to become more family-like at a local level to provide space for people to rediscover the good news about 21st century whole-some families.
In addition to this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading which is common to most Christian churches, the other readings from scripture found in the ‘paired’ Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) of the Church of Ireland for this Sunday are: 1 Samuel 2:18-26 Psalm 148; and Colossians 3:12-17. .
In the liturgical cycle of the Roman Catholic Church, for this coming Sunday, the choice of Gospel and second reading is the same. The following alternative readings may be used: 1 Samuel 1:20-28 and Psalm 84(83).
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Further reading: notes and questions, verse by verse
Preliminaries
In passage from the second chapter of Saint Luke’s gospel we fast forward some 12 years from nativity to Jesus as a child growing in ‘wisdom’ and ‘favour with God and men’ according to some translations.
v. 41-42: A normal Jewish family
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.
Rather like many Christian families across the world who make a pilgrimage or journey to weekly prayer, the family of Jesus followed the customs and traditions of the Jewish people living relatively near Jerusalem: they paid an annual pilgrimage visit there. The point to note is that they were no different to most or many Jewish families of the time. Jews in that part of the world were, typically, obliged to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem at least once a year for the Passover. The Temple would continue to play a significant part in the very Jewish life of Jesus. It was here that he was circumcised and presented after his birth. It is here where he was found among the ‘teachers’ of the Law by Mary and Joseph. It was here that he sparked a riot many years later such was his indignation at the way that his Father’s house had been turned into a market place. The public Jesus would be in Jerusalem for significant festivals including the Passover as well as the Dedication of the Temple or ‘Tabernacles’ or ‘Booths’ (John 10:22 and John 7:14) or the Festival of Weeks which became the occasion of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
A related and important point is that they went to Jerusalem to pray, to meet up and to celebrate together.
There is a detail that might be missed for modern-day Christian readers of this passage. It concerns the traditional age at which a boy comes of age (13). At 12 years of age, Jesus was about to pass from childhood to adulthood. However, he was not yet ready for the ministry that was to come.The Bat Mitzvah was and is an important moment of transition for a boy in the Jewish community. It signals a point of arrival when the child takes a greater responsibility for his or her’s action and faith. Here, we may see a link to the Christian sacrament of confirmation which happens to be part of a rite of passage from childhood even if, sadly, it is often a ‘passing out’ parade for young teenagers who depart from ‘religious practice’ even when they had been partaking in such practice for a time.
v. 43-45: The extended family
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 travellers, 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.
Some may doubt or even reject the historicity of this passage. Without clear evidence to the contrary I am inclined to the view that it was the clear memories of Mary as she recounted her story to Luke.
In that place and at that time it was normal for a child of 12 years of age to be minded by the ‘whole’ extended family. Such was the trust and the normality of this that Mary and Joseph could leave Jerusalem without worrying and shouting out ‘Jesus hurry up we need to leave, where are you?’. The ‘relatives and friends’ of Jesus’s family were, likely, moving north together. Quite likely, the much of the village of Nazareth had been together in Jerusalem and were now moving north. In all, the journey for Jesus’s family would have been around 150Km across rough terrain and roads. It might have taken a good few days to complete assuming that a reasonably direct route was taken. Perhaps, they were somewhere in the region of Shechem when they alarm was first raised: ‘Where is Jesus?!’. We may imagine the panic and tension of discovering that Jesus was missing. Was he abducted, alive, injured or just wandering off? What could have brought this about? Why would something like this be allowed to happen? Was there a mysterious link with those prophecies and events of 12 years previous? Mary’s heart was troubled to say the least. And Joseph must have been beside himself.
v. 46-50 Jesus found in the Temple
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.
The family drama ends in the Temple after ‘three days’ (and three nights). Are there hints, here, of Jesus who would become the new Temple in his Risen Body on the third day? Just as the infancy narrative, in Luke, ends in the Temple, the Gospels would culminate in the Temple following the death of Jesus in Jerusalem (outside the Temple) and as he would gather together all believers and those waiting for belief.
The response of Jesus to his parents seems out of place with what was to follow: ‘he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them’. It looks as if Jesus was finding his own identity and place as he continued to grow into adulthood. He was an ordinary person who was a member of what was, then, an ordinary first century Jewish family in Palestine. Yet, he was not ordinary: he had a Father who was and is above all and of whom Jesus is, uniquely, a Son.
Here, we hear of a young boy growing in knowledge and understanding questioning and drawing conclusions as he stays in conversation among the ‘teachers’ of the Law. He needed to make this his own. And so it should be then as well as now. Everyone including those ‘coming of age’ need to own what it is that is proposed to them. Each generation must ‘re-receive’ the faith – remaining faithful to the core as Jesus was but digesting and applying it for one’s own.
In the drama of losing and finding Jesus again and in hearing his declaration that he must be about his Father’s business’ (or ‘in my Father’s house as many translations have it), we read that Mary and Joseph ‘did not understand what he said to them’. Like us, they had to grow in understanding and trust. All was not revealed in one go and Jesus was not always clear. We have to work things out.
The curious implication of the very next sentence, ‘Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them’ is that we learn that Jesus, the Son of God, would continue to be obedient to Joseph. Yet, this is the last Gospel reference to Joseph. Had he died by the time Jesus commenced his public ministry? It seems so.
v. 51 A mother’s heart
His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
This is one of those unique Lucan gems in which the heart of Mary is mentioned. The other places are a little earlier after the birth of Jesus in Luke 2:19 and in Luke 2:35.
v. 52 The divine-human paradox
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour.What is puzzling and unfathomable to us is possible to God. A child grows into an adult and this child is God in the midst of us. God chooses to become a child for us. Let’s think about that. This growing in humanity is for us: to grow in loving, to grow in sensitivity, in understanding, tact, genuine charm and depth.
