I have to think that Jesus was just a little different from the other children, even Mary and Joseph’s.  I’m sure Jesus also liked to play games, run around, and do the things active children have always enjoyed doing.  And Jesus was just a little different.  His parents knew it, saw it, from time to time.  I don’t think he was a troublemaker.  I just don’t see him liking mischief or throwing fits.  Though he wasn’t a middle child, my guess is that, more often than not, he was the peacemaker among them.  He never taunted his younger siblings or made fun of them.  I picture him always finding something positive, encouraging, and upbuilding to say.  He lived his life under his loving, faithful parents and tried to live up to their love for him.  As the Jewish mother would say, “He was always a good boy.”

He was also trying to live up to another love.  Mary and Joseph could get so occupied with everyday work that, how Jesus was given to them, what the angels told them, and what the elderly people at the Temple said, while never forgotten, wasn’t always front and center.  Then Jesus would say the oddest things.  And I have to believe there were moments when Joseph and Mary saw and knew that God was at work in their child, this child of the promise, this fulfillment of God’s promise.

This is my hunch.  Scripture has almost nothing to tell us about Jesus between birth and baptism.  Oh, there’s the flight to Egypt, when Jesus was still so very, very young: that terrible episode reminding us of the bloody, brutal lengths to which those in power will go to maintain their hold on to that power.  There are several noncanonical accounts, all late, compared with the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).  It seems there’s a noncanonical account named after each of the apostles, even Judas!  These never made it into the Bible.  As you look through one and another, it’s easy to see why: Jesus as he is represented in those accounts bears little resemblance to the man we encounter in Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.  Rather, the Jesus shown to us in the noncanonical accounts bears an all too similar resemblance to other teachers of the mystery religions so common in the ancient Greco-Roman world.  The name Jesus is being used to offer another gospel.  The more things change . . .

The only other authoritative episode from the life of Jesus between birth and baptism is what Luke tells us here.  Just this one, just this once.  Why include it?  Luke wants to remind and assure his readers that the Spirit is active, at work: that, with Jesus, God is writing upon human hearts a new chapter in the history of the Holy Spirit.  With the other canonical gospel writers, Luke tells how the Spirit came upon Jesus at his baptism.  That doesn’t mean the Spirit had no connection, relation, or communication with Jesus before that glorious moment.  Consider your own journey to faith, and since faith came alive in you: if you contemplate the journey long enough, you’ll realize the Spirit has been at work in you, with you, too, even before you knew how to know it.

Like the other three, Luke also takes pains to remind us of and insist upon the humanity of Jesus.  The Incarnation is hugely important for John, as we remember from his first chapter; it is also of first importance for Luke.  Luke shares this episode from the youth of Jesus at least in part to show us that God is at work in the child.  God is at work in us as well, for, in Christ, we also are His children.  And, praise the Lord, God is at work in our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  Let us attune ourselves to perceive it and pray that God would be pleased to use us to help nurture and bless that work in the young lives around us.  How our children need Christ, in this society, this culture!  They will always need him.  Some know it already; it will take others longer to see it, and still others longer to accept it.

Luke tells us Joseph and Mary made an annual trip to Jerusalem for the week of Passover (2:41).  It’s not as if Joseph had paid vacation.  They had to plan and save carefully for this special trip, each year.  That meant hard choices, doing without.  The parents made those sacrifices gladly, because being in Jerusalem for the Passover was just that meaningful to them.  We make time for and devote our limited resources to what is meaningful to us.  How are we using our time?  Our resources?  How does this line up with our avowed priorities?  Let’s each have that conversation with God, in this new year.

As Jesus was approaching the age of responsibility, accountability, his parents took him with them for the Passover (2:42).  Passover was several things, all blended together: a festival of God’s bounty and blessing, a celebration of freedom from bondage, and a reminder of God’s power for salvation.  For this festival, the number of people in Jerusalem multiplied tremendously.  It was crowded, loud, bustling, busy, happy—sort of like Christmas shopping in the big city.  Mary and Joseph made it very clear, several times, that Jesus needed to stay with them, that during the festival, it was easy to get separated.  And Jesus listened and stayed with them all through the festival: he wasn’t a troublemaker and didn’t get into mischief.

Even the happiest celebrations in this life come to an end.  Luke tells us that, “while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem” (2:43).  This sounds like a choice, a decision rather than an accident or oversight, like the five-year-old left behind on the field trip: I thought he was with you!  Jesus wasn’t ready to return to Nazareth just yet, so he stayed.  Apparently, he didn’t first consult Joseph and Mary.  He was almost at the age of religious responsibility.  God was with Jesus.  Jesus was with God.  Mary and Joseph could see this, hear this, from time to time, when Jesus would say the strangest, most wonderful things or do something so lovely.

Well, Jesus could have asked them if they could stay a little longer, but he knew Joseph and Mary couldn’t: with a large family to feed, Joseph had to get back to work; Mary had to get back to look after the children and keep the home going.  There’s an old Scottish saying about the end of the Christmas season: Yule’s come, and Yule’s gone, and we have feasted well: Jack must now go back to his flail, and Jenny to her spinning wheel.  When you know your parents are going to say No, not in anger or irritability but just from necessity, but you want something so badly, and it isn’t a bad thing you’re wanting . . . well, sometimes the child makes a decision that will upset the parents.  And the Spirit was with Jesus, uniquely.

Apparently, the group from Nazareth, a town of maybe as many as one thousand, were all heading home together.  With a population that size, many were probably related to one another, by blood or marriage.  Joseph and Mary didn’t have to worry about Jesus, because they were all like one extended family, bound by connections of trust, a community of trust.  “Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day.  Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends” (2:44).  He was with the group, all right—where else would he be?  Mother and father just wondered why Jesus was taking his time rejoining them.

You can imagine how they felt as the realization struck them as well as the rest of the tight-knit group, that Jesus wasn’t with them.  They couldn’t just call his cell phone.  They couldn’t post their plea for help to social media, or even go to the police: there were no police.  There was only one thing for the pale, heartsick couple to do: “they went back to Jerusalem to look for him” (2:45).  The festival was over; Jerusalem was returning to its normal size of somewhere around 25,000 people.  How to begin?  Where to start?  Whom to ask?  Hour passed into hour, people shook their heads, shrugged or maybe offered leads that didn’t amount to anything.  People wanted to be helpful, but what could they do?  A day passed.  One day became two.  Two became three.  Yes, they hoped, but the anxiety, the worry and fear, grew larger and darker, and stronger.  Hope is up against a lot in this life!  Their child, their well-beloved son: where could he be?  Was he alright?  What if he was hurt, or what if someone was hurting him?  Oh, they prayed and cried and begged God.  At what point does bravery melt away?  At what point do helplessness, powerlessness win?

God is at work in Jesus, Luke wants to remind us.  The Spirit is uniquely with Jesus.  But Luke also means to remind us that God is at work in all who turn to Him, who seek Him, who fall flat on their faces before Him, realizing God is the only help there is, the only real help, true help.  When Mary and Joseph get to the point when they felt they had exhausted every possibility, just demolished and sick, God reminds them of the one possibility that has been there all along: God.  Sometimes we have to run through everything else before we can really understand that the only one we really needed all along, the only one who could really do anything about anything all along, after all, is God.

“After three days they found [Jesus] in the temple courts” (2:46).  I guess they hadn’t looked there yet, hadn’t thought to: as if why would a twelve-year-old boy be at the Temple when he could be anywhere else, doing anything else in Jerusalem?  What is there for a boy to do at the Temple, anyway?  Or, what boy hangs out at the Temple for three days?  Yet, there he was, “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (2:46): he was in Sunday School!  Just imagine these eminences permitting this strange boy to sit there among them, not just listening to them as they delved into God’s Word, but also permitting him to asking them questions.  How are we to understand that?  Is adolescent Jesus quizzing the teachers of the law?  Pass!  Fail!  I hear him asking questions like “Why?” and “How?”  So often, probably too often, people don’t really know why they believe what they believe, or even what they actually believe.  People don’t often spend much time considering the consequences of how they think, discovering inconsistencies, gaps, assumptions . . . mistakes.  It’s in conversation with others and above all in conversation with God, that all these begin to surface, for us to become aware of and consider.  One huge blessing of spending time with the Word is that, by it, God challenges and clarifies our thinking.

We can prove very resistant to that, because most of the time we’ve convinced ourselves that we’re right, not wrong, especially about the things that matter most to us, the things that evoke strong feelings and reactions.  May every Christian set him or herself to dwell more and more in the Word, listening, learning, growing, becoming.

As Jesus listened, it didn’t take long to perceive that these experts in Scripture had disagreements: they didn’t read or hear Scripture in the same way.  Maybe it was differences of emphasis.  Maybe it was differences in theological preference.  Maybe it was differences in their upbringing and life experiences.  They were each attracted by different qualities of God’s character.  And each was drawn to God.

Years later, Jesus will again be at the Temple, engaged in conversation with the purest, highest, and best: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes.  Then, as with what we hear today, there will be amazement at what Jesus says.  All those years later, Jesus will silence those who challenge him, send them away stunned with the breadth and depth of his familiarity with God’s Word, as if how did he know all this?  Who was he, that he knew all this?  Luke tells us that, “[e]veryone who heard [the boy] was amazed at his understanding [knowledge, intelligence] and his answers” (2:47).  I suspect it’s more than his understanding of Scripture that amazes them.  We can all be staggered by how well some people know Scripture, but it isn’t just the ability to quote chapter and verse that made Jesus different.  It was also, maybe even more, his knowledge of people.  Jesus had an uncanny way of reading the readers, of understanding why they understood Scripture the way they did, why each one especially latched on to one thing or another in God’s Word.  Jesus has a way of showing people to themselves, causing them to see themselves as God sees them, in His holiness and righteousness, and in His love and grace.  Some were broken by the experience of having their brokenness shown them, to discover, suddenly, overwhelmingly, that there was one who truly knew them, understood them through and through.  For these, the understanding they felt, sensed, in company with Jesus was healing, was like what they had always heard of God’s love but hadn’t yet encountered in this world, hadn’t encountered so abundantly, so purely, as in the presence of Jesus.

There were others, though, enraged by the experience of having their brokenness shown to them, of discovering, suddenly, overwhelmingly, that there was one who truly knew them through and through.  For these, how Jesus read them and knew them inside and out, felt like judgment—exposure, shame, the humiliation of their chief god: self.  They couldn’t abide it.  Such never can.

Sitting with the teachers of the law, listening, Jesus heard different takes on God.  He listened attentively, thoughtfully.  Many seemed to be saying that God loved those who obeyed the law, loved them because they obeyed the Law, loved them because they were righteous.  Others, the smaller number, asked how anyone was or even could be righteous before God: God was too high, too pure, too holy.  An even smaller number also argued along those lines, but with different emphasis: The high, holy God, knowing none could be righteous before Him, gave the blessing of the Law, like a wall or a sheepfold for safety, but He gave even more, and better: He gave His love by offering mercy, grace, forgiveness, salvation.  It was as though God were saying, in so many ways: know Me, love Me, walk with Me.  God’s love wasn’t dependent upon mortals, who we thought we were in our heart of hearts, or what we did, or even what God already knew we would do.  This love already there—this was God offering Himself to us, if we would only receive Him.  God wanted to create a community of trust, a connection of trust.  Trust, faith, was better than mere obedience.  Obedience in and of itself has little to do with love.  Trust has much to do with love.

Here, today, God reminds us that He offers Himself to us, for us.  Here, He again offers to establish with you a connection of trust, a community of communion: bound by love, lifted by hope, sustained through faith.  Blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him.