Grace, mercy and peace be to you
from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our sermon
text today was inspired by the Holy Spirit by the apostle St Luke. And we read from
his gospel where it says:
And Jesus
said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?
Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus, send to
all of us today your Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well, and to all of
us that we may hear well. Amen.
In our Gospel reading today, we read about Jesus’ childhood. It’s a very
strange thing, that in all of the four gospels, in Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John, nothing is really said about the Jesus’ early life at all. Here in the
Gospel of Luke, this passage about Jesus going to Jerusalem when he was twelve
years old is the only thing we know.
In Luke chapter 3, we read that Jesus began his ministry when he was
baptised at thirty years old. We often say that each of the gospels tell the
history of Jesus’ life, but in reality, they only tell us about the 3 years
from when he was 30 until his death and resurrection and then when he ascended
into heaven.
Normally, if we were to go to a library or book shop and read a biography
about someone, we would expect there to be a section about the person’s early
years. Sometimes, reading and learning about a person’s childhood, gives us a
window into the psychology of a person—for example, sometimes the things a
person does when they are an adult are influenced by things that happened to
them when they were children.
So if we were to read the gospels of Mark and John especially, we might be
disappointed to find nothing really said about the history of Jesus’ early life
as a child. In Matthew, nothing is said about Jesus’ life between the time when
the family came back from Egypt when they fled from King Herod and settled in
Nazareth until the time when John the Baptist was preaching in the wilderness
when Jesus came to be baptised.
The only thing we know from the time Jesus was a child is written here in
the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus and his family went to Jerusalem when he was
twelve years old.
One more thing—you might be aware of the fact that in the history of
Christianity, there have been other gospels apart from Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John. Some of these gospels have names such as the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel
of Mary, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, etc. Christians have never
recognised these gospels as authentic, and not the voice of the Holy Spirit.
Some of these writings attempted to satisfy people’s curiosity about Jesus’
childhood and fill in some of the missing details. There are stories about
Jesus playing with mud when we was a child, and making pigeons out of the mud,
which then fly away. Sometimes, at different times in church history,
Christians have held these stories in higher regard. But we have to be careful
with these things, and make sure that we stick to the word of God as revealed
to us in the Scripture.
But in 2 Peter it says: We did not
follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
Do you see here? Peter tells us that as Christians we are not following cleverly devised myths. When it comes to cute little stories about Jesus’ childhood, we should
make sure that follow the truth, and not cleverly devised myths.
So what actually does Luke write about Jesus’ childhood? This is what we
read: Now his parents went to Jerusalem
every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they
went up according to custom.
The feast of Passover is the celebration of that wonderful event where
God lead the people of Israel out of Egypt. Passover commemorates the time when
the Israelites had to paint the blood of a lamb over their doorposts, so that
the angel of death would pass over them, and not slay their firstborn children.
In our passage, Jesus himself was also Mary’s firstborn child. And we read
about him as a twelve year old boy—this is a very significant age, because it
kind of marks that time between being a boy and a teenager.
We read: And when the
feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in
Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the group
they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their
relatives and acquaintances, and when they did not find him, they returned to
Jerusalem, searching for him.
Here we get a picture of how life was in those days—here was a group of
travellers, and people seemed to trust each other in looking after each other’s
children, and Mary and Joseph didn’t seem too worried about the fact that they
hadn’t seen Jesus for a whole day. They just assumed that he was with his
friends, having an enjoyable time, sitting on the back of someone else’s cart,
playing games and doing all the kinds of things that kids do. But after a
while, it occurs to them that they should go and check on him, and make sure
they know where he is.
Now, many parents can often identify with this story—I heard about a
family recently who went to a Christmas party in two separate cars, for
whatever reason. When they got home, both of them thought that the other one
was bringing their daughter home, but neither of them did, so that had to go
back and get her! Many families have a story like this—“Remember the time when
so-and-so got lost at the Royal Adelaide Show”, and things like that! I think
that today, people are probably so much more protective of their children,
because of all the news reports we hear about people who mistreat children, and
all sorts.
By today’s standards, we might think that Mary and Joseph were a bit
careless. After all, this was God’s son. But we get the impression that in
those days, there was nothing particularly unusual going on—it seemed as though
it was common for people like Mary and Joseph to let their children have plenty
of freedom when travelling together, and let them enjoy the company of other
children and other families.
But at the same time, if this was God’s son, then God the Father was not
going to give up his job as father. God the Father knew where he was.
But can you imagine what must have happened in the minds of Mary and
Joseph? We read: When they
did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. After three
days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to
them and asking them questions.
Have any of you ever lost a child for three days? I remember when I was
in high school, I went on an overseas music trip to Japan. One of my friends,
who was a twin, was left behind when we went to Hiroshima, because they counted
his twin brother twice! I remember the panic of the possibility of us not
finding him, and that was only a matter of a few hours.
But imagine three days—and this wasn’t just any child, this was Jesus.
Let’s think about this for a minute—we know what it must be like to lose a child
for three days. But what if we were to lose Jesus? Surely, as Christians, we
wouldn’t want to lose Jesus for a minute. Sometimes, it’s easy for as
Christians who come to church each week to be happy to lose him for six days of
the week, only to be pretty uninterested in finding him the following Sunday.
Of course, many of us go through patches in our life when our faith is not as
important to us—it doesn’t mean that God had abandoned us during those times.
He is faithful to us even during our times of weakness in faith.
But what’s our attitude towards Jesus? Are we happy for him to make
friends with other families, and play with other children, but not to be with
us? We have to be careful how we talk about this though—Jesus does not slip
away from us, simply because we don’t feel his presence, or when we are not in
a good frame of mind. Of course, it’s a good thing for us to read the bible at
home, and to pray, and to do works of love towards people around us. But Jesus
does not stay with us only when we have put our “religious hat” on. He stays
with us, because the word we hear from him in the Scripture is a living and abiding word, and it is a word that continues to work on us and shape us through all
kinds of things that happen to us in life. And when the words of the Scripture
keep on churning over in our minds, through good times and bad times, through
happy times and sad times, through times of joy and times of grief, we know
Jesus is travelling with us faithfully through all of this.
It’s when we start to reject the word of God that things get dangerous.
We don’t value God’s word anymore, and when we go about our daily business
churning over the word, we resist it and repel it from us. We start to think
that the Holy Spirit comes from our own hearts, or that God’s word is no
different from what we think, or that the things God rejoices in are only those
things that make us feel happy. No—if we want to find Jesus, we find him in his
word. John says: Whenever our
heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Whenever we think that our sinful human hearts have pushed and forced
Jesus out, God is
greater than our heart, and he knows everything. God reveals to us a new word, that is greater than all the standards of
spirituality and religiousness that we set for ourselves, and that word is the
forgiveness of sins, pure and free.
Let’s read our reading: 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. And when his parents saw him, they were
astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so?
Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” And
he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you now know that I must be
in my Father’s house?”
What a wonderful mystery we learn here in this reading! We see here a
wonderful picture of how Jesus is both true God and true man. Jesus had Mary as
his human mother, but he had God the Father as his true Father. And it’s a
wonderful thing, that Jesus was looked after by Mary and Joseph as a child, and
yet at the same time, as true God, Jesus didn’t actually need them at all. For
example, think about the whole of the Christmas story—did Jesus actually really
need a human mother? Did he actually need to be born of the Virgin Mary? Did he
actually need Joseph to take him to Egypt? Well—if it weren’t for Mary and
Joseph, Jesus would have survived, I’m sure, even as a baby. After all, this is
not just any baby, this is the Son of God, and God knows how to look after his
own son. But Jesus knows that we all have to be born of a human mother, he
knows that we all have to be looked after by our parents, and he chooses to be
like us in everything.
Afterwards we read in the reading: And Jesus went down with them and came to Nazareth and was
submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in his heart. Listen to that: Jesus was submissive
to them. If we want to know about Jesus’ life
before his baptism, then just listen to these words. He was a good and dutiful
son. He did was his parents asked him to do. If he had to go outside and
perform a chore, he did it. He didn’t have to do, of course—he didn’t actually
need his parents at all. But in order to be like us, he chose to bless our life
at every single stage, so that we could pattern our lives on his. But also, in
all our failures in life, Jesus lived a perfect life on our behalf. We often
look back on our childhood, and we might think about all the wasted
opportunities. We might think that we were rotten children who gave our parents
a hard time and pushed them to the edge. We might think that these years we
could have spent learning God’s word and serving him were used on all kinds of
other things. And so we read in Psalm 25: Remember not the sins of my youth. And then we look to Jesus’ youth, and we no sin there—only purity. This
shouldn’t discourage us, but through the forgiveness of sins, through holy
Baptism, all the purity of Jesus’ youth is ours. Jesus’ perfection becomes our
perfection, and our failures become his failures. He dies for our failures, and
we receive his perfection purely by faith, and all the sins of our youth are
completely wiped clean.
One more thing—Mary in our reading almost tells Jesus a bit! Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your
father and I have been searching for you in great distress. Often we go through times in our life when we are searching for Jesus in
great distress. And we can even become a bit angry with Jesus. Why are you
letting this happen to me, Jesus? Why do I never seem to get past this problem?
Why am I feeling like this or that? Why is this going on for so long?
And then, in all our frustration, Jesus looks at us calmly and lovingly
and says: Why were you looking for me? Did
you not know that I must be in my Father’s house? Come and find me in my Father’s house. Look, and see me standing at the
right hand of God bringing all your needs and all your worries to my Father. I
spend each day regularly in prayer for you, says Jesus. I am always there in my
Father’s house, with my blood, offering it to my Father for you. But also, the
will of Jesus is done on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus comes and makes our
little humble churches here on earth his Father’s house, so that he says: come
and find me here, in my Father’s house—don’t find me in all the fluff of the
world. Find me here, speaking my words of comfort in the church, the words of
the forgiveness of sins. Find me here in my Father’s house, baptising people,
and encouraging you with the gift of the Holy Spirit which I gave you there.
Find me here in my Father’s house, strengthening you with my own body and
blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Did you not know that I must be in my
Father’s house?
Amen.
Lord Jesus, teach us to find you where you have taught us to find you, in
your Father’s house, and nowhere else. We thank you for your holy life, which
you lived completely for us, and to forgive us. Come and dwell in us, and help
us to grow and become strong in faith and in you, and let the favour of God the
Father rest upon us, just as it does on you. Amen.
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