"Astonished and Amazed"

African painting of the boy Jesus in the Temple.

December 30, 2012

Gospel Reading:  Luke 2:41-52

⁴¹Now every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. ⁴²And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. ⁴³When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. ⁴⁴Assuming 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. ⁴⁵When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him.

⁴⁶After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. ⁴⁷And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. ⁴⁸When 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."

⁴⁹He said to them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" ⁵⁰But they did not understand what he said to them. ⁵¹Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.

⁵²And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

Sermon: “Astonished and Amazed”

P.G. Wodehouse once wrote: “I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.”

When we think of the childhood of Jesus, we might just assume he “loafed” around, played video games with his friends and just passed the time until he was thirty and could really start living.  Of course, there are more colorful ways his childhood has been described.

The 2^nd century Infancy Gospel of Thomas has some amusing and disturbing stories about the childhood of Jesus.

There’s the story of him making twelve sparrows out of clay, and then being ridiculed for doing so on the Sabbath, and so like an angry Severus Snape child from Harry Potter, making the birds come to life and fly at his accusers.

Apparently, having a child-magician around came in handy for his dad, Joseph.  Once the boy Jesus sowed a single seed of grain, and produced 100 measures of grain, enough to feed his family and many orphans and widows. 

Another time, Joe was making a bed, but the boards were too short, and instead of having to make another trip to Lowe’s, the child Jesus simply stretched them to the right size. 

While once fetching water for his mom Mary, the crowd at the well shoved into him and broke his cistern.  He spread his cloak over it and, better than super glue, fixed that broken water pot.

But my favorite story of the child Jesus from this Infancy Gospel was when Jesus was playing with his friends on a roof, as kids sometimes like to do.  One child slipped and fell to his death.  The other children scattered in fear, so Jesus was left on his own.  The boy’s distraught parents came to Jesus and accused him of pushing their son off the roof.  So, naturally, Jesus did the logical thing.  He rose the boy from the dead and said, “Please tell you parents I did not push you.”  The boy said, “No, Lord, you didn’t.”

And finally, there is the story of the twelve-year-old boy Jesus in the Temple.  But we know that story: it’s the only one that made it into the canon.  It sounds more like a biblical retelling of the movie Home Alone where a boy was accidentally left while his whole family journeyed on, and in that isolation, proved himself cunning and wise.  This boy Jesus did not outsmart thieves with hilarious antics, though, and we do not hear anything about him eating absurd amounts of junk food and jumping on the bed. 

In fact, this rebellious child doesn’t do anything you might expect a twelve-year-old to do.  He just goes to church.  Which is perhaps why his parents, when stumbling upon him there after three days of frantic searching, were astonished.  In the Greek, it’s more like dumbfounded.  Of all the places a child could go when out of the careful eye of his parents, he went to the Temple! 

The teachers of the temple were amazed at the wisdom of this child, as he

asked them questions and gave deep answers.  In the Greek, the word amazed is closer to meaning displaced: he took all of their learning and turned it upside down.  They saw the world and their faith differently after meeting this child.

Mary rushed in to Jesus and said what any parent would say, “Child, where have you been?  Don’t you know your Dad and I have been worried sick about you?”  Jesus calmly replied, “I’ve been here.  Are you really that surprised?  I’m in my Father’s house.  Where else would I be?”

Like those learned teachers in the temple, his parents didn’t really understand what he was saying, and took him home.  We’re told Mary “treasured these things in her heart.”  Honestly, I think Luke just liked that saying.  He also said that she “treasured these things in her heart” when Jesus was born and angels and shepherds came to visit her newborn baby.  In this moment, I think she was more frustrated that he ran away from them, while at the same time proud that he stayed true to his Jewish upbringing and went to the temple.  

And then Luke ends our teeny glimpse into Jesus’ childhood with the sweeping statement, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.”

The next we see of Jesus, it is eighteen years later and he’s being baptized by John.  I can’t help but feel that we’re missing out: not knowing much about Jesus Christ, God-With-Us, until his ministry began.  But, wait a minute…wasn’t the boy Jesus ministering to those rabbis and teachers in the temple, as he astounded them with new insight on what they thought they already knew?  Weren’t his parents amazed that he would call the temple his home and hold his own with such wise leaders? 

Jesus’ ministry did not begin when he was thirty.  It began in the deep darkness of an ordinary night, in the homeless poverty of a barn used as a makeshift delivery room, in the hungry, new cries of an infant taking its first breath.  Jesus’ ministry began the night that God became one of us, that love came down to this troubled, violent world and shone with the light of a goodness that could never be dimmed. 

We do not know the full story.  We do not know whether Jesus was a child magician, or whether he replaced the usual games of hide-and-seek with his own version of death-to-life.  We do not know if those clay sparrows ever flew from the hands of a whimsical child.  We do not know if the child Jesus ate his peas, or did his homework on time, or skipped stones on the Sea of Galilee.

But perhaps some things are best left to mystery.  For we do know enough to be astonished and amazed.  We know that, if ever we feel that the playfulness and joy of Jesus has been unintentionally left behind, we only need to come here, to his Father’s house, to discover him again.  We know that, even when we think we have all the answers and every part of our faith neatly tucked in its proper box, Jesus will come with his uncomfortable questions and compassionate answers to shake open those boxes. 

We do not know it all, but it is better than way.  Without the full story, our imaginations are freed to embrace the possibility of a child who comes in the face of the homeless and hungry, who joyfully plays connect-the-dots with the stars he flung into the velvety deep of the sky, and who holds our hand and skips alongside us as we desperately seek the childlike hope we have accidentally left behind in our hurried race to being responsible grown ups.

The boy Jesus is curiously exploring this world still, waiting for us to seek him, waiting for us to find him and, in finding him, to find ourselves once more.  Let us search for him together, and be astonished and amazed, displaced and dumbfounded, with the child we discover.  Amen.