Scripture
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Well, it is the fifth day of the season, your true love has finally stopped giving you birds (for now), and it is time to celebrate again.
Merry Christmas!
…
I always find it a bit odd that this is the first Sunday Gospel reading of Christmas.
We have seven days to go, the wise men aren’t even here yet, and Jesus is already twelve years old? It’s just too fast.
But maybe the parents among us can relate.
Jesus is twelve years old, and it is time for Passover. (In the story. You didn’t sleep until spring. I promise.) For centuries, the people of Israel have gathered in Jerusalem every year to celebrate the Passover feast, and Jesus and his family will do the same, once again.
They join a caravan of travellers coming from Nazareth, family and friends, neighbours and acquaintances, each making their way dutifully south to the holy city and the holy Temple for the holy feast.
They would’ve sung psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs all the way there, celebrating God’s history of faithfulness to them and expressing their longing to ascend the holy mountain and to be in God’s presence. I will lift up mine eyes to the hills…my help comes from the LORD. (Psalm 121:1–2)
But we don’t actually hear anything of their travels—or anything of the festival at all. Apparently, it goes off without a hitch, a week spent celebrating the founding story of their faith, and then before they know it, they are on the road back home.
It’s amazing how fast the holy returns to the ordinary, and the holiday gives way once again to the daily grind.
Only Jesus isn’t quite ready for it to do so just yet. He stays behind, captivated by the Temple and the conversations within it, feeling at home there more than anywhere else on earth.
His parents don’t quiite realise that he’s missing. He’s twelve, after all, almost an adult in their world, and he’s more than old enough to wander around with caravan and his cousins, playing amongst the family. His parents figure they’ll see him at the campfire that night. No big deal.
And then they don’t. So, the next morning, they start asking around. Whose tent did the kids sleep in last night? Did anyone see where they went this morning?
By lunch, it’s become clear. He is nowhere to be found.
Mary and Joseph are worried sick, of course. I mean, what if something happened to him? Where could he possibly have gone? Didn’t he leave with everyone else?
They start heading back to Jerusalem, retracing their steps, looking down every side road, wondering if they are the absolute worst parents in the world for losing the actual Son of God on a roadtrip.
They make it most of the way back, probably camp with another group of pilgrims just leaving the city, and then on the third day, they race to the Temple to pray for help in finding their son in this huge city.
And they find him there.
Sitting in the Temple courtyard. Dialoguing with the priests and the scribes and the attendants about every matter under heaven—and in it. Talking like he’s one of them—no, like he’s a leader among them. Answering questions, and asking more. Listening for the wisdom amongst them all. Learning and living and loving the Law of God.
That moment, that image, hanging in the air, for what must seem like an eternity.
I mean, he’s just a child, right? Sure, he would be an adult of the community next year, but he’s a child. He’s twelve years old. And yet, here he is, doing what the angel had promised so long ago. Leading his people. Showing them God. Listening and loving each and every one of them.
It’s breathtaking, and surprising somehow, and utterly surreal, and deeply holy. And as annoyed as they were to have to backtrack and find him, Mary and Joseph must have paused to watch, caught in this timeless tableau before them, as their son comes into his own, as a teacher in the Temple.
After a minute, though, the awe does fade, enough for the frustration to return. And in the most mom that Mary has ever been, she waltzes right up to the gaggle of religious scholars on the floor and demands to know what, exactly, her son thinks he’s doing.
“Where have you been? We have been worried sick!”
To which Jesus replies, with what I imagine is an infuriating calm, “Why? Didn’t you know I needed to be here? This is my Father’s house.”
They’re baffled, frankly. And I mean, they know he’s special. They know the angel called him the Son of God and that he sure seems to be the messiah, but…I mean, he’s twelve! He’s their kid! This is weird.
I mean, surely this should’ve all started later, right? It’s just…it’s all happening too fast.
And Jesus seems to understand that. They’re not ready quite yet. And so, as much as he loves the Temple, as much as it feels so much like home to him, as much as he wants to spend every hour of every day talking with these priests and these scribes and these attendants about God, he goes home.
He goes back to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph, and he finishes growing up with them. He spends more time with his family, more time with his friends, more time in the woodshop and the local synagogue and the quiet countryside.
He comes back every year for the festivals, and he spends his days there in the Temple, and then he goes home again, each time, because they’re not ready quite yet.
And I wonder if that choice didn’t shape his teaching almost as much as his divinity. Perhaps if he had stayed in the Temple from twelve years onward, he would’ve come to agree with the legal scholars on all the conventional points. Perhaps he would’ve found it harder to notice when they were wrong, or to stand up when the Temple leaders were harming the people, or to walk away and lead from the margins.
Because the lesson here is twofold.
There is beauty and wisdom and holiness and home to be found in the holy places. In the Temple, there is the presence of God, and in the wisdom of the religious scholars, there is wisdom of God, hidden amongst the conversations.
And when we gather in the presence of God, in the places of God, in the holiness and the holidays and the mystery, we grow. Just like Jesus. We grow in our faith and in our love and in justice and in wisdom. We grow in God as we sit in God’s presence.
But the Temple isn’t the only place where God is.
The prophets said it again and again through the years. The Temple is God’s house on earth, but it isn’t the only place God can be. God can move. God can find the people enslaved in a foreign land and rescue them. God can walk with them through wilderness and war and uncertainty and exile, and can speak through the prophets every step of the way.
God can even show up in human flesh, in human life, in human time, just to walk with us and teach us and love us.
Because, as Jesus recognised in this passage, the ordinary days are holy, too, in their own way. The ordinary human body is holy, too. The quiet countryside and the rural synagogues and the bustling woodshops are holy, too. The time with family and friends, neighbours and acquaintances is holy, too.
And when we gather together, in the ordinary, to do our work and our rest and our play together, we gather in the presence of God there, too.
We are all made in the image of God. There is a fragment of that same divinity that lived in Jesus, living in each of us. A tiny incarnation of holiness, to mirror the Incarnation of God on this earth.
And so, when we gather together as the children of God, we grow together. We work together, and we eat together, and we listen to each other’s stories. And in those, we grow, in faith and in love and in justice and in wisdom. For the presence of God is among us, too.
In the chaos. In the quiet. In the holy and the ordinary. In the Temple and the manger.
God is with us.
Thanks be to God.
Merry Christmas.