Finding Jesus

Scripture:       I Samuel 18-20, 26,  Psalm 148

Colossians 3:12-17,  Luke 2:41-52

Some of you may be familiar with the “Where’s Waldo” children’s books.  They show a crowd of people doing something in a large space – maybe at an amusement park or a circus or a large birthday party – and the challenge is to find Waldo, with his distinctive red and white striped shirt, bobble hat, and glasses.  I’ve seen some variations on “Where’s Waldo” on Facebook – most recently a panel where we’re invited to find the panda amid the snowmen – and I have to confess I’m still looking for that panda; I just don’t seem him.  All I see is snowmen.

In our Gospel reading today, Mary and Joseph are playing a game of “Where’s Waldo” – except they’re looking, not for Waldo, or for a panda for that matter, but for their 12-year old son Jesus, and they’re not enjoying the game at all. They had all gone up to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover, and after the festival was over, they headed back home – except that apparently Jesus had other ideas.  There were throngs of people returning from Jerusalem, and Mary and Joseph apparently traveled as part of a larger group containing their extended family and friends, likely for protection – safety in numbers, as travelers on the roads from Jerusalem were subject to attack by robbers.  They assumed that Jesus was among the group, but by the time they got a day’s journey from Jerusalem, Mary looked at Joseph and said, “Have you seen Jesus”? and Joseph said to Mary, “No, have you seem Jesus?”  “I thought you were keeping an eye on him?”  “I thought you were keeping an eye on him.”  They hurriedly look among the caravan with whom they’re traveling, asking each person “Have you seen Jesus?  Have you seen Jesus?” – nope, no Jesus.  And panic sets in.  You who are parents know this feeling if you’re ever gotten separated from your child at the mall, or at the beach, or in an amusement park.  Where is he?  Is he ok?  I hope nobody tries to rob him or hurt him or, God forbid, abduct him.  And with a major festival having just ended, Jerusalem would have been full of families, many with 12-year old boys….many of whom would have looked a lot like Jesus – Jesus wouldn’t have been wearing a “Where’s Waldo” red and white striped shirt and bobble hat and glasses to make him easy to pick out in a crowd.  Nor did Mary and Joseph tell Jesus something in advance like “if we get separated, wait for me at the information counter”.

So Mary and Joseph are running through the streets of Jerusalem in a panic, looking for Jesus among the various shops and bazaars and side alleys, and the longer they look and the longer they don’t find him, the more their hearts are racing and the more their guts are knotted up in worry. 

Finally they check in the Temple – and there sits Jesus, calmly listening to the learned elders and asking them questions.  Mary said, “Child, why did you do this to us?  Your father and I have been half out of our minds worrying about you.”  And Jesus replies with something like, “Well, where else did you expect to find me?  Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”  As far as Jesus was concerned, he hadn’t been lost at all; Jesus knew exactly where he was. Of course, Mary and Joseph had no idea what he was talking about…..as far as they were concerned, the house of Jesus’ father was back in Nazareth, where they’d been heading before they had to return to Jerusalem to search high and low for him.  And then they all went home….Luke tells us that “Jesus went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.  His mother treasured all these things in her heart.”  Well, that’s one way of putting it…..

Only Luke’s gospel includes this story, and so this account is really the only glimpse of Jesus we get in the Bible between his infancy and adulthood.  We’re reminded that the Holy Family were not plaster saints, but human beings, and like any other human beings, sometimes they got their signals crossed.  And Jesus was at that age, then and now, where a boy starts to become a man – and in that culture, the transition happened much more quickly than in our own.  Jesus was beginning to engage with the world around him, and religious faith was at the center of that world.  He was beginning to claim his faith for himself, and not rely only on the faith of his parents.

It’s a transition we all have to make, sooner or later…..and actually, a transition that happens over and over again throughout our lives.  As children, we look on God and Jesus, and on life in general with wonder.  Our parents provide everything for us, when we cry, they come running to us.  And the church, whether it’s a grand cathedral or a humble chapel on a side street like ours, is a place that’s warm and safe and lovely, and people there care for us.   Our parents tell us that God loves us, and our Sunday school teachers tell us God loves us, and we trust in that.  We look on the beauty of the world, and it all seems magical, and we’re at the center of it.

And then we grow older, and we start to notice things that seemingly don’t fit the story we were told – and this may happen more quickly or more slowly, depending on our circumstances, and on our parents’ circumstances.  As we get older, when we cry, our parents don’t come running quite as quickly; sometimes they don’t come running at all, but instead ask us to do things for ourselves or to help out around the house, rather than have them do everything.  “You’re a big boy now, you’re a big girl now, and you can make your own bed or clean up your own room, or take out the trash.”  Or tragedy strikes: a grandparent dies, and we have to wrap our minds around the idea that we won’t have a chance to talk to them again, at least not in this life.  Or a parent becomes seriously ill, and the child may have to pitch in and help care for the parent.  In some neighborhoods, where gunfire and police and ambulance sirens are a daily part of life, this realization that life isn’t perfect, that life can be really messed up, can come very quickly; for others, where parents have the resources to shield children from life’s harshest realities, it may come more slowly.  But it comes to all of us eventually. 

For some, that can be the end of faith as well.  We ask, if God loves us, why did God let this happen?  For some, the conversation goes no further, and faith dies.  But if we’re fortunate, our parents and our Sunday school teachers and our pastor can explain to us that though God is in charge, God also gives humans the freedom to make our own decisions – we know from our own experience that sometimes we make mistakes, and other people make mistakes as well, sometimes humans make really awful decisions, and sometimes even do so on purpose.  God gives us freedom, and sometimes we use that freedom to inflict incredible pain on others or ourselves.  And sometimes, with the best of intentions but a lack of foresight, we do really just plain dumb stuff.  And the natural world itself isn’t always safe, weather events and disease can wreak havoc.  But even though there’s a lot that’s wrong with the world, and wrong with other people, and even a lot wrong with ourselves, God is still at work to try to save us all, and that’s why God sent Jesus.  If we’re fortunate, when we come of age, our parents send us to confirmation class, and our pastor teaches us what the Bible says about God and what the church believes about God – and all of this is really a process of handing down the faith that has been handed to us through the ages.  I haven’t actually had any confirmation classes since I’ve been here – no children of confirmation age quite yet, but in a few years, Lilly and Eric and a few of the other children will come of age, and confirmation class will become part of the schedule.

And so we’re confirmed.  And for many people, confirmation is where their relationship with God stops developing…it’s as if they ‘graduated from church’.  Their faith gets put on a shelf along with the Bible the church may have presented them at confirmation, and both gather dust.  We don’t see them at church again until they come to be married, or until there’s a death in the family. 

And it’s at that time that many struggle with their faith.  Just as the answers we were given at age 6 didn’t always work for us at age 12, the answers we’re given in confirmation class at age 12 may not work for us at age 22, or age 52, or age 82.   Because as our lives continue on and we mature, life brings different questions.  As we mature, our relationship with God needs to mature as well.  At one stage of our lives, faith may be all about getting to heaven.  At another stage in life, or in different circumstances, faith may be about just getting through the day with body and soul together and intact.  And at yet other stages in life, faith may not be all that much about us at all, but more about those around us, asking questions about why other people are suffering, asking why God lets other people suffer, and maybe getting to the point of asking what God is asking us to do in response – as Jesus said, “Those who would save their lives will lose them, and those who would lose their lives for my sake, and the sake of the Gospel, will find it.”  Yet even as we mature, we hope never entirely to lose that childhood sense of wonder. As we come to the end of our lives, and we no longer have the strength to do much for our neighbor but pray, faith may once again be mostly about getting to heaven, and surely we can face that question with confidence if our lives have been spent in God’s service…as Catherine of Siena said, “All the way to heaven is heaven, for Jesus said, ‘I am the way’”.  So faith begins with God and us, but as we mature, inevitably it leads us to our neighbor….and ultimately from our neighbor back to God.

We can learn from the life of Jesus.  As an infant, his parents kept Jesus out of harm’s way, keeping him safe from the murderous King Herod.   As Jesus grew into early childhood, if he had any questions, he asked his parents.  As a 12-year old, Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem to bring his own questions to the learned elders in the Temple.  Twenty or so years later, Jesus would again enter the temple, but this time with a whip of cords, to cleanse the Temple of the corruption that he saw – corruption that was surely also present when Jesus was 12 years old, but that Jesus at the time didn’t question, but if he even knew about it, accepted as a given, as “just the way things were”.  And while Jesus embraced the Jewish faith of his people, he developed his own unique perspective on it - theologians have a fancy word that they use, “hermeneutic”, which means framework of interpretation.  As the Gospel writers present it, while the Pharisees emphasized purity and while the Temple authorities emphasized religious observance – sacrifices, tithes, attendance at festivals and such – Jesus emphasized love, not a sentimental love of trying to feel warm and fuzzy about everyone, but love in action, as demonstrated by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, liberating the captive, and binding up the wounds of the afflicted – love in action, as Jesus loved us so much that he laid down his life for us.  And so as our faith matures, the life of Jesus can be a guide to us.  Our answer to the question “What would Jesus do?” may not resolve all our problems, but it’s a really good start.

At age 12, Jesus stayed behind in the Temple, as his parents ran all over Jerusalem asking, “Where is Jesus?”  And that’s a question for us as well – Where is Jesus?  Where can we go to find Jesus?  The creed says he’s seated at the right hand of the Father – that’s one place, but not a place we can visit at the moment.  We hope to find him at church, and that’s one place…but if this is the only place Jesus can be found, that leaves him sitting around in the sanctuary twiddling his thumbs six days a week.  Where is Jesus?  Jesus said that he can be found wherever even a small number of believers are gathered, for he said, “Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”  We find him among the poor and dispossessed, for Jesus said, “Whatsoever you do to the least of these my brethren, you’ve done it unto me.”

We’ll soon be starting a new year, 2016.  As the year 2015 ends, may we be grateful for the places and situations and people in which we have encountered Jesus.  As the new year begins, may it bring opportunities to encounter Jesus in new places, in new situations, in new people whom God puts into our lives.  May our eyes always be open to seeing Jesus, and when Jesus calls, may we answer. Amen.