River Road Church Baptist

December 28, 2003

Dr. Cecil E. Sherman

“A Clue to Identity”

Luke 2:41-52

Jesus was a son of the law, Judaism and tradition. Now, every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover and when he was 12 years old, they went up as was usual for the festival.

Luke is telling us that Jesus was reared in a home that was devoutly, strictly, Jewish. Jewish law required every male who lived within 15 miles of Jerusalem to attend the Passover. Nazareth was 70-75 miles north of Jerusalem. Joseph didn’t have to go. He went anyway. It says they went every year. The man took his religion seriously. The Passover lasted a week. The journey could not have been easy. Jesus had his Bar Mitzvah at 12 and became a son of the law and he became under obligation to go to Jerusalem, but distance would have excused him. This was probably his first trip. Previously, he had been considered a child.

Nazareth was a backwater. The trip to Jerusalem had to be exciting. It was a sure sign that he was growing up that he was allowed to go. It was a city. Probably, he had never seen a city. Huge crowds…the population of Jerusalem was multiplied by three to six during Passover. We’re talking about an enormous number of people crowded into a rather small area and all of it’s a first, and it had to be a thrill. I don’t think Mary and Joseph were careless parents. Relatives, friends made the trip with them. Kids ran together then as now. That they were separated from parents was normal and it was a relief to both generations. Joseph and Mary went a full day’s journey before noticing Jesus was missing. They assumed he was with friends and would show up. By nightfall, it’s obvious that Jesus is not with their party. They returned to Jerusalem immediately. After three days searching in that crowd—and consider the anxiety that is building in the parents—they find him in the temple sitting among the teachers of the law listening to them and asking them questions and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.

Religious art has had a field day with this. They make it appear Jesus is teaching his elders. This may be good art, but it’s not a good picture of Jesus. At Passover, the wisest teachers made themselves available to pilgrims. Jesus was only taking advantage of an opportunity. So, Jesus sits in the temple with teachers and as a child of unusual understanding, instructing no one. Now by the time Jesus is 30, he is accomplished in the Law of Moses and Judaism. He came to this full understanding by family pattern and personal study. When Jesus was full grown, he also argued with Pharisees. He was not overmaxed; he was drawing on a tradition that made him fully Jewish, fully Jewish in the very best sense when he spoke judgment against Judaism, as he would later do. He spoke from within the system as a son of the law.

This text is a strong argument for religious education. Joseph and Mary put Jesus in a place where he could get the best that they could give him in a religious education in his tradition. They went out of their way to give the boy religious opportunity. Children can’t bring themselves to religious opportunity; it has to be put within their reach. Your child is most impressionable at six, ten, and twelve. If they have religious opportunity, you put it within their grasp. They can’t do it without you.

I was given a strict Protestant religious education. I’ve not followed every rule I was given, but in the main, I’ve been well served by the ethical rules, the social patterns, and the theology that was given me. My education has tuned it. The basic stuff was put in place before I left home. Especially when I was a teenager did these rules serve me well; the times when I was most likely to do harm to myself or to others.

Second idea – I told you he was a son of tradition and Judaism. He was also the son of Mary and Joseph and that meant tension and obedience. “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” Now, I want to paraphrase that and bring it into the language that I would use if I had been Joseph. “Kid, for three days we’ve looked high and low for you all over this town. We’ve been scared stiff something bad had happened to you. Where is your mind?” Now if you’ve been looking for your kid for three days, I bet you wouldn’t put it softly. You’d have come on strong and if all of you weren’t listening, I might have come on a little stronger myself. “Where in heaven have you been?” That’s the way preachers talk, you know?

Now, we’ve romanticized the rearing of Jesus. Mary and Joseph had some hard times. A part of the trouble laid in the self-discovery Jesus was making through the years. Now surely you know that the baby in manager didn’t know who he was to be as an adult so sometime this awareness has to come. This text is one of those times. At 12, Jesus began to have inklings of whom he was and what he was supposed to do. You say, well that’s fantastic. Not really. If some of you were in a setting where you would loose your tongue, you would tell me that you had inklings of what you have become when you were 12 years old.

I was taken to an R.A. camp at Latham Springs, Texas, when I was 11. That’s the first time the idea that I might become a preacher occurred to me. I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t think they would pay any attention to me and I wasn’t sure I believed it myself. But that idea was there. Later on, that idea would grow stronger. That idea would become more insistent in my mind. Some of you are teachers, physicians, lawyers, business people, engineers. My 16-year-old grandson some years ago said, “I want to go into building things.” Now, he’s looking for schools that teach engineers. I’ve no doubt that’s the route he will take. This is really not that fantastic. “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. Two ideas are conflicted here. Mary and Joseph are just trying to be good parents and Jesus is becoming self-aware and growing away from them. That part’s not really that unusual, is it? I tell parents, Your kids start leaving you when they’re 13. It just takes them until they’re 18 to get their bags packed, but they’re ready to go.

A fellow in Asheville said, “You know, when my boys were six, eight, and ten, I used to dread the time when they would go away to school. When they got to be 18, I couldn’t wait.” What’s happening here? Independence – is it normal? It’s normal, you have confirmed it’s normal by resonating with my conversation, this is your experience. But that doesn’t make it easy to be the parent. Remember when you were the 17 or18-year-old kid leaving? Now remember when you were the parent when your child was leaving? When I was 17 or 18, I thought my parents were way too slow in giving me independence and then the tables turned and I didn’t know whether I was doing it right or not. You’re letting go the rope, giving more rope and in our case, she wanted it faster and I wasn’t sure. Isn’t that what’s happening here? Jesus is coming to self-awareness; it’s taking him away. They’re trying to be good parents; it’s a conflicted situation. Sometimes religious identity creates problems in family.

The text has an interesting conclusion. Jesus went home with Mary and Joseph and was “obedient” to them, but Mary remembered all these things, she treasured all these things in her heart. Looking back, it made more sense. In the moment, it was hard, hard, hard, to rear Jesus. That gives me a little encouragement.

The last idea – he was the Son of God and he was coming to his own awareness and identity and when Mary confronted him she said, “Child, why have you treated us like us?” Then came the most provocative statement in the text, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?” All commentators agree, this statement is a revelation of Jesus’ adult identity. They don’t agree on how much he knew. William Barclay, I think, overstates the case. Here’s what he said, “See how very gently, but definitely Jesus takes the name father from Joseph and gives it to God? Here we have the story of the day when Jesus discovered who he was.” Fred Craddock is more guarded. He says, “Let us at this stage of Jesus’ life simply say that there were in him vague stirrings of his own identity. The circle of his awareness and the sense of a larger duty begin to widen and deepened beyond the home in Nazareth.” I think this is the beginning, not the end of self-awareness for Jesus.

His mother treasured all these in her heart. Years after, Mary reflected. She put there Gabriel’s visit, the shepherds’ coming, the wise men, the flight to Egypt, the temple experience at 12, the time he left home at 30, the day he came back to the synagogue at Nazareth and was handled roughly, the day she and some of her other sons went to fetch him, to save him from himself, the day he hung on a cross in Jerusalem and she was witness. She backed way up. She thought about these things. Parents do that, you know? It all fit into a pattern. A pattern that made more sense afterward than it did in the living of it. Martin Buber said, “Nobody walks with God, but sometimes we can track him.”

How do we deal with our own youth? They’re 12, 14, 16, 18; finding their way, discovering themselves, they want to do the right thing, but they’re not sure what the right thing is. This text has some hints for the older generation. Ever so briefly, four of them. Don’t underestimate these people. They may be ahead of us as Jesus was ahead of his parents. Second observation – give them a religious education. Every opportunity needs to be put before them. They will do with it what they will, but they need to have it put before them. Third – give them some space. Nobody can tell anybody else what God wants them to do. Or, take the religious language out. Nobody gets to tell somebody else what you ought to do with your life. I don’t get to go but so far with my child. Last observation – every kid needs encouragement. This is not an easy thing to figure out. They need lots of encouragement. The church needs to be an encouragement.

I paid close attention to the part we read back to parents at a dedication in November. We promised we would be grandparents and aunts and uncles to these children growing up. Since families are so scattered these days, oft times, right here you’re closer than blood kin. Encourage, encourage, and encourage them. Bless them—they long for it. You know how this story turned out with Jesus, but it’s also a mirror. As you look at him, you can’t keep from seeing yourself and your relationship to a host of other people. It’s about identity and the part others can play in it. It’s a good story.

CES; lmk, mt