10. Losing Jesus

Luke 2:41-52

Have you ever lost something really important that someone else entrusted you with? Spare a thought for Mary.

This is the only story we have of Jesus in the thirty year gap between infancy and public ministry. He is 12 years old.

It was easy enough to overlook someone when travelling in a large group that was leaving the huge annual Passover festival in Jerusalem.

Joseph: “He’s at the front with his mother and the other kids.”

Mary: “He’s at the back with his dad trying to hang out with the men.”

Sorry folks, both wrong.

As they go about their journey they are unaware that Jesus is not with them. We have a couple on the road outside Jerusalem who are unaware that Jesus is not with them and don’t see Him for three days. Luke is using a literary technique that is a bit like a frame around a picture. At the opposite end of Luke’s gospel we will meet another couple on the road outside Jerusalem who haven’t seen Jesus for three days and are unaware that a stranger walking with them is actually Jesus. We sometimes underestimate how skilled these gospel writers were when it comes to writing.

He is found outside the temple in discussion with the teachers and they are amazed at his participation in their discussions.

Meanwhile, His parents are astonished.

Mary tells Jesus that she and his father have been looking for him.

Jesus’ response is to tell them that he could be found about his Father’s business.

Mary was referring to Joseph.

Jesus was referring to God.

The original Greek doesn’t have a word to fill in the blank: “I must be about my Father’s ………..” Translators insert house or business to make it read better in English. These are the first recorded words of Jesus anywhere. His first statement is to make it clear that his priority is to be doing what His Father wants.

Luke uses the Greek word dei (must) repeatedly in his writing, giving a sense of the sovereign plan of God unfolding in Jesus.

Jesus must proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God (4:43).

He must suffer many things (9:22).

He told Zacchaeus that he must stay at his house (19:5).

There is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

And here, aged 12, Jesus must be about his Father’s business.

Something astonishing is happening in this boy. He is beginning to understand who he is.

Don’t be thinking that Jesus had some sort of God-switch that He could just flick and do the God-stuff. He didn’t sit in his high chair at nine months thinking about theology and turning cabbage into chocolate.

He learnt the Scriptures like any other Jewish boy. He learned to pray like any other Jewish boy. He didn’t swagger into the temple, give the God-switch a flick and have some fun with the teachers. If he was able to engage with them it was because, at 12, he had already learned and pondered the Scriptures profoundly. And he was developing such a relationship with God, in Scripture and prayer, that he was realising who he was.

Jesus would return to the temple in very different circumstances years later (again Luke is setting us up for what lies ahead). He would once again cause astonishment, although not with questions but by turning over tables and driving out religious peddlers who were turning a profit in God’s house. The response of the religious leaders was more chilling on that occasion (Luke 19:47).

Ponder

Like Mary and the teachers in the temple, are you amazed and astonished at Jesus?

Do you view the gospels simply as a journal of what Jesus did and taught, or are you starting to see the genius in the inspired authors (e.g. Luke’s framing of the story of Jesus between the couple who were unaware that he was not with them on the road out of Jerusalem in Luke 2, and the couple who were unaware that he was with them on the road out of Jerusalem in Luke 24)?

Consider the Incarnation. God became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1,14). Jesus emptied himself, being made in human likeness (Philippians 2:7). If the Incarnation is real, Jesus had to learn Scripture and develop a relationship with God in prayer just like us.