Luke 2: 41-52 And the Child Grew

When Daryn, our eldest was born, his first journey was to visit my grandmother. This event had been chosen and the visit carefully entered in a baby diary of significant events, photos and milestones. It was a few months before he made his first long distance car trip to Swan Hill to see his maternal grandparents.

Jesus was about a month old when he made his first major journey. In the broad brush- strokes of the Bible, Jesus, journey and temple are closely linked. His first journey to the temple was to make the prescribed offering of a lamb and a dove for the sacrifice of purifi- cation following childbirth. Joseph and Mary couldn't afford the lamb. They arrived with two doves or pigeons and walked hesitantly towards, well, they weren’t to know what was to come. But prior to what we read are the two beautiful stories of Anna and Simeon and the blessings and prophetic words spoken over the baby.

Scripture is then silent about the family except that in Matthew of the journey to Egypt for a few years. As we said in the last week, it is easy to construct such a climate of faith around the birth of Jesus that we forget the fear and doubt of the political situation as well as the raw human situation into which he was born. We ignore them, sanitise or romanticise them.

In this time of silence, Jesus must have grown, going through all the stages growing boys go through: the terrible 2's, frightful 4’s. As the eldest in his family, he coped with brothers and sisters. He went to whatever was the equivalent of school.

Sunday School pictures aid and abet us into further error causing us to think of Jesus as a bright, blue-eyed, fairskinned young lad walking among the animals and flowers. The perfect child. But Jesus grew as a normal Jewish boy - dark-skinned, brown-haired. That "Jesus was tempted in all points as we are" would at least indicate that Jesus grew up in a normal family and dealt with all the things normal kids and parents deal with. Compared with his cousin John who grew and became strong in spirit and lived in the desert, Jesus grew up in Nazareth. John was spiritual Jesus was normal. John lived like a mystic out with the locusts. Jesus lived at home with his mum and dad.

Deep within him was a sense of his knowing his relationship with his earthly family was different and that there was a special relationship with his heavenly Father. Mary may have ensured she had a special time at bedtime: a prayer, song, a story.

His second journey was also to the Temple. Though an annual Passover journey, this one is memorably different; not just because he was lost. He is a 12 yo. Age of his Bar Mitzphar, the movement from childhood to adulthood. The time of puberty the time when he took on the adult identity and the acceptance of expected responsibility within the family community.

Whenever a child is missing a parent will panic, be distressed. We’d be aware of how Mary and Joseph would have felt on their way home a day's journey out from Jerusalem: "I thought he was with you!" "Well, I thought he was with you." How easy to assume when it comes to the care of our children. They all did a "U" turn back to Jerusalem and found Jesus, unfussed, unconcerned, in the Temple discussing theology. If that had been my boy I would have been furious - the cost in time, emotion, finances, the inconvenience, the lack of care and concern for others would’ve been ample fuel for a lengthy tirade either before or after the whack on the backside!

Something quite profound happened to Jesus. There’s a strong hint of the choice Jesus had to make concerning his life: "he was obedient to them". For the next l8yrs the Scriptures are silent, but it is obvious that Mary and Joseph would have now faced the task of raising a teenager and their experience of Jesus in Jersualem was not getting anyone off to a good start. But he was a teenager who knew who his Father really was. He was very much an individual, who at some stage went through the ordeal of burying his earthly father, for we now hear no more of Joseph.

The chapter closes and nothing is known of Jesus until he was about to commence his ministry. Meanwhile the words hang there: he was obedient; Mary pondered these things. Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and men.

What do we make of this at the start of a new year with new opportunities when we visit our annual "new year resolution" habit. As we reflect on this early life of Jesus, the circumstan- ces surrounding his birth, his growing up in a not too well off family, before we make any hasty resolutions, maybe a question is in order. What does all of this mean for us 2000 years later? In the light of all this what is our response? How shall we live?

The qualities of a Jesus-like lifestyle is offered in the letter to the Colossians. Mary and Joseph were chosen as earthly parents. Jesus was chosen. You and I are chosen. Being chosen also means that we are holy; not because we have done any holy things but because of the holiness of the One who, in love has chosen us.