A Story from the Lost Years
December 26, 2021 + First Sunday of Christmas + Luke 2:41-52 + Pastor Michelle Sevig
I was lost once. Well, honestly, I’ve been lost many times, but one time in particular I was lost for quite a while…in the wilderness, by myself. I was a young adult and on a weekend vacation in Northern Minnesota with my parents and a guest from England. We stayed in a rustic cabin with holes in the walls, no air conditioning and plenty of mosquitos. At breakfast my step dad said something annoying, I don’t remember what now, so I took off on a walk in the woods all by myself.
It was glorious! It’d been a long time since I’d been hiking in the wilderness, and it felt good to be alone with my thoughts, breathing in the fresh air and enjoying the morning sunshine. Until I realized I wasn’t on a clear walking trail anymore. It was more like a path, probably one made by animals, and it became more faint, unrecognizable, the further I walked. Suddenly I was out in the middle of nowhere, and I couldn’t find my way back to a trail. I was lost.
My parents were worried, of course, when I didn’t return within an hour of taking off. They were just about ready to call the sheriff, or whoever you call when someone is missing in the woods, when I came walking up the road toward the set of rustic sabins we’d spent the night at.
It’s every parent’s worst nightmare–to have a child separated from their parents. When I was a child, and before cell phones, when I got “lost” at Target I’d hear an announcement over the intercom, “Shelly Miller, please come to the service desk, your parents are looking for you.” but now when separated from my kids, I just send a text, “Where R U?” And for the more serious missing children alerts we no longer look at milk cartons with photos on them, but instead hear our phone alarms go off with an AMBER alert of a missing child.
Mary and Joseph had no such warning systems when their child was lost, missing from their traveling caravan headed back home after visiting the temple in Jerusalem. On this first Sunday after Christmas we read from the gospel of Luke, not about Jesus as a baby, but about Jesus as a young boy. It seems we’ve lost a few years of narrative in just a few short hours between the celebration of his birth Friday night to this morning. Much of Jesus’ history remains lost to us. Did Jesus go through a terrible two phase? Sudden growth spurts? Teenage issues? Youth directors/pastors/parents would love to know!
From his infancy to the start of his ministry at age 30 we know almost nothing about Jesus, beyond his being raised in the Village of Nazareth in Galilee and working with wood in some fashion. Some might call these the lost years of Jesus.
Ironically, this one incident in the temple, from Jesus' “lost years” features him being lost from his family’s tribe for three days. He doesn’t think he’s lost. He’s in the temple, right where he aims to be. But his parents don't know where he is and become utterly frantic. In fact one interpreter suggests that Mary's question to Jesus, “Child, why have you treated us like this? We have been searching for you in great anxiety!” could be interpreted as, “ Child, why have you put us through hell? We feared you were lost for good!” Any parent can relate to that feeling, right?
So what’s his response? Typical teenager, some might say. ‘What? I wasn’t lost! I’m right where I was supposed to be.’ And then responds to his parents' questions with his own, “Why were YOU searching for me? Didn’t you know I must be in my Father’s house?”
But wait! Joseph is his father, what is Jesus talking about?
Identity. It’s here in this story from the lost years, read at Christmastime, that we begin to see more clearly who Jesus is in the world—Son of God, one who must grow in divine and human wisdom.
All of our New Testament scriptures were written post resurrection, not as they happened in real time. So every story, yes this one too, tells us about who Jesus is from the perspective of knowing him as the one who was raised from the dead, something we celebrate at Easter, not Christmas. After his crucifixion, his disciples, his family, friends and followers we’ve never heard of were lost in sorrow and grief as the One they had loved, trusted and looked to for redemption was gone. For three days they suffered in great anxiety, were put through hell fearing they had lost Jesus for good. And then on the 3rd day, he was found; though Jesus had never really been lost. He was alive again–walking on the beach, eating fresh fish from the grill, extending his scarred hands in peace.
Symbolically, Mary and Joseph do the same. They search for Jesus for 3 days, and when they find him, not only is he safe and sound, he is actually doing the work of God he is destined to do. Jesus was beginning his preparation to be the one who finds and rescues the lost.
The lost ones…
who are forgotten by society,
who are betrayed by systems of oppression,
who are lonely and disconnected from others
who are sick and suffering in pain or fearing death.
The gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as the Divine seeker of the Lost–as in the famous trio of parables, about seeking and finding-the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son. And is each parable Jesus identity is defined as the one who has come to seek and save that which is lost. God in Christ seeks us, even when we don’t seek him.
And right now, when so much seems at a loss in the world, that is good news. God, Emmanuel, is not lost at all, but is right here with us in the midst of it all. Seeking us out. Giving us hope for a new dawn. Feeding us at the table of mercy and grace.
