Luke 2:41-52

Jesus getting lost at Passover has always been an odd thing to me. 

While I understand that, in some way that is not quite clear to my scientific and 21st century mind, Jesus was both fully God and fully human, it’s hard to know what he was thinking when he chose to stay in Jerusalem as his parents, his family (for I assume his sisters and brothers were on the trip too) left for Nazareth. 

In this stage of my life, I am a grandparent and have been on many trips with my children and grandchildren.  One of the things we always do is count “heads” to be sure everyone is with us as we’re moving from place to place. 

There is often a tendency I’ve noticed among family, friends and colleagues, when we get to a point like this, to compare life now to life in the past and to assume we now are so much more advanced.  Hence, we often do not have the same expectations of understanding and action for people in the past.  The term for such underestimations of the past is time chauvinism.

However, the more I study and think of our ancestors from the past (remembering that even scientifically we are known to all be from the same ancestors and likely not more than 60th cousins away from any homo sapiens who has ever lived) it is clear to me that those of the past were easily as wise, if not wiser in many respects than, we are now.  Sure, we might know more about electrons or protozoa; but we are unlikely to be any more knowledgeable about caring for children or each other.

So, what was it that made Joseph and Mary assume rather than know Jesus was with them, even if that meant he was walking or riding along with others from the family or friends from Nazareth?  And what of Jesus?  From everything I know, Jesus was always obedient to his parents.  He is unlikely to have stayed in Jerusalem without his parents knowing except for a very good reason.

I think the explanation for the actions of Joseph, Mary and Jesus must be similar to the explanation of why God allowed Pharaoh to be blinded to the meaning of the plagues or allowed Satan to cause such pain in Job’s and Joseph’s and Jesus’s lives.  I suspect the answer is what God seemed to be saying to Job: you, just must understand I, God, got this.  We must accept we can’t understand everything, and most often have to just trust God. 

So, Jesus staying in Jerusalem as his family left must have meant, that as Jesus says to us later on, to truly follow Jesus, to follow God we have to accept that God’s call takes precedence over everything, even our normal obligations to family.

The result of all this is: God, for some reason, needed Jesus to be on his own with the priests, the scribes and the teachers in the temple.

Perhaps then, what we are to learn from this story is, like Abraham, we have to be willing to put it all on the line when God calls.  I don’t know about you, but for me, in the midst of a relatively comfortable life, to think of giving up everything to follow God seems wholly unreasonable.  Yet, I think we are to pray daily to be able to rise to the occasion, to do what God calls us to do.  That, of course, also makes us understand, that with all the rewards of following Jesus, we must, like Jesus, accept those times, like in the desert or at Gethsemane, when being faithful is hard, almost too hard.

Meditation by Canon Phil Lewis, MD, MPH
Trinity Cathedral
Member of the Lifelong Christian Formation Committee
Diocese of New Jersey