The Lost Years

Propers: The First Sunday of Christmas, A.D. 2018 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our Christmas continues this morning with the only story in the Bible of Jesus as an adolescent. We have tales of Him as a fetus, as a newborn, even as a toddler. But then we skip ahead to His emergence as a public figure around the age of 30. And we’re left to wonder: What became of Him in the meantime?

There are plenty of stories that attempt to fill in the gaps. There are legends, for example, that the young Jesus traveled to Britain with His uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, who owned tin mines in the region. Others speak of years spent in India or Tibet, studying with gurus and yogis.

Scripture, however, places Him firmly in the Galilee at age 12, when His family, along with their extended community, traveled south to Jerusalem for the high holy days. Passover is the principle festival of the Old Testament, upon which we base our own celebration of Easter, or more properly the Pascha. Devout Jews, whom Mary and Joseph certainly were, would come to the great Temple for religious feasts, a journey of several days from the Galilee on foot. And of course pilgrims would travel in large kin groups for safety and mutual support.

When the festival was ended, the family headed home, though unbeknownst to them Jesus stayed behind. We mustn’t read our own cultural norms too deeply into this. Mary and Joseph were by no means neglectful parents. Rather, they were always amongst a gaggle of family and friends. They had every reason to believe that Jesus was with the group, and it took them a good day to realize otherwise.

After three days they found Him—note that ominous period—and where else should He be but in the Temple. Mary and Joseph are sick with worry, but their concern surprises Him. Why would they be alarmed? Isn’t this where He is meant to be, within His Father’s house, doing His Father’s work? Yet they do not understand Him, we are told. Not fully. Not yet.

His age is no coincidence, mind you. At 12 He would be considered on the cusp of manhood, one year shy of legal adulthood, when He would be expected to keep religious precepts and to participate in public worship. Yet here He stands in the story—still officially, religiously, a child—not simply listening to the learned rabbis and teachers of the Law, but instructing them. At what ought to be the beginning of His formal religious education, Jesus is teaching the teachers, and they are rightly amazed.

This is the period in a young man’s life when the particularly talented and clever would be singled out for rabbinic instruction and taken under the wing of a great teacher as his disciple—just as Jesus would one day call fisherman as His own. But the child Jesus has already outstripped the teachers, not simply in His hometown but here in the big city, here at the Temple itself. It is they who must listen to Him.

Jewish readers would recognize all this in the Gospel story. Gentiles, however, might note something else. The Emperor Augustus—who styled himself king of kings, savior of the world, and son of a god—was also said, at age 12, to have recited a shockingly learned public eulogy at his grandmother’s funeral. Here Luke presents to us a rival brilliant 12-year-old also destined for greatness. Here we have Christ set up as the true Emperor, the true Augustus. A parallel this dangerous, this subversive, would not have been lost on Roman ears.

Regardless, after this episode in the Temple Jesus returns home with His parents to Nazareth, and, it says, was obedient to them, increasing in wisdom and years, and in divine and human favor. So for as much as it’s fun to speculate about Jesus journeying to the ends of the earth, to Britannia, India, Tibet, it seems instead that Jesus’ “lost years” are anything but. We know where He was, and we know what He did.

He lived in Nazareth, a relatively small town in a relatively remote section of the country. He became a builder, like His earthly father, Joseph. Scripture refers to them as carpenters, but we might think of them more like masons or contractors, skilled professionals who worked with their heads as well as their hands. Jesus did not undergo formal rabbinic training. Why would He? He knew everything that the religious establishment knew and then some by the time He was 12. That’s why everyone always sounds so shocked at His teachings in the Gospels: Where did this guy go to school?

He did not study with yogis and gurus. I very much doubt that He ever traveled to the tin mines of Britain. Instead, He did what all of us do: He spent most of His adult life working hard, providing for His family, and building a community. He did so quietly, humbly, and anonymously. We don’t hear about the years between ages 12 and 30 because nothing much of note seems to have happened then. He lived like us: toiling quietly, without fanfare, to care for those He loves.

Keep in mind that this is God on earth, God made flesh. And He spent most of His mortal life hallowing the lives of simple, quiet, working people: not rich, not famous, not powerful, but faithful and loving and true. Jesus was in effect lower middle class. He had far more in common with the working poor than He did with any rabbi, any emperor, or any great king of old. And there is meaning in that. There’s grace in that. God chose to become one of us: a good Son, a good worker, a good Man. And if that’s good enough for Jesus, then by God, it’s darn well good enough for me.

So what changed at age 30? Why did the Son of God go from anonymous carpenter to miracle-working Messiah? There was no alternation in Him, of course. All the stories we have agree on that. From day one He was always God, always King, always Christ. That’s the whole point of Christmas, really. But at age 30 His time at last had come. And He went about the work of doing His Father’s will.

Maybe it’s because priests back then were considered ready to serve at age 30, and Jesus was indeed a priest, though by no means a traditional one. Personally, I suspect it has to do with His other father. I suspect that His public ministry began shortly after Joseph died. For indeed there is no clearer signal for us that childhood has ended and the mantle has been passed.

Brothers and sisters, today is Christmas. The fanfare is over, the frenzy all spent. But the celebration continues for 12 full days. We enter now a quieter period, a sort of pause betwixt the Nativity and the New Year, when we recover, take stock, and look ahead. There shall be resolutions to write, leftovers to consume. And we may well be struck by a sort of melancholy relief as the holidays wind to a close.

Perhaps life has not quite turned out the way that we expected. Perhaps we haven’t struck it rich, or written the great American novel, or been able to retire early. Perhaps old wounds remain open even as new opportunities present themselves. But amidst our ruminations of the past and resolutions for the future, let us take a moment to look at our lives not with the eyes of man, and certainly not with the eyes of the media, but through the eyes of God.

God, who silently toils. God, who works with His hands. God, who spends most of His life caring for His parents, never leaving His hometown. Think of what our lives must look like to Him—He who cares nothing for power or fame or bank accounts; He who instead notes every sparrow that falls, and counts every hair on our heads. For Him, there are no lost years. For Him, there is only life.

Merry Christmas, my friends. May the love of God in Christ Jesus hallow every home, every town, every quiet vocation. And may we know the God who is born to us, who comes down to us, in the silence.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.