Gospel Reading: Luke 4:21-52
For Sunday, December 30, 2012—Christmas 1
The Sunday after Christmas is the second least attended service of the year; the Sunday after Easter is the first. What’s going on, is it some kind of spiritual hangover?
Congregants have been so jacked on Advent adrenaline (worst band name ever) and worshiped late into the night on Christmas Eve, a little sleep and then one last push to praise our dear savior’s birth, then they spiritually black out. When they finally come too is it all they can barely remember what happened (did I really sing the alto part on O Holy Night?), they have strange programs in their pockets from services they don’t remember attending and their mouth tastes like stale coffee and dry cookie crumbs. 
Is that You, Jesus?
No wonder the thought of going back to church so soon makes their head hurt, and for what? All the exciting stuff has happened. And if they happen to know the Gospel text for this week it only drives them back under the covers more quickly—Teenage Jesus (second worst band name)?
Well it is too bad, because even if the congregants stay home Teenage Jesus goes to church (well the Temple). This passage is so unique in all the gospels and narrativly and theologically rich.
How Fast they Grow Up
First of all Luke’s Gospel is full of the drama of traveling to Jerusalem for the Passover, the crush of the crowds in the city and then the leaving the kid at the gas station/loosing your kid at the mall scenario.
One can easily identify with the panic that they feel searching and not finding him until they go all the way back to Jerusalem to the Temple. At the temple we, the reader come up on Teenage Jesus, as we tag along with Mary and Joseph, and see him learning.
Learning, studying, listening and asking questions. I don’t know of another place in the New Testament where Jesus is studying and learning. He asks a lot of questions, but they are more rhetorical, rabbinical asking a question to make a point sort of questions. Here Jesus is studying and learning, and sure he is a really good student and the teachers are impressed with his depth of understanding, but he is still the student.
Sponge Jesus, Smarty Pants
Then Jesus’ parents step out of the shadows and make a scene—which no teenager wants their parents to do, especially at the Temple in front of all the cool Rabbis.
“Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” And Jesus responds with a typical teenage kind of contemptuous jab, “where did you think I would be? I am at my father’s house.”
Of course, you don’t have to characterize it like that. It could be the more traditional reading where the boy Jesus cocks his head and quizzically (and maybe a little condescendingly or is that compassion) and says, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” If you just picture Jesus with blank eyes and him speaking in an English choirboy voice, it can seem super creepy.
Choir Boy or Hogwallup?
Am I the only one that has ever thought that? The only way I can even get that reading from the text is through filter of time and culture. I have more experience with creepy English choirboy narratives, than I do teenager in 1st century Palestine narratives.
But here is the problem: This is the first Sunday after Christmas. God has come into the world. Jesus the Christ has been born into our midst. God is among us, but maybe there is a little bit of a feeling that when we started to look for him, we could not find him. We have been anticipating his coming for four weeks and we celebrated his arrival and now we just want to see him and hold him or be held by him, but we don’t see him among our party of travelers.
Jesus is done r – u – n – n – o – f – t!
The Hardest Question
When they find Jesus in the Temple Mary says to him, “Look, your Father and I have been searching for you with great anxiety.” Sometimes the search does feel like great anxiety. After he responds with, why were you searching for me, didn’t you know I would be in my Father’s house?” The text interjects, “but they did not understand what he was saying to them.” That seems like a really good confession/point of contemplation to bring into the post-incarnation world.
I like both the searching for Jesus and confession that they do not understand what he is saying. The Hardest Question isn't about what Jesus is or isn't up to, but, rather: What exactly did Mary and Joseph not understand?
Is related to a much larger lack of understanding that carries us through the balance of Luke’s Gospel?
Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.
