The Boy Jesus For You
Luke 2:41-52
In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Luke 2:46-52 After three days they found [Jesus] in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”
49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
51 Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… It is very easy to misunderstand what is happening in today’s Gospel which records Jesus as a 12-year-old boy in the temple. We tend to think that He amazed the teachers with His understanding because He was and is God. As the only-begotten Son of the Father He is omniscient; therefore He knows all things, He knows all the answers. It’s a piece of cake for Him to do this. Except that is not what is going on here.
Notice how Luke writes that the 12-year-old Jesus was listening to the teachers in the temple and asking them questions. And it’s not that Jesus is just playing along; He’s truly learning. Luke records that Jesus “increased in wisdom and stature.” Just as Jesus was growing up in body, so also He was growing up in mind as a true human being. Even though Jesus most certainly is fully divine, He is also fully human. And we know from Scripture that Jesus did not always use or reveal His divinity, a truth that is demonstrated here. Jesus doesn’t impress the teachers here by pulling out His divinity card. Rather, right there before them is perfect humanity, a boy who loves His heavenly Father and who is absolutely enthralled with pondering the Scriptures, a boy who has no sin to cloud His understanding or insight, a boy who has no misunderstandings about God and His Word.
The way that the Scriptures speak of this is that the Son of God emptied Himself of His divine powers for us. We call this Jesus’ state of humiliation which is everything about Jesus from His divine conception through a word delivered into Mary’s ear by the angel all the way to His death and burial. And during that period of time when Jesus lowered Himself to become one of us, He did not always or fully use His divine knowledge and might. Only after His death on the cross and burial did Jesus then enter His state of exaltation as He bodily rose from the dead and ascended to the Father’s right hand.
Most certainly Jesus now always and fully exercises the powers of His divine nature as both God and man. But here in today’s Gospel, Jesus has emptied Himself for us in order to redeem us. St. Paul writes in Philippians 2:6-8 “[Christ Jesus], being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
So, consider what is going on here. Having been raised in a pious household, Jesus had been hearing and learning the Scriptures all His life. He was growing up with a clear-minded, innocent, and accurate grasp of the Scriptures as a fully human boy. Now here He is in the temple, and He is reveling in the discussion of the things of God, demonstrating marvelous insight, growing in the holy words of the Scriptures. Would that all our children would be like that, right? Here is Jesus, increasing “in wisdom and stature,” all without making use of His divine powers. Here in Jesus, perfect 12-year-old humanity is being revealed. That is what is bringing amazement to the teachers.
We also marvel and are amazed at all of this because we realize that Jesus our Savior was doing this for us and for our children and for our grandchildren. He was living a perfectly human life in our place. He was living a life unstained by sin from beginning to end so that He might cleanse us of our sin and that we might be given to share in His love of the Word. He did this so that we might be made perfectly human again through faith in Him.
This is so very important for us to remember and cling to, especially when we seem to have lost track of Jesus like Joseph and His mother did. All too often we can become complacent in our faith. We are tempted to think that we have all everything about religion all figured out. And then we take our eyes off Jesus and focus our attention on the things and the people and the honors of this world. Everything seems to be going along fine until we get a rude awakening of some kind, and then we are confronted with the truth about ourselves. And suddenly Jesus seems to have become far, far away from us because we have been walking along without Him for so long. That is when the fear strikes you that perhaps you’re the one who is lost, and you don’t know how to get back to Him.
Thankfully, the good news of today’s Gospel is that Jesus in the temple is already at work to bring you back into God’s holy presence – just as Mary and Joseph were brought back – and to find you and reconcile you to the Father in Himself. That is His Father’s business.
As Joseph and Mary were anxious about being separated from Jesus, so Christian parents also should be anxious that their children are not separated from Jesus in this ungodly world. That should be our greatest concern for them, infinitely more important than fearing that they may not be smart or popular or athletic or get a good job, more important even than their physical welfare. For nothing worse can happen to anyone than that they wander from Jesus and are cut off from Him and the life He alone can give, and then ultimately die without faith in Christ.
So our fears in particular are for our loved ones who have strayed away from the Lord and who may not even seem to care about those who have loved this world and their own philosophy of life instead of the wisdom of Christ. Be wary of just giving up and saying, “Oh well, it’s not my business.” Don’t pretend that those people are not acting like unbelievers when they have no time for the preaching of Christ or His Holy Supper. We should care and we should be anxious for them. So pray for them and speak to them about Christ before it’s too late for them.
There is comfort here knowing that Jesus lived through these growing up years, including adolescence and early adulthood – those times when people often stray away from the faith. Jesus lived through all the stages of our life in order to sanctify them for us and to make the way back for those who have strayed, so that His life might be theirs again, so that the words of Psalm 25:7 might be in their mouths: “Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you, Yahweh, are good.” Our Lord fills up this and every phase of our life with His perfect life so that we might never lose hope for those who have lost track of Jesus. He lives to restore our humanity and to reclaim us and draw us back to Himself.
What is clear here in today’s Gospel reading is that while Joseph and Mary lost track of Jesus, Jesus Himself was never lost. He was always right where He was supposed to be. He was in His Father’s house and about His Father’s business. Jesus would not only learn and do the carpentry work of His guardian-father Joseph, but also and especially the work of His heavenly Father, where wood and hammer and nails would be put to a different use. Jesus continued to do His work until it was perfected 21 years later outside Jerusalem when He said, “It finished.” This, after all, is the Passover feast, and the Lamb of God is in the holy temple. His shed blood causes death to pass over you. By His holy cross He paid for your sins. You are redeemed, you are bought at the price of His suffering, death, and resurrection.
For three days Mary felt the loss of her Son when He had to be about His Father’s business. All these things that happened she would keep in her heart, even though she may not have understood them yet. Mary may well have recalled this day in the temple later on as she stood at the foot of her Son’s cross and lost Him again, this time to death and the grave, only to receive Him back once more on the third day as He rose from the dead. Here Jesus said, “Why did you seek me?” Later angels would announce to the women at the tomb, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (Lk 24:5). The temple was destroyed and in three days it was raised up again. Jesus had to be about His Father’s business like this in order to deliver Mary and Joseph and the whole world from the curse.
Today we are given to see that the Son of God emptied Himself so that we might be emptied of our sin. In Jesus we are being restored to our true selves. By His Spirit, we are being made to be all that we were first created to be – not in the way of the world, which thinks you are becoming all you can be by pursuing self-fulfillment and achieving your dreams. No, you are being recreated in the way of Christ, increasing in godly wisdom, in love for the Lord, and in kindness and compassion for others.
So remember this: You may sometimes lose track of Jesus, but He never loses track of you. He has inscribed you on the palms of His fully human and nail-scarred hands. The Lord has given you His saving name, and He has not withdrawn it. His words and promises always remain true; you can count on them, and you can trust in them.
Jesus increased in wisdom and stature in order to give you stature and standing before God, to bring you back into the Father’s favor, to make you wise for salvation through faith in Him. Here your lost humanity is restored. You can count on this Jesus, who already as a Boy was applying Himself to His saving work for you.
In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit.