[i Sam. 2:18-20, 26; Lk. 2:45-52]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
They say it takes a village to raise a child.
The raising of a human child is so complicated that it takes more than two parents to be involved in its upbringing.
It also takes more than one generation to be invested, that’s why humans live longer to also take part in the education of the children and grandchildren; anties, great uncles, cousins and so on, all have there role to play.
They say it takes a village to raise a child.
What about a child raising a village?
What about a child raising a nation, a human family?
This is the setting of our Gospel narrative this morning:
Three times a year, at Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles, the people of the Jewish nation were requested to pilgrimage to Jerusalem and attend ceremonies and sacrifices at the Temple there.
Because it was such an undertaking, people usually only fulfilled the obligation to go up to Jerusalem once a year.
Such a trip was expensive, travel took several days -as we read in our passage today- and the roads were made unsafe by bandits roaming the countryside, which is why people travelled in large groups, whole families together and even whole villages.
It’s in this context that Jesus goes missing.
Parents who on a day-out have lost sight of a child, know the sheer panic that this situation brings. Sweat, palpitations, fear.
People looking for a teenager who’s run off, desperate to bring them back home, running through their heads what they might have done wrong.
Or when a pet escapes through an open door, and everyone’s hoping the animal won’t get hit by a car.
Or when an elderly person, confused, manages somehow to get past security at their care-home onto the street and they’re unable to tell others where they need to go.
Panic strikes.
Guilt for not paying attention.
Anxiety.
There were no police in those days, or emergency services, no means of quick communication to contact the authorities in the Capital.
Mary and Joseph were on their own.
What on earth possessed them to leave Jesus unattended, to travel in a group without proper supervision?
As we mentioned just now, that’s the way people organised their pilgrimages in those days, so rather than criticise them, let’s help them find their child.
Another twenty four hours travelling back to the city as fast as they can, on foot, agonisingly slowly.
What was going through their minds? Did they speak much to each other, or sat in silence by the camp fire, trying not to imagine the worst.
Will their son find a place to stay, to be safe and indoors during the night? Will he be given a proper meal? Will someone care for their boy?
Then another twenty four hours of rushing around Jerusalem, a big, crowded city, with many nationalities and customs, not everyone speaks the same language or the same dialect.
And then they find him, at the Temple.
Joseph goes and gets him out, Mary probably had to keep her distance in the Women’s Court.
Relief, he’s alive and well.
Seemingly he has been taken care of, welcomed, fed, he was even allowed to sit with the adults, the important people at the Temple and talk to them.
Crisis averted.
It wasn’t the first time Jesus came to the Temple.
Remember, as a first born boy he was dedicated there forty days after his birth. We’ll be celebrating the event at the Presentation in February.
It’s however the first time we here Jesus ‘speak’.
Here he is, on the cusp from boyhood to manhood, completely at ease with his surroundings, holding his own amongst the grown ups.
Mary and Jospeh have looked all over for him, and there he was, safe and sound, not a care in the world.
For Jesus it’s the most logical place to be: had he not been presented to God his Father, so why would he not spend time in his Father’s house?
How would we have reacted to that answer?
This whole story’s about finding the lost.
Granted, we’re not to used to Jesus being the one who’s lost, but Saint Luke has turned the narrative around.
Mary and Joseph are parents desperately looking for their missing child.
They leave everything behind, including the safety of their tribe, the safety of numbers and go look for him.
Like a shepherd leaving behind the ninety nine sheep of his flock to go and retrieve the lost one hundredth.
Or like a father running out the house when he sees his long lost son approaching from afar.
They were lost and now they’ve been found.
We were lost and as the hymn goes we are found.
Like Mary and Joseph, like the shepherd, like the prodigal son’s father, God will come out to find us. Every single time.
Like them, God left the safety of his own tribe, his own home, even his own heaven and came looking for us. And he will continue to do so, God’s love is so infinite, his grace so immeasurable that he will never stop looking.
God left heaven in order to reconcile earth to himself.
God was incarnated so he could show us how much he knows what it feels like to feel utterly lost, to feel utterly abandoned.
And then God finds us because he will never stop looking.
Emmanuel, God with us.
God walks with us, along life’s way, holding our hand at every step.
And when we let go, God comes to find us, looking for days, even for a life-time, and God will come back looking for us every single time.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.