Luke 2:41-52 (NRSV)
Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day's journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.
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"St. Luke gives us [the theme of 'lost and found'] more than any of the other three Gospel writers. He has a whole chapter on it that is unique among the gospels. In Luke 15 Jesus tells us those three parables back-to-back-to-back: the parable of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost, Prodigal Son. On Sunday mornings we gather to celebrate that we who are lost have been found. We celebrate like that shepherd who finds his lost sheep, like the woman who finds her lost coin, and like the Father, who upon the return of his Prodigal Son, tells his servants, “Quickly, bring out a robe - the best one - and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”
"Luke is also the only Gospel writer to tell us this story of Jesus being left behind in the Temple, without his mother and father even realizing it until three days had passed. But this, of course, a bit of a different story about being lost and found. On the surface, it's about a twelve year-old boy being lost and then finally found by his parents. But in the exchange at the end between Jesus and his mother, it becomes evident that the story is really about the parents being lost. The boy Jesus knows exactly who he is and where he needs to be: in his Father's house. It's his mother and father who have lost him and need the help.
"The amazing grace in this story is that it's like a dry-run for what comes later: Jesus and his disciples will also later journey to Jerusalem, and the disciples will come away from Jerusalem thinking that they have lost Jesus forever to the cross, and not understanding that they are the ones who are lost. Jesus wasn't lost on the cross. No, he was doing what he needed to do to save us! He was going to his Father's house. When Jesus dies in Luke's Gospel, Jesus knowingly offers his spirit back to God: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” He does so, knowing that on the third day those who think they have lost him will find him."
- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from sermon delivered on December 31, 2000 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/xmas1c_2000_ser/)
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"Well, if we have a hard time understanding this, we are not alone. The text from Luke says, “But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.” In essence he told them he is the Son of God and then relinquishes all power-claims that could go with that by submitting to Joseph and Mary's authority as his earthly parents. In this way he emptied himself becoming a human being, as it says [in Philippians 2]. We see in this brief glimpse into Jesus' life at age twelve both his divine nature, as Son of God, showing us the face of God, and his self-emptying willingness to be fully human just like us."
- Thomas L. Truby, from sermon delivered on December 30, 2018 (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Truby-Christmas1-2018-Riffing-Off-Jesus-at-Twelve.pdf)
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"“Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” So that's referring both to the Temple, and of course to the trajectory of his life, in which he is going to open up the Father's House to us, and sit in it. That's the whole of his family life trajectory.
[...]
"So how do we add to this for our celebration of this feast, the feast of the Holy Family? I think it's a reminder that of all the difficult things that God does in order to bring us to life, he even comes into a family. This is not necessarily a happy, sweet, kitsch, perfect porcelain reality. It can be a difficult, tense, complicated reality, full of all sorts of hidden things and unspoken things, and tensions and dramas, and that yet it was in the midst of a family and dealing with all those things that God wanted to come into our midst so as to open up the possibility that we might become God's family.
"So let's rejoice with the Virgin at what she saw. Remember how little she understood about it. Rejoice to think that our family screw-ups, our family misadventures, may also be blessed and have another meaning than the one we're currently able to give them. And that there may be a far, far happier and richer fulfilment of them than we can imagine."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Holy Family Sunday 2021 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Binsy23Sns4)
[Source of links to Paul J. Nuechterlein and Tom Truby sermons, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/xmas1c/]
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