Anxiously Searching for Jesus
Rev. Cynthia Anderson, December 27, 2009 Have you ever been separated from someone you love, from someone you feel responsible for? Most of us can remember some instance where, at least for a time, we weren’t sure of the whereabouts or safety of someone we love. And certainly, most parents can recount at least one or two anxious moments when they weren’t sure where their children were. And have you noticed that when it happens you have a major brain cramp? We become so anxious we have trouble thinking – we even overlook the obvious. Today, we hear this very human story about a moment in the parenting life of Mary and Joseph when they too were not certain of the whereabouts of the twelve-year-old Jesus – this Son who is the gift of God, who is actually God himself in the flesh – no pressure there. As Luke tells us the story, the family has been to Jerusalem for the Passover. They have traveled with a huge caravan of extended family and friends from Nazareth and after the excitement of the celebration, they are finally on their way back home. This is an ordinary slice of faithful Jewish life. Mary, Joseph and Jesus are part of an extensive network of social relationships that comprise life in the Jewish community. And the trip to Jerusalem for Passover is an annual pilgrimage made by the faithful to celebrate their remembering of God’s saving acts in bringing them out of slavery in Egypt. Jesus is being raised in great faithfulness to the traditions of the Jewish faith. On such trips, it was not unusual for boys of Jesus’ age to band together and move throughout the caravan as it made its way to its destination. After all, Jesus is 12, moving to that age of Bar-Mitzvah and the transition to being an adult male, with all of the privileges and responsibilities that conferred. So, after leaving Jerusalem, it is not until the next day that Mary and Joseph realize that somehow Jesus is not in the caravan. Those of us who have adolescents realize what a complicated thing it can be to keep track of their whereabouts when they are with friends – and we have cell phones. So we find Mary and Joseph checking every way among their family and friends before coming to the daunting conclusion that Jesus must be back in Jerusalem. They hurriedly set off to search for him in great anxiety, which only grows as they go back to the places in Jerusalem they had stayed, checked with friends, looked in all of the most likely places. It is not until three days later that they find Jesus – in church of all places, sitting with the religious leaders having a serious conversation about matters of faith. It’s probably not the first spot most parents would look for a 12-year-old boy. But, there sits Jesus, deep in an interesting conversation and seemingly oblivious to the fact that he’s been separated from his parents for three or four days. Mary rushes up to him and, in her relief at seeing him alive and well, and does what moms do; she gets a little testy – why have you treated us this way, she asks – we’ve been searching for you with great anxiety. And Jesus’ response is a little cheeky to say the least. No apologies for worrying his mom to death. Not even any excuses. Just this odd question – why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house? It seems that as far as Jesus was concerned he wasn’t lost – he had never been lost. He had been right where he was supposed to be all the time. To hear him tell it, if Mary had just thought a moment, she would have expected him to be nowhere else. This may seem an odd story for the lectionary to choose on this Sunday after Christmas. But perhaps we can see its importance if we understand that it is designed to function in a number of ways. First it assures us that Jesus, who is completely God, is also completely human and he lives and walks around as a 12-year-old boy who is growing and developing in his faith, albeit precociously. Second, this is the only story of Jesus’ boyhood in the New Testament. The story bridges the birth narratives, in which God in Jesus enters human history as a fully human baby full of promise and those next scenes in which God in the man Jesus will fulfill that promise. But what does this story have to say to us? Well, as I look around, it seems to me that many of us are still anxiously searching for Jesus – at least for our idea of Jesus. There are those who search for the historical Jesus. And there are those who search for the new age version of Jesus – a kind of spiritual guide who helps us find ourselves. There are those who search for Jesus the miracle worker who pops in when needed and then recedes into the background before making any real demands of us. We live in a culture that seems to feel it has lost – or is in danger of losing – Jesus. And we have all kinds of folks telling us what to do to find him again – as if he’s an object we’ve misplaced and with the right strategy can make reappear. This anxious sense that we’ve somehow misplaced Jesus is at the core of so much of our anxiousness at Christmas. Surely, we tell ourselves, during this season of all seasons, we can find Jesus. And we spend so much time and energy and money on the quest only to find on this first Sunday after Christmas, that he has eluded our attempts to manufacture his presence or control his appearance in our lives. Yes, there’s a fair amount of angst and anxiety over the search for Jesus. We can identify with Mary and Joseph during those long days of anxiously searching for Jesus. Most of us can think of a time when we have anxiously searched for him, when we were in the middle of a situation that felt out of our control, in which we felt helpless, desperate, lost and separated – even from those we loved most – even from God. In those moments, we find ourselves desperately looking for Jesus, trying to get him to appear, to be present, going from one strategy to the next in our attempts to find him. But in this story from Luke, Jesus stop us short. He asks us why we’re so anxiously searching for him -- he isn’t the one who is missing. He is right where he has always been, doing God’s work in our midst. We’re the ones who leave him. We pack up and head out on life’s journey, certain we know the way, not paying much attention to whether Jesus is with us somewhere in the caravan we’ve put together for ourselves. And then come those moments in our lives – a strained relationship, the loss of a loved one, a difficult diagnosis, a job or career that goes sour, a nagging sense of meaninglessness – those moments when we are brought up short, when everything comes to a halt and we wonder where Jesus is. We busy ourselves looking for him, growing more anxious the harder we try to find him. But today, Jesus reminds us that he’s right where he’s always been. He isn’t missing. We’re the ones who get lost, who lose our way, who head out on the road without him. These days immediately following Christmas invite us to reorient our lives and to see Jesus always present with us. Christmas is not just one day in the year – it is a way of life. A way of life centered on Jesus Christ – 365 days a year. These days invite us to reorient ourselves around the pivot point of Christ, to turn around and move toward him, to stop running off without him. Jesus isn’t missing from our lives or our world. He’s right at the center where he has always been – when we have eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to receive the very presence of God in the middle of whatever circumstance in which we find ourselves. That is the promise that Christmas makes real. We need not anxiously search for Jesus – we have only to stop and turn around to find him waiting patiently and graciously for us to make our way back to him. He is the unmoving center of our lives – the love that cannot be lost, the life that cannot be defeated by death, the very presence and promise of God come closer than we could ever have imagined. Thanks be to God. Amen. |
