Looking for superpowers

a Sermon for Christmas 2C
Text: Luke 2:41-52

Please pray with me. God of Hope and Wonder we thank you for families, friends, and most of all, our relationship with you. May we continue to learn how to love you and be your children. Amen.

There are a few strange things you probably noticed this morning in our gospel from the evangelist we know as Luke: The holy parents forget Jesus in Jerusalem; Jesus just hangs out in the Temple for 3 days; Jesus talks back to Mary when she comes to collect him. OK, maybe that last one isn’t so strange, considering the Jesus of this story is a pre-teen. Sorry to those in this room in the 11-13 range, but many adults have come to see this as the unfortunate byproduct of your hormones. Hey don’t look at me—I’m just reporting what I hear! My kid’s not even 2.

These are strange things, for sure. How could Mary and Joseph be so careless with Jesus, the Son of GOD? After the strange circumstances of his conception and birth, the angel visits, and the prophecies, how can they not check whether or not he was on the caravan? That he was, in fact, playing with the other kids? But I think this reveals more about us than about them. About our priorities and the way we govern our lives.

But really, most of us don’t have our minds on Mary and Joseph, anyway. Our minds aren’t really on the 12 year-old Jesus, either, but on the 30 year-old Jesus as a 12 year-old. Like a fiancée discovering their love’s baby books, yearbooks, and family photo albums, we’re looking for clues into the Jesus we know by looking at his past. We want to know more about him; as if discovering what his favorite food was might help us to grow spiritually. So this…this is really about us. And since we treat Jesus as some kind of superhero, looking at Jesus’s past is an attempt to discover what Superhero Jesus was like as a child. We look for evidence of superpowers to answer the unanswerable theological questions that have haunted Christianity for centuries. Was he born with superpowers, or did they show up at baptism? Does Jesus know who he really is, or does he merely have a hunch? Does he understand the world at birth, or does that understanding just show up one day, or does it only happen in death? These dizzying questions circle around the Scripture and we hope that they can get answered because really, deep down, this is merely part of our own pursuit to better understand him and his nature. In this way, the story of the pre-teen Jesus is full of new confusions.

It says in verses 46-48:

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;

This is perhaps the closest thing we have to seeing pre-teen “superpowers”. Jesus was “sitting among the teachers…And all who heard him were amazed”. We might be tempted to see that what was amazing about his teaching was his age. That the maturity of his answers were beyond the ability of a “normal” 12 year-old. But I think that’s weak. Especially in light of our modern bias against the wisdom of youth. No, I’m more inclined to see it plainly—Jesus, at any age, gave some pretty solid answers. At the same time, it also didn’t say that he answered well—it says that they were amazed. This is the same word used in later chapters in the crowd’s response to Jesus’s miracles. There is something remarkable about this adolescent, isn’t there?

It is that moment in the Scripture, when the teachers are amazed and the parents come in and are astonished that helps us understand what it means to move from the Incarnation in the birth of Jesus to the ministry of Jesus’s later life. This pre-teen Jesus is on the cusp of living into his called life. It would have been common in Jesus’s time to not see Jesus at 12 as a boy, but as a young man. The teenage years were seen as full maturity. Similarly, if Jesus were following the rabbinic traditions at the time, by the age of 12, he would have memorized all of Scripture and would soon be exploring Midrash and all of the great questions of Judaism. In other word, at 12, Jesus might reasonably be considered a budding academic. And further, those sitting around him in the Temple aren’t likely to be 70 year-old graybeards, but young men, many of which could very well be in their late teens and twenties.

What is most profound, therefore in this Scripture is not a revelation of Jesus’s childhood, but a defining moment in Jesus’s maturation and the revelation of Jesus’s adulthood. One scholar highlights an interesting textual shift in the midst of this reading. He points out that the story begins from the parent’s perspective. After they come to the Temple and find Jesus, the perspective shifts onto Jesus. In verse 51, the perspective is singularly about Jesus. It says:

Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.

The story becomes centrally about Jesus. The text itself narrates Jesus’s independence from his parents, even as he succumbs to their direction and instruction. In many ways, this is a demonstration of Jesus’s maturity and adulthood—that he is able to follow his calling from GOD by being obedient to his parents, even after the point in which he no longer needs to.

In finding a ‘Father’ that takes the ‘top spot’ from Dad, Jesus is making both a deeply human and deeply spiritual decision. This is small comfort for parents that are dreading the onset of their own kids’ budding adulthood. But this is more than maturity and the passage of time; more than some imposed sense of wisdom or a practiced custom. This is, instead, the image of one who is changed through his new relationship with GOD and with the world. And each of us is given that opportunity to be changed—whether we like it or not.

As the children of parents who had trouble with our growing up; as children of parents who reluctantly allowed us to move out on our own; or as parents, with children at home or children long gone we are all in the midst of following GOD’s call and exploring the redefinition of relationship that comes with it. For many, this can be a traumatic time, full of confusion and even estrangement. But it is necessary, if not inevitable.

We often speak in our culture of growth and maturity as loss—a loss of innocence, as well as a loss of peace and harmony and a loss of dependent relationship. But rarely do we see what is gained. As each of us is separated from our families and customs, and as we bind ourselves to GOD through faith, we gain community. We gain new family. We gain the fullness of GOD’s love and a multitude of ways to love GOD back. We (St. Paul’s) are a product of that love and that relationship.

I don’t have answers to all of our questions…but I do have faith in those who ask them. I have faith that people of all ages are looking for a better relationship with GOD. I believe that in their hearts, whatever their age, resides the wisdom of GOD’s love. That, in our midst, there are apostles who will soon lead, prophets who will soon speak, and teachers, doers, and healers discovering their calling. If we are willing to cast ourselves in with God.

May we each continue to explore GOD’s work for us, help one another discover our spiritual gifts, and be a family-of-origin for world-changers. Amen.