- Psalmody: Liturgical Text; Psalm 100:1-2a; Psalm 72:18, 3; Psalm 100:1-2a; Psalm 100:1-3a; Luke 2:48b-49
- Lection: Isaiah 42:1-9; Romans 12:1–6a; Luke 2:42–52
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before His presence with singing. Know ye that the LORD He is God. To know that the LORD is God and that Jesus is manifested, revealed to be the LORD our God, is a central theme in the Epiphany season, the third of the Church Year into which we have already been propelled. If time seems to pass by quickly, give thanks to God that in it doing so, the saying is fulfilled “Come quickly, Lord Jesus.” For, it is with quickness that the Last Day draws near, each day one closer to the glorious End. Prepare for the future by making the most of the present that the Lord has deemed to give to you, regardless of the speed at which it comes. He is at hand, and as Advent prepared us for the coming Christ, and Christmas rejoiced us in the Christ Child, these days of Epiphany bless and strengthen our faith by teaching us more about the glory of God Himself manifested in Jesus Christ our Savior.
As we march through these whitened days toward the Transfiguration and there make our descent into the plain that shall take us through Gesimatide, Lent, Holy Week, and to the Crucifixion and empty tomb, pay attention to how our readings focus on God being made manifest in our own flesh and bone in the Christ. By the time we climb the glorious mount with Peter, James, and John to behold Jesus radiant as the Sun, we shall have in Epiphany recalled Christ in every stage of His earthly life that the Scriptures have recorded for our learning: from Child to Boy to Man, all the while Him remaining fully God, yet dwelling in His own great submissive humiliation as a true Servant that He might sympathize with all our weaknesses, weaknesses of every age of life, yet without sin. We see that in every year of life given, Christ is the One Who has led the way for us, that in Him we might have hope, comfort, and strength unto the Last.
Thus, we encounter this very unique Sunday where the only account of Christ’s life is recorded from the decades in between the events pertaining to His birth narrative and His appearing at the Jordan to be baptized by John into His three-year ministry. St. Luke is the only evangelist to show us 12-year-old Jesus going up to Jerusalem with His parents at the time of Passover. Let us there peer upon Him, upon God our Savior in the nearly-adolescent flesh going about His heavenly Father’s business.
The holy family, along with relatives and acquaintances, went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast. By this we see the importance of godly homes, that the mind of God is to be ours as we go about this life and in all that we do. Our homes are to be intentionally, decidedly, and characteristically Christian, made so by the lives of the children of God kept and lived within them. Joseph and Mary saw to it that the things of God took precedence, which included not only attending this annual feast but two other major ones that required their presence in the holy city: The Feast of Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles. In between those thrice annual journeys was godly living, sacrificing, forgiving, learning, loving, rejoicing, just as how we are to walk from Sunday to Sunday with the guiding Light of Christ and His Word central to our homes, to our thoughts, words, and deeds. This is a must, it is necessary, just as what was necessary for Christ in the temple. As children of God, we are to be about our Father’s business, not because He is a ruthless tyrant full of merciless demand, but because we live in a world hostile to all of true worth, to all that we hold eternally dear.
Yes, we look at the humility of a Boy and see our great Deliverer and the Lover of our souls. As the Feast ended, the truth and the discovery of His missio Dei, His glorious mission of God, in the teacher’s teachings from the prophetic Word of the Lord, guided this spotless young Lamb in the way of wisdom and grace. In His Divinity, did Jesus already know all things as they would take place in years 13-33? Yes, by all means, yet, in His humble humanity, He submitted fully to the weakness of our flesh, just as He did at His birth. Coming forth from the blessed womb of Mary, He possessed divine knowledge of all languages, matters of body, and could speak anything into existence, just as through Him were all things made that were made. Yet, He lay submissively, mildly, humbly upon Mary as a helpless suckling at her breast. It was by His God-given parents that He was carried down into Egypt, not seeing to it Himself to make His protective escape by night, but depending upon the sacrifice and love of Joseph and Mary. And once the threat on His very young life had passed, it was the same who took Jesus to Nazareth to grow in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men in a godly home. He did so perfectly, with never a coarse word nor a dishonoring refusal to father and mother, displaying in His life the way that humanity is meant to be.
Jesus did not dishonor Joseph and Mary by lingering behind in Jerusalem. Children are the responsibility of parents, so they should not have wondered why He wasn’t with them, but why they weren’t with Him. The same goes for us all as we should not marvel at a Jesus that we have lost in our lives. No one finds Jesus, for He is not the One lost. If we desire to be where we need to be, where it is good for us to be, then let us look to where Jesus is that we may be found with Him, namely in His holy Word and in His blessed Sacraments where we are given to lay hold of Him by faith to the relief and rejoicing of our souls!
This trip up to Jerusalem was for the feast of the Passover, a rich time in His Heavenly Father’s providence to grant the Boy Jesus wisdom into what lay ahead in Him for the sake of Jerusalem, and all Judea and Samaria, and for all those reaching to the end of the earth. By His own words later as a Man, we know that the Scriptures testify of Him, so as He sat as a Boy in the midst of the teachers in the temple, He both listened to them and asked them questions. By the Scriptures’ inspired revelation about Him, that very Person, His course grew clear and He shirked not from it, not even as a Boy. The slaughter of the Paschal lambs that He had witnessed at the feast told of His blood that would be shed for the salvation of the whole world. He had but more years and patience to endure until His hour, determined from the foundation of the world, would come in the midst of the Passover Feast in which He would be the Sacrifice once and for all.
The troubled parents made their way back to Jerusalem and after three days of suffering, of believing Jesus to be gone, they discovered, right Him where He was to be expected, much to their relief of heart, similar to the great turn of events on the Third Day in the tomb when all those who loved Him then believed Him to be gone. To the Boy, His parents described how they had sought Him anxiously. And He said to them, “Why did you seek Me?” Jesus is not to be sought for our reprimand, but for our Refuge. His ways are pure, right, and always good. He, the King, was surveying the lay of the land of His eternal reign that He was soon to assume and bring about as Victor, not by human wisdom, but by that of God, through the sacrifice and death that reconciled us to God. This is why Passover is no more. It is no longer needed. The slaughter of lambs and Seder meals are empty gestures of what now stands fulfilled in Christ and His Supper is the medicine of immortality. There is no greater a feast.
Where His parents found Him points further to all things being fulfilled in Him, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ. He went on to say to Joseph and Mary, “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” Some translations have it as “…that I must be in My Father’s house.” The difference is because the words business or house must be supplied in English, because they’re not there in the original, so we attempt to grasp the Boy Jesus’ meaning in translation. But where there is usually a word missing in a sequence like this, providing a simple word, things, may lend best to the whole meaning. Thus, it would read, “Did you not know that it is necessary for Me to be among My Father’s things?”, which, by being said right there in the temple, points further to salvation in Christ in the Divine Service of the temple of His Body being given and His Blood being shed for us. For, as God instituted divine functions in the temple that made way for Him to be among sinners through Divine Service of the washing of water, through the shedding of blood, through sacrifice, through incense and prayers, through the sacrifice on the altar, through the lifting of holy hands, and through eating the sacrifice in thankful joy for God’s institution of grace, He is the fulfillment all these things. They foreshadowed this well-pleasing Boy Who had come into the temple in the flesh as The Father’s only-begotten from eternity, to be The Holy Thing that reconciles us all to God. He is the sacrifice. He is the sweet and pleasing aroma ascending to the Father. He is the Great High Priest mediating for us. He is the heavenly Food. In God’s house, that is the Father’s business, and it all takes place in the Temple made without hands, but with miraculous and gracious union of God and Man in the Child, in the Boy, in the Man Christ Jesus. May this same Christ ever find us and make our hearts the temple of His Spirit that we may grow in wisdom and stature in gracious preparation for how we shall ever be in Him and with Him!
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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