1 Samuel 2. 18 – 20, 26
Luke 2. 41 – 52
Fr Alex
It’s a rare treat to hear that lovely Gospel passage. We only get it once every three years: and we missed out three years ago, because the First Sunday of Christmas was nudged out of the way by St Stephen’s Day. So you might not have heard this passage in church for six years or more!
But what a precious text it is, and packed full of symbolism. In all the gospel accounts it’s the only glimpse we get of Jesus’ childhood, beyond his birth. Otherwise there’s a great big gap of three decades before the start of his public ministry as an adult.
In this mysterious ‘hidden life’ at Nazareth, we don’t get to hear of things like his first words, or first steps, or his friendships, or learning his father’s trade as a carpenter; all of that is known only to that family.
But strangely enough that absence of information reveals something profound to us: Jesus was a human boy who lived an ordinary childhood. He is truly one of us.
There have been attempts to add in miraculous details to his childhood, to try to make it seem a bit more like the life of someone important. In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, for example, the young boy Jesus makes little birds out of clay, and then brings them to life, and does other amazing things.
A version of Jesus’ birth is told in the Quran: people doubt Mary’s story about this child born out of marriage, so to save her from suspicion and persecution, the infant Jesus proves God’s involvement by miraculously sitting up and talking from the cradle.
But that totally misses the point. Rather than supernatural stories, in the Bible, the sign of God’s involvement is the familiar and unremarkable love shared within an ordinary human family. And we can then see God’s involvement in our own lives, when we live in love with one another.
But while this young Jesus is certainly a human being like us, he is of course at the same time divine. And in today’s Gospel passage we are given hints that he is destined for something rather special.
It’s not actually in the content of the story. Rather, Luke leaves certain narrative clues that signal what is to come.
The first clue is in the passage that immediately precedes this one, which we will hear at Candlemas. After Jesus’ birth, his parents go to present him at the temple, according to their customs. Simeon takes up the baby and prophesies that here is the Messiah, at last: the “light for revelation to the Gentiles.”
But in the midst of this joyful celebration, he says to Mary that “this child will be a sign that will be opposed… and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
This foreshadowing of Jesus’ death might seem rather out of place in the sequence of Luke’s beautiful birth narrative. But in fact it’s there right at the moment of Jesus’ birth, too, if we look carefully.
Luke writes that Mary took her newborn son / “wrapped him in bands of cloth / and laid him in a manger / because there was no place for them in the inn.”
Later, at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross, Luke writes that they took Jesus’ body / “wrapped it in a linen cloth / and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb / where no one had ever been laid.”
That three-fold rhythm of taking / wrapping / and placing; along with the disturbing sense that he’s not where he should be. He was placed in an animal’s feed box, because there was no room for them anywhere else; and the Son of God should never have been sealed in a stone-cold tomb.
But if the birth story subtly foreshadows Jesus’ death, then today’s Gospel passage promises his resurrection.
Look at the clues Luke sprinkles throughout this scene. Jesus disappears from Mary and Joseph for three days, the same time that he remained in the tomb before his resurrection. But that’s just the first clue.
The idea of someone being lost and then found is always connected in Luke’s Gospel with the dead coming back to life. Think of the parable of the prodigal son, which ends with the father saying: “We had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”
Another clue is in the dialogue. When his parents find him, Jesus asks them quite sharply: “Why were you searching for me?” It’s very similar to the women looking for Jesus’ body in the empty tomb, and the angels ask them: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
And there’s something profound in the interplay between presence and absence. The great sense of anxiety Jesus’ parents feel at his absence, is shared by the disciples walking the Emmaus road after the crucifixion, who can’t get their heads around what has happened. But they begin to understand only when Jesus vanishes from their sight.
In our story today, it’s only when Jesus withdraws himself from their care, that Mary and Joseph can begin to understand his higher vocation. Jesus’ presence is discovered to be even more powerful when he withdraws from sight – something his disciples will later experience at the Ascension and Pentecost.
It's a powerful story to reflect on in this Christmas season. So what are we to do with it all? Luke gives us another clue in something he repeats throughout these first two chapters of his Gospel. That Mary “treasured all these things in her heart.”
May we treasure the wonderful faith we have been given: may we devote ourselves to pondering the Word of God this Christmastime, and throughout the coming year; that we may come to know more fully the Word made flesh and dwelling among us, in the child of Bethlehem. Amen.