Mothering Sunday March 18 2007

Luke 2: 41 - end

Have you ever had a heart-stopping moment with a teenager? or for some of you in the choir – have you ever given one to a parent or friend?! When the phone rang at 1.30am and our then daughter’s boyfriend asked if she had come home yet from clubbing because he couldn’t find her, we did get rather concerned… Adolescent angst is for parents: youngsters don’t see it the same way: “What are you worried about Dad?”

But adolescence is also essential, even though it may be unpopular with parents: we can’t grow up without it.

Here in Luke is the one biblical story from Jesus’ life between being a very young child and an adult beginning his ministry. It’s there because it’s about the essential transition of adolescence.

Christians tend to see Jesus as too divine – or the divine as too inhuman! Jesus wasn’t born fully-formed, but fully human. In Jesus, God experiences growing-up; as in the crucifixion, God experiences loss and death. Jesus is divine in nature, but is fully human in experience and reality: therefore he has to learn through his experiences.

Also when looking at this story we tend to focus on Jesus himself, his precocious wisdom and insight into his relationship with God; so here is Jesus aged 12, at the time of the (later) bar-mitzvah, becoming a religious adult. It’s all true, but in focusing on Jesus we neglect the social dimension of Jesus and his relationships.

The presumption behind the story is the strength of relationship between Jesus and his parents and their group – family and friends together. Jesus is one of the group: in this incident he asserts his individuality, his ability to think for himself, to do things differently – but in doing so he affirms the strength of his relationship to those around him.

How would you feel as Jesus’ parents? They had a quite understandable reaction. Jesus stays behind, leaves the group as they travel back the 60 miles from Jerusalem to Nazareth, he says nothing, just is not there. The Jesus Mary and Joseph know can be trusted to be there, so they don’t worry, thinking he’s gone on ahead. But Mary and Joseph’s trust was betrayed this time. Jesus didn’t think about what they or other people thought or what they needed. He was caught up in the childish self-centredness of adolescence, in the sense of focusing on one thing that matters to him, not realizing how it would affect others.

That’s why I think he responds as in v.51 – he goes down with them to Nazareth and is obedient to them. Jesus had to learn how much it mattered to others what he did, and how the commandment to honour your parents needed to be worked out in his life. We know Jesus wasn’t afraid to confront and to tell his family they were wrong when they thought he was mad. But here he learns that that kind of confrontation is for when it’s about the essence of truth. It’s not about being inconsiderate of the people who care for you.

In this story Jesus finds his adult voice, discovers his identity, and then gives it away. That’s the nature of what it means to be grown up, really grown up, rather than the rebellious adolescent picture of what adulthood is. Choosing obedience is what is really grown-up, knowing you can do things differently, but choosing to obey not rebel. What Jesus does in the Temple is not rebellion, but self-discovery and then obedience for the sake of love. Rebellion is childish, necessary but childish: it’s learning to love that really counts, and to love you have to be able first to discover who you are, and then you have to give yourself away.
So what does this story say to us? There’s obvious relevance to family life: the need to care for the feelings of others, to help adolescents grow a proper sense of self as well as learn consideration for others, to encourage parents to give children space and not be surprised to have their trust let down from time to time.

But there’s a deeper issue too, also summed up in v.51. It’s that we need to be ready to be surprised and to learn from what God and others may do. Mary treasures all these things in her heart. She reflects on and learns from what happens, rather than treating it as a nuisance or unfortunate episode. Here is her son who trusts that she and Joseph will know that he has a particular relationship with God – what does that mean? How must they think of him? What will God do in him? No longer is this the child they’ve cared for: it’s the young man who has things to teach them.

One of the joys of having older children/young people is that they introduce you to new things, help you learn and grow. Some parents won’t have it (Dad?): but it’s a great opportunity to develop in new ways. E.g. dance, army, rowing…

And God invites all of us to find out new things, about God and others and the world God has made, through our relationships with others. However old or young we are, there’s so much more to reflect and grow with. Sometimes it will be hard and painful, as with Jesus’s parents or our own experiences; sometimes it will be a joy. Who know what when the phone will ring in the middle of the night?

But whether hard or not, God invites us to be open to grow, and to find more of his life and love in us and others: so that like Jesus we may increase in wisdom as in years. God be with us as we follow in the footsteps of Jesus and his family.