A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, December 27, 2009
Luke 2:41-52
Have you ever had growing pains? They’re pretty common as your bones grow longer and stronger and your muscles have to stretch and grow to keep up. Growing pains happen most in the long muscles in your legs and can really hurt, can’t they? But they’re a normal part of life. Every day inside our bodies there are changes that we can’t see, and a whole lot we can see.
There are other kinds of growing pains that aren’t in our muscles or in our bones. These growing pains come from stretching our thoughts, our feelings and our experiences. And that’s what our story’s about this morning.
Let’s turn to the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament, the part about Jesus and the disciples who follow him as the Messiah of God – the anointed One. Luke begins on page 56 in your pew Bible. So take a minute and find that place and let’s look at it together. Here’s how the story unfolds:
• Prophecies (God speaking through wise people to prepare us for what God is going to do)
• Birth, shepherds and angels (no wise men!)
• Presentation at the temple at 8 days for naming and circumcision
• Mary’s purification & Simeon’s song of praise; return to Nazareth
• “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God rested on him.” {hidden or lost years of Jesus}
Then we read today’s story… chapter 2, verse 41 through 52. Jesus was 12. There’s lots of years missing in the Gospel – from eight days old to 12 years old… like a photo album of you with pictures when you were new born and then a big gap, and then the next picture when you’re starting middle school. A lot has been going on but we don’t know what because nobody tells us.
What we do know is that when Jesus was 12, he and his parents and lots of their neighbors made a long trip from Nazareth to the big temple in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover – the most important Jewish festival. It was about 60 miles. Now how do you suppose they got from Nazareth to Jerusalem? [ask responses] This was long before cars or trains or buses. So the people walked or maybe rode on a donkey, but it would have taken maybe three long days to get there. {Do you suppose Jesus kept saying “are we there yet?!”}
Well, when the festival was over they all headed back from Jerusalem to Nazareth. When they left Mary and Joseph figured Jesus was somewhere in the crowd of neighbors and that they’d find him as they walked. They looked for him, and looked, and looked, and looked and couldn’t find him anywhere. Nobody remembered seeing him. So Mary and Joseph turned around and went back to Jerusalem and searched there for three days. They were so worried and afraid that something terrible had happened. Then they went to the Temple and there was Jesus talking with the wise old men about the Bible and about life and God and religion.
Mary said “Jesus, we’ve been worried to death. Why didn’t you tell us your plan.” And Jesus answered “didn’t you know I’d be doing God’s business?” But Jesus understood their worry, and he left with them and went back to Nazareth.
And Mary kept all of these things in her heart and thought about them many times.
Growing pains – parents understand it as a child grows and stretches and pulls away a little, then a little more and then a lot. At the beginning it looks as though the kids will never grow up, but don’t blink or you’ll miss it!
This is a perfect story for our family today. Our son Ben is home from college and leading worship this morning. He’s grown smarter, wiser, and a whole lot taller than he was when we moved here just 20 years ago…
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