The One About 12-year-old Jesus and the Incredible Humility of the Incarnation
Dear Congregation
I have a 12-year-old son and he is wonderful. It is a super weird age though. He (and his peers) are standing right on the precipice of a season of incredible development and with it will (hopefully) come increasing levels of independence from his parents. It is an in-between age and that manifests pretty clearly when you put a bunch (or troop, or herd … I am not sure of the best collective noun for these creatures) of Middle-School boys together. They are such wonderful, awkward, potential-laden, insecurity-riddled little mysteries of weirdness and body odor.
I was laughing at some of this weirdness manifested in my son and his friends at their band concert last night, when I remembered that Jesus was once a 12-year-old boy. The story of Him at 12 is told in Luke 2. Joseph and Mary took Him on their annual Passover trip to Jerusalem, but when they left to head home, He didn't go with them. He stayed in the temple, and interrogated the teachers of the law there. Now, I know that parental supervision was different back then, and kids were left to roam a whole lot more than they are now. Helicopters weren’t invented yet and so parents didn’t know they were supposed to imitate them in their hovering. But, Joseph and Mary took a full day of traveling to realize that Jesus wasn’t with them, and then they took a further two days searching for Him. They couldn't find their 12-year-old son for 3 days, and I am sure the stress was immense, especially - as we saw from the text this last Sunday - Mary knew that this Son was sent on a Divine mission to save the world.
You lost the Messiah?
Well this isn’t good.
The interaction that is recorded once Mary found Jesus seems almost a little harsh from the 12-year-old Jesus.
Mary expressed that they had been deeply anxious in their search for Him, and His answer is …
“Why were you searching for me?” he asked them. “Didn’t you know that it was necessary for me to be in my Father’s house?” - Lk 2:49 (CSB)
Typical 12-year-old right? An answer for everything. But, look at what happens next. I don’t think we ponder this sort of humility from Christ enough.
Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them. - Lk 2:51.
He was obedient to them!
12-year-old Jesus, who clearly had developed a fairly advanced sense of who He was and what He was sent to do … obeyed His earthly parents through His years of adolescence. Friends, this Christmas season, as we rightly contemplate the vulnerability and humility of Jesus as a baby, let us also remember that the baby grew up, and that this Jesus never saw Himself as above or beyond the regular rites of passage and seasons of development that it takes to become an adult, and that He went through it all in obedience and humility.
In some ways, there are very few creatures on earth as vulnerable, or as dangerous, as a pre-teen boy. He doesn’t know who he is yet, and who he might grow up to be and what it might take to get there. And yet Jesus went through all of it, all of it, in order to become the one who could save us.
Jesus obeyed His parents.
Oh, the humility of our King.
Enjoy the fruits of His obedience this Advent season.
The song this week is special. It is from Peter Gabriel’s latest album I/O, which is such a daring work of originality. I want to be taking creative risks like this when I am 73. I heard this song for the first time when Gabriel performed it at Moody, and it had me in fairly obvious tears. It was (and is) 6 minutes of powerful and pure performance art.
Enjoy.
Peter Gabriel - Love Can Heal (Bright-Side Mix) (Official Music Video)
Press on.
Ross
