Losing Jesus [Christmas 2C - Luke 2:41-52]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Luke 2:41-52

 

Losing Jesus

 

She couldn’t help it.  The angel’s words just kept playing in her mind, on this seemingly endless loop.  They wouldn’t stop; neither would her tears. 

 

The image of that angelic face, burned into her maternal memory, haunted her now, as she frantically scoured the bustling city streets.  When Heaven showed up and asked her to carry a child, she responded immediately and affirmatively.  She went along with the crazy plan.  But now that she needed something from Heaven, a little help, a little guidance, she got back nothing but silence.

 

When a parent cannot find their child, time slows to a crawl – one minute stretches into an eternity.  And for Mary it had been three days – of searching and crying and trying to keep it together, oh, and praying unanswered prayers.  Three agonizing days.

 

Every minute introduced yet another drop of despair.  She tried not to think the terrible thoughts that parents think in those situations but those thoughts are aggressively persistent. 

 

She had lost Jesus.  She and him; Mary and Joseph: they lost him and they could not find him.  After all they had sacrificed, all they had endured – the laughing and mocking and rumors – the sullied reputations they continued to bear: it couldn’t end like this.  It just couldn’t.   

 

The circumstances around the conception were admittedly unbelievable.  The birth narrative: like that of a fairy tale.  It was all supernatural, in the beginning.  But the love, the love felt like the most natural thing in the world.  That impossible love: it had sprouted in their hearts like a thirsty seedling; it had softened them; it made them dangerously and uncomfortably vulnerable.  And as quickly as it had sprouted, they knew it would only continue to grow, that every day it would blossom a bit more, like it had every day since Christmas.  They still had so much love to give; it couldn’t end like this.

 

Jesus was only twelve years old.  And none of the things Mary had been told, none of the messages she locked up in her heart, had yet come true.  Like when that angel said, “He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”  But what if this was the end?  And so with her grief and her fear, she also carried the crushing thought that they, she and him, Mary and Joseph, might have unwittingly sabotaged God’s plan to save their people and also the world.

 

For once Mary isn’t the High Queen of Heaven, an untouchable saint wrapped in baby blue.  She is a mom – with puffy eyes and tear-stained cheeks, desperate and worried about her son.  Maybe never more relatable.  In this story, she is one of us.

 

After three terrible days, they found him in the temple.  He was just sitting there, without a worry in the world, making himself at home.  And Mary said to Jesus, “Child, why have you treated us like this?”  But what she really meant was, “where were you when I was falling apart?”  And again, maybe Mary is never more relatable. 

 

The old man at the Temple, Simeon, the one who called her baby boy Salvation, he had looked deep into Mary’s eyes and told her beautiful and horrible things.  He warned her that a sword would pierce her heart because of her son, because of Jesus.  And still she gave Jesus her heart – understanding, as much as one could understand, the tremendous price of such love.

 

Perhaps what this story tells us is that sometimes life with Jesus is hard and sometimes it hurts.  And that loving Jesus will make you dangerously and uncomfortably vulnerable.  And at times you might lose sight of him and worry that he is gone forever.  But Jesus doesn’t allow things to end like that.

 

When Mary thought she had lost Jesus, he was never really lost.  She did have to search.  But he was where he belonged.  He was waiting for her.  And she found him. 

 

And for reasons I’ll probably never fully understand, this too she treasured in her heart.