By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
December 29, 2024
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Luke 2:41–52 (ESV)
41 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. 43 And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, 44 but supposing him to be in the group they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, 45 and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” 49 And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50 And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. 51 And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.
Here we are once again, continuing the celebration of Christmas. I hope that if you learn nothing else from me, that you will learn that the holidays we celebrate are more than a day. Instead they are seasons. The church year begins with advent. Advent is the season of longing, of expectation. It is a season where we recognize that things are not exactly the way they should be and we look forward to the redemption and restoration that is found in God. The second season is Christmas. Today is the first Sunday after Christmas. And the season of Christmas will continue through the New Year holiday and will come to a close on January 6th with Epiphany.
As Friends we do not really keep the traditional church calendar, I am an oddity in that aspect, but I find it interesting. I like that those of ancient days used the natural light of the seasons as an illustration to share the wisdom of God. It intrigues me because we live through the seasons, we have different experiences at various times of the year. And those seasons can remind us that God is with us through each change within life.
As the days darken in the autumn our bodies respond. We begin to get a little nervous, anxious. Sure we like the light jacket weather, the hot tea and the falling leaves. But there are other things that weigh on us as winter approaches. We enter that last quarter of the year, we begin to run the year end reports we look at the budget and decide what we need to do the last few months of the year and we begin to plan for the year to come. As this occurs the days shorten, elections are run, we turn on the heater so our utility bills begin to change. Anxiety increases, darkness begins to creep into our lives.
We may not fully realize it but we live the reality of advent, or as I call it Holy Anxiety, every year. We long for light, we pray for change, we want to hope. Then winter set in.
It is cold, at least its supposed to be. There is more night than day. Its dark when you go to work or school, its dark when you come home. But on the darkest day, something remarkable happens, Christmas.
We sang about it last week. We shared scriptures filled with the hope that is revealed. Light has come into the darkness. And that light will enlighten mankind. The Word become flesh, and dwells among us.
When we think about Christmas, our attention usually is redirected to the children within our community. We remember the Christmases of our youth, the traditions we establish with our children, and of course the presents we give and receive. Christmas can be both dark, and light. It can be filled with hope and despair. It can be a season of blessing or pain. Christmas is life in so many ways. And that is why I want us to remember it is more than a day but a season.
It is a season of newness. A season of change. It is a season of reconciliation and redemption. It is an opportunity begin again. Christmas is for the children, the children among us and the children within each of us.
This week as I read and prayed with this week’s passage I was struck by the story. Jesus is a child. If we look around our meetinghouse this morning we will see a few people at the age of Jesus in this story. He was twelve years old. This is an important age. It is important because around this age the child begin to become who they truly are. In the Jewish traditions they call this Bar or Bat Mitzvah. They become a son or daughter of the commandment or covenant. It is around this age where each child stands before their community not as children, but as participants.
Jesus went to Jerusalem with his parents for the feast of the Passover, they went up according to the custom. The custom they speak of is what eventually became the Bar Mitzvah celebrated in Jewish tradition today, but in the second temple period of history they did not have a big birthday party when the child got to the age of twelve or thirteen they would begin offering sacrifices for themselves instead of being included under the father’s offerings. Jesus was seen that day as a member of the community and he according to the traditions of his day brought his own offering to the temple.
For many of us we wonder why the gospel accounts speak of Jesus’s birth and then jump twelve years forward with this story. We want to know what Jesus did as a child, because that is what the biographies of today will do. That is not how people wrote back then. They did not write like that because everyone knew what the children were doing. They were kids, it is only after they become a member of the community that they begin to take a closer look. But there are clues to what Jesus did in today’s passage.
“And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the group they went a days journey.”
For so long I did not take much notice of this. I have heard sermons about how Mary and Joseph lost track of Jesus, and how we should as parents give ourselves some grace because even Mary forgot Jesus once. But there is more. Why were Mary and Joseph not concerned when they left?
This what grabbed my attention. Jesus was not with them and they knew he was not with them. They knew, and they supposed that he was among the people of their community. This tells us that Jesus was not acting out of the ordinary. They were used to Jesus not being right there with them. They were used to him being off with someone talking. They assumed that he was curious or that something had attracted his attention at that time which kept him occupied when their relatives began their journey back north to Nazareth. And they were not worried.
I want us to take a moment to reflect on that for a moment. Jesus was curious. Jesus was engaged. He became engrossed in some activity enough within those past twelve years that his parents were not worried. And they were not worried because he always made his way back home. He would go out, he would follow some curiosity, he would go chat with someone just because and would make his way back home as the sun began to set.
Jesus was curious. He observed, engaged, studied, and explored.
Jesus was a child, just like the children of our meeting. Like every child that has ever lived. Mary and Joseph were not bad parents because they left without their son, but they were good parent. They allowed their son the freedom to explore. They instilled in him a sense of awe and wonder, and encouraged him to interact with those within his community as well as nature.
This season, Christmas, is for children. We wrapped presents and put them under a tree. There is a mystery within those packages and every child is beckoned by that mystery. We chide them for being snoopy and chase them away, yet we still put the presents there. We tempt them with the mystery and make them wait. It might be a bit cruel, but with that tradition we are encouraging them to explore, imagine, to brainstorm the possibilities. We are creating an environment of curiosity.
This is important. God wants us to be curious. He wants us to explore. The job God gave our first parents was to name the animals, to go into the world and bring it into submission, and to be fruitful and multiply. That idea of submission we often think of as being almost negative but this is our contemporary understanding of a word bleeding into it. To bring something into submission is to know and understand it. To be able to utilize it for mutual profit. God, with that command, was challenging us to explore, to study, to engage with the world around us so that we could flourish.
We often forget this as we become adults, because we take on responsibilities. We once explored, we once lived with curiosity as our guide, but now we work and labor. Some might say that this is the curse that resulted from the fall. It is true to a degree. We get distracted by our responsibilities and we lose that sense of curiosity.
But we get a glimmer of it in our children. And this is a blessing of Christmas. We watch their eyes light up when they are finally allowed to dive into the gifts. We join with them as they figure out how to make the remote controlled car work, or as they try on their new shoes and see how fast they can run in them. We engage with the curiosity. Everything is new. Everything is bright and hopeful. We explore and try. We play the game and enjoy life.
“And when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him.” This is the day after Christmas, when you return to work. The responsibilities of life once again return, and we are concerned. For three days, Mary and Joseph search for Jesus. For three days they are worried and anxious. They had one job to take care of this child and they are failing.
We have all been there. Maybe not losing our child for three days, but we have felt that pang of inadequacy, that little voice within telling us we are not good enough. I am not ashamed to admit that I experience it quite often. I get frustrated. I worry. I often catch myself sitting in my chair contemplating and praying, but instead of praying I am wondering if people will see just how much of a failure I am. I often find myself struggling with impostor syndrome.
Mary and Joseph are with us in this feeling. God entrusted them with Jesus, the God that created Heaven and Earth entrusted them with taking care of Jesus, God incarnate. And they lost him. And out of their frustration and relief they lash out at Jesus, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.”
The past few days, I have been thinking about my grandpa. I watch TV shows and I remember him. And then I pulled up my plex account and found that my brother uploaded MASH. I sat for a while watching it with tears in my eyes because that was the show I used to watch with my grandpa after ate supper. As I thought about my grandpa, I remembered a few things. My grandpa was wise, witty, and calm. He had a song for everything, and very rarely did I ever see him get anxious. I thought he was superman.
Rarely did my grandpa get upset, I never heard him raise his voice. But then I remembered the few times I saw a different side. There was a time when my sister, brother and I were outside playing and my brother hit my sister with garden hoe. It was an accident but it was the only time my grandpa spanked any of us. And yes my brother is the only grandchild ever to have been spanked by my grandpa. Later my mom told a story of the only time she was spanked by grandpa, it was when she did not follow him to the cab of the truck and was hanging on to the back when he began to drive away. Both stories have something similar. My grandfather spanked when he was scared. When he felt as if he failed to protect. It sounds terrible when I say it, but in his frustration when he failed to protect my sister from harm he lashed out, not in an abusive way but just enough to let my brother know that it was dangerous and not to do it again. And he only did so when it was terribly dangerous.
As parents we can sometimes respond to our children in our frustration. And it is sometimes out of our fear. Our sense of inadequacy. We can lash out at them because we do not know how to express our emotions of fear and relief. It is not right, and I am not encouraging you to let loose, but I am telling you Mary and Joseph know the feeling. We can feel defeated and we can respond poorly.
But I do not want us to focus too much on this. Instead I want us to focus on where they found Jesus. For three days they searched within the city of Jerusalem. Even then this was a monumental task. And they found him in the temple sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions.
They found him doing the very thing they taught him to do. They found him doing the very things they encouraged him to do. They wanted him to be free to explore. They wanted him to let his curiosity guide him and lead him into a deeper understanding of the people and world around him.
As they came near, they listened to the people talk about their son. Everyone who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. We often assume that this is because Jesus, being God knew everything, but it think there was more to it. They were amazed at his ability to hold a conversation, they were amazed at how he was able to communicate with the teachers who were so much older than him. They were amazed that Jesus was willing to engage at such a young age.
They walk up to Jesus, they rebuke him. And like so many times when we discipline our children they saw the confusion in his eyes. Mary and Joseph were good parents. My grandfather was amazing as are my parents but at times we as parents are unable to express what we feel to children. They rebuked and disciplined him. And Jesus looked at them, and I imagine he had tears in his eyes, and he answered them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my fathers house?”
This phrase is difficult to put into English. The King James Version translates this as “my father’s business.” instead of house. A literal translation would be closer to, “Did you not know that I must be about my father’s things?” What it is implying is that they should have known that Jesus was doing the very thing he was always doing. He was right where they left him. He was doing the very thing they had always encouraged him to do. He was talking with the people he found interesting. He was asking and answering questions. He was living into the person they were raising him to be.
The passage ends by saying, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” I sat this week with this passage. And I was filled with emotions as well as thoughts. I thought about the many Christmases I have celebrated. I reflected on my grandfather, my parents, my children, and my own grandson. I had little pangs of homesickness and self doubt, as I reflected on it all. But one thing stood out above all.
God wants us to explore. He wants us to be curious, to engage with the world around us. He wants us to get to know the people next door, to understand the intricacies of science, to wonder how the toys work that we received on Christmas. He wants us to be like children. God wants you to ask questions, and seek out answers. He wants us to increase in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
For those young students among us, those that are just beginning to learn who they are and want to be. God is calling you to stay curious, to come seek and find. And God is inviting you to become sons and daughters of the covenant. But this is not only a call to them. He is calling those of us who have already matured to remember what it was like to be curious.
Jesus once took a child from among the people and told those that were listening to look upon that child, and he said, that we must all be like the child if we wanted to enter the kingdom. I have thought about that a great deal. What does Jesus mean? Is it the trusting innocence of a child? Is it the energy? I think it is many things, but most of all I think it is curiosity. It is the ability to be amazed and the desire to figure out how it works. It is the sensitivity and willingness to express the full range of our emotions, and empathy for those around them. We must be like children, and children grow. They learn, and become who they were created to be.
God is calling the young to grow, to become children of his covenant, to live according to his teachings and commandment. He wants you to be curious, to learn, to find and become the person you were created to be. But this call is not only for the young. We adults are also sons and daughters of that same family. We too are children in the eyes of God the ancient of days. He is calling us to continue to be curious, to explore and grow. To laugh and to cry. He wants us to live within this community encouraging those around us to be immersed in the life and lifestyle of Christ.
Christmas is more than a day, it is a season. It is a season of hope, and curiosity. It is a season to enjoy being a child of God. Because God is with us. And as we go deeper into this season into the newness of a new year I want us each to be curious and to grow. I challenge you to learn something new. I encourage you to make a new friend, and to engage them in conversation. I dare you as you make your new years resolutions to be like Jesus. To be about the things of your father in heaven. And become a people loving God, embracing the Holy Spirit and living the love of Christ with others.
Previous Messages:
Living Stones
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church May 03, 2026 Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 2:2–10 (ESV) 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have…
Endure
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 26, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Query 4 (Faith and Practice of EFC-MAYM pg 61) Do you provide for the suitable Christian education and recreation of your children and those under your care, and…
Ransomed to Love
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 19, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 1:17–23 (ESV) 17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time…
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