Reflecting back, looking forward

The comments of children sometimes are wonderful. We can all probably think of a funny story to do with something a child has said – a while ago I remember a 3 year old telling Helen that she looked a mess in the morning !! Something I would obviously have disagreed with……… 

There’s also the great children’s letters to God – I’m a bit sad perhaps but I never tire of hearing things like, ‘Dear God, Did you mean to make giraffes look like that, or was it an accident ?’ or ‘Dear God, I keep waiting for a nice summer day, but it hasn’t come – did you forget ?’ or just one more, ‘Dear God, Maybe Cain and Abel would not kill each other so much if they had their own rooms – it works for me and my brother.’

Children's words are often profound and today in the gospel reading we hear the only recorded words of Jesus as a child (Luke 2:41-52). As a 12 year old after his parents had visited Jerusalem for the Passover festival Jesus was lost in the convoy back home – panicking they returned to Jerusalem and eventually they found him in the Temple sitting amongst the teachers asking questions.

Of course when Mary found him there would have been the relief, but there was also the inevitable telling off that all of us, I’m sure, can remember from a parent or another adult as we were growing up ! ‘Why did you do this to us ? We were worried about you !’

And Jesus replied, almost seeming to be a little perplexed, ‘Why were you searching for me ? Didn’t you know I’d been in my father’s house ?’

Probably they didn't ! We may assume now that that is where Jesus would be - but to Mary and Joseph, though they knew he was a child with a special mission, he was still a 12 year old boy lost in the big city !

Jesus' answering back could have led to a good telling off perhaps, but Mary and Joseph, perhaps so relieved after all, decided to let it go, and we’re told Jesus returned home to Nazareth with them, and was obedient to them. But we’re also told that Mary treasured all these things in her heart.

Any caring mother will have thoughts about a child, memories of them growing up, they will look perhaps for things they do or say as clues to what their real nature is, what will interest them, what they will do when they grow up- there will be all kinds of thoughts, but with Mary there must have been even more – the dramatic birth showed her already that this was to be no ordinary child, but in this incident in the Temple, as she told him off for going missing, it was clear that she was a long way from understanding her son.

Many parents will have heard their child saying to them, ‘You don’t understand me !’ It’s common teenage talk ! And though it may be hard to think of it in this way, this really is where Jesus is in this gospel reading. If Mary and Joseph truly understood who he was they would perhaps get why it was that he stayed at the temple…

Jesus was misunderstood, and it’s not only here that we see this as an issue for Jesus. It seems that he was constantly, throughout his ministry, longing for people to understand him. Being the Son of God, being the Messiah, the promised Saviour, he had to deal with people’s misconceptions and misunderstandings of who he was and he had to constantly work past them.

There are people who follow him around expecting him to be something that they have decided he must be. They expect him to heal them… they expect him to feed them… they expect him to get rid of the Roman rulers… some even expect him to rule... But these aren’t the things that Jesus is about. He is constantly moving from place to place, not to spread his word to new places as much as to get away from the flocks of people who want something from him.

He asks his disciples at one point, “Who do people say that I am?” Basically he is wondering if people, if his disciples, actually understand what he is about. And even when Peter responds, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Jesus tells him to keep it quiet because he knows people won’t understand it… And the people who misunderstood Jesus the most in his day were the religious leaders. He didn’t meet their expectations and therefore they eventually found a way to have him killed because they could not understand him, and therefore he must pose a danger...

And this leads to an important question - are we misunderstanding Jesus today? It’s a question that we can only answer for ourselves – each of us have to make our own decisions about Jesus, and his place in our life, but whatever our answer, there is still a lesson for us to learn here.

The people that had the biggest problem with Jesus were, as I said, the religious leaders of the day, and one of the reasons for this was that they approached him with a superior attitude – perhaps not the people in the Temple when Jesus was 12 – they may have just dismissed him as a bit of a precocious child, but as he grew up, he threatened their way of life, and they didn’t understand…

And that superior attitude that they had meant that they dismissed him as someone with nothing to teach them. They could learn nothing from him. They looked at him only with a view to catching him out, finding his mistakes, and when they found none, they made them up !

On the other side though, there were some that came to Jesus with a spirit of humility and they are the ones who truly grew from their relationship with him. They were the ones who became true followers of Christ.

And so the challenge of this story for us is ‘Do we approach Jesus with that same humility?’ Do we expect ourselves, our minds, our hearts, to be changed by our relationship with Jesus? Or are we too busy trying to use him to prove ourselves right? It is the very difference between the tone of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and the tone of humility.

And it is that tone of humility that each of us must seek in our own lives. If we can capture that and seek to learn from our studies of the Bible, from our prayers and from our relationships with God and with others, then perhaps we might understand Jesus in a way that we haven’t before.

Then, perhaps, we might connect with our Saviour and Lord in a deeper relationship than we ever thought possible. Then, perhaps, we will find new and exciting ways to live out our faith day by day…

It seems a little odd to think of Jesus as a twelve year old having some sort of moan to his parents, Mary and Joseph, about not understanding him, but that seems to be part of this story, and it is part of the story of Jesus today - as he cries out for people to try and understand him better, to live with him, and live for him, to fulfil our own lives, and to continue to build his kingdom of peace and love here today.

As we come to the end of one year, lets reflect back on the relationship we have enjoyed with God in the past year - but let's also look forward - whatever we've done or failed to do, been or failed to be, God greets us with open arms; and so let's turn to him, turning away from any distractions so that we may truly allow him to share our lives, and allow him to show us the fullness of life that he intends for us all. AMEN