51Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. ⁵²And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

It was a Friday afternoon at St. John’s Baptist in Charlotte. The youth were gathering in the parking lot to load up a chartered bus for a weekend retreat. I had just picked up Rachel and Jeff from day care. Since the center was right downstairs from my office, I could always work until just before closing time and still be on time for them. We had to pass through the crowds of youth to get to our car. Rachel pulled back, just a little bit hesitant to face all those strangers, but Jeffrey eagerly plunged forward into the crowd. Was it a foreshadowing of a time to come? Some twenty years later, he is now the youth advisor helping to load the bus.

Benjamin was only a few months old and still content to sit in an infant seat, especially if his big sister Rachel was around. When you are raising three children in a typical southern ranch house, you learn to adapt rooms to meet current needs, and at that moment our den needed to be a playroom. Its basic furnishings were Jeffrey’s small basketball goal, a Little Tykes elephant slide, and a sofa. Yet one evening that sparsely furnished room came to life. Rachel had taken every form of doll she owned and arranged them in perfect rows on the sofa and on the floor in front of it. I think she was playing teacher and these were her students, though if she knew I was telling you this, she would probably insist on a different interpretation. It would merely be a typical story of a kindergartner at play if it were not for her baby brother, front and center, lined up with all her other students. Was it a foreshadowing of a time to come? Well, she’s not a teacher but she does like to take charge of the situation.

When they were young, I tried to jot down quick observations of all three of my children. Nothing fancy, just a quick note in a journal. I remember noticing how much Ben seemed to like music. When it came time to enroll him in kindergarten, I pondered briefly the music magnet program. But I opted instead for the French immersion magnet school.

He would have attended, too, if a move to Macon, Georgia hadn’t interfered. I think much to his relief. Maybe I should have listened more to my first instinct. Was it a foreshadowing of a time to come? If you know Ben, you already know the answer to that question.

As parents, aren’t we always watching for signs of our children’s gifts? What do they enjoy doing? What distinguishes them from the crowd? What little hint can we find that tells us something of the man or the woman hidden in the child?

The ancients loved to hear stories from the childhood of their heroes. Perhaps that’s why Luke included this unique story of Jesus as a child in his Gospel. It is a gem, isn’t it? We want to know all that we can of the child that became the man. Was there any sign of his hidden greatness or was he an ordinary child, just like all the others? Was there a foreshadowing of a time to come? I think there was, but perhaps not entirely in the way you would think. Let me see if I can tell you why.

The story, at least as it begins, is rather ordinary. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus travel from Nazareth to Jerusalem to celebrate the festival of Passover. So ordinary, in fact, that most interpreters skip over this part of the story. But I think understanding the experience of Passover is essential to understanding the story. A lawyer might say, "It speaks to motive, your honor." A theologian would say, "It speaks to how we encounter the enduring and enabling presence of God."

As a dutiful Hebrew male, Joseph would have been obligated to make an annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for three feasts, but of the three Passover was primary. Women and children were not bound by duty, but Luke wants us to see this Hebrew family as perfectly faithful. Duty aside, it was a wonderful experience, a family holiday if you will. It was a time to get away from routine, to put aside the chores and stress of daily life. It was an opportunity for sacred pilgrimage, a chance to travel to Jerusalem, the holy city, with hundreds of other faithful pilgrims. And it was an occasion for worship at the Temple, God’s house, the place where God lives. You could say it was like a summertime family reunion at the beach, New Year’s Eve in Times Square, and the annual Montreat Summer Youth Conference all rolled into one.

Passover was a time to be with people you cared about, drawing passion from the crowd and energy from sacred time and sacred place. Passover was God’s people offering praise and thanksgiving to God for the gift of miraculous freedom and for the gift of miraculous life. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus would have traveled with their extended family: sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, all taking care of one another. Along the journey, as they gathered around campfires at night, perhaps they shared stories from years past; stories that told of joy or struggle, of pain or delight. They probably noticed how the older generation was walking just a bit more slowly this year. Perhaps they missed those who could no longer make the journey, those who had to remain home in Nazareth. I imagine they took time to speak the names of those no longer with them; they took time to remember.

Passover is a celebration of remembering. It remembers slavery and fear and oppression. It tells the story of Pharaoh and his tyranny. It tells of courage and patience and God’s persistence. It speaks of a God who cannot bear to see the innocent suffer. It proclaims without doubt that there is no Pharaoh, no threat of evil in any time or place, that God cannot and will not defeat. It teaches us that life can come from death. It immerses us in the truth that only through death comes genuine life. Passover tells a story, but it does even more. Passover invites a suspension of time, an overlapping of time. Past becomes present. Liberation is experienced as a powerful memory from the past and liberation is experienced as a powerful moment in the present.

The festival of Passover lasts for eight days. During those days, the crowds in Jerusalem would have gathered in family groups. Each group would have celebrated its own Passover meal, which meant that the Temple courts were full of lambs being sacrificed. That meal commemorates the night of freedom when God instructed the people to sacrifice a lamb. God’s children were to mark the doorposts of their homes with the lamb’s blood so that the Angel of Death would pass over the homes of the Hebrews, sparing their firstborn, even as death strikes the Egyptians, compelling Pharaoh to finally let God’s oppressed children go free. Thus it is a night of terror and great anxiety as death moves over the land. But it is also a night of great anticipation. God commands that those who celebrate it in every age must do so with sandals on their feet and a walking stick in their hand, because once liberation comes, you must act quickly. That’s not just ancient story; that is current reality.

The twelve year old Jesus would have experienced Passover in this sacred family community. He would have eaten the unleavened bread, the "bread of affliction," and tasted the bitter herbs so that he would know the bitterness of oppression. This is how Israel taught its identity: with sacred words and sacred food enacting sacred story. I think something caught hold of that twelve year old young man during that Passover experience that could not be denied. It was something that superseded parental authority. It was something more powerful than even the love of mother and father, for it compelled him to leave behind mother and father in order to listen to God. In that moment, that foreshadowing, what of the man do we see in the child? I think I see a passion for the story of his people as God’s people; an obsession with doing God’s will; a wisdom that enthralled the wise; a clarity of purpose; a drive for service; a declaration of separation from earthly family in order to claim divine calling.

"Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?" They are the first words spoken by Jesus in Luke’s Gospel. Too often we think of them as adult words, as Messiah words, coming from a boy’s body, as if the fullness of God was already present in a child. Yes, this was a unique child. Yes, there was more of God in him even then. Yes, we see something of the man in the child, a foreshadowing of what is to come. But could not the same passion for God have been awakened in a human child who had just experienced the awe, wonder, and power of his people’s sacred story? Is this not the same passion for God that we wish for our own children, even for ourselves, when we encounter the call of God in our lives?

You see, just as the child Jesus was claimed by his sacred story, our sacred story wants to claim us. But first we have to know our story. We can find our story in this story, but we have to listen a bit more closely and dig a bit more deeply. There is another foreshadowing at work here.

When most of us encounter this story, we delight in the image of the child but we are distressed by the image of his parents, especially Mary. Why does she seem so surprised to find Jesus in the Temple, in quite literally his Father’s house? This is Mary who was visited by Gabriel. This is Mary who sang of God’s wondrous deeds in the gift of her child and God’s child to the world. This is Mary and Joseph who were visited by shepherds still aglow with angel dust; shepherds who had come to find the child whose birth announcement shattered their dark night. And what of Simeon who took the infant child in his arms and spoke of seeing God’s salvation without any hint of angel prompting? In twelve years of raising this child, had Mary and Joseph forgotten it all? Where along the way had they lost their way?

This is Luke’s Gospel and it is filled with images of the lost being found. Here it is a lost child. Later it will be a lost sheep and a lost coin leading to the story of a lost and prodigal son who is found by a waiting and loving Father.

There will come a time in Luke’s Gospel when Jesus will return to Jerusalem, once again for Passover. Once again, he will engage in conversation with the leaders of God’s people, only this time the response will be anger and not amazement. Once again, Jesus will be lost. He will be crucified and buried. Anxious ones who care deeply for him will once again search for him. Once again, they will be greeted with words reminding them of their own ignorance and assuring them of God’s deeper truth: "Why do you search for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen."

Today is the first Sunday in the season of Lent, a time for holy preparation for our most sacred of days, the day of resurrection. Let this story with its images of faith being claimed with power and of the lost being found, be our threshold, our foreshadowing, of the season. For Lent is our season of pilgrimage when we journey once again with Jesus from Nazareth to Jerusalem. We journey with our sacred family in order that we might once again hear the sacred words, share the sacred food, and enact the sacred story.

"Lent is a time to take the time

to let the power of our faith story take hold of us," writes Ann Weems.

"a time to let the events

get up and walk around in us,

a time to intensify

our living unto Christ,

a time to hover over

the thoughts of our hearts,

a time to place our feet in the streets of Jerusalem

or to walk along the sea and listen to his word,

a time to touch his robe

and feel the healing surge through us,

a time to ponder and a time to wonder…

Lent is a time to allow a fresh new taste of God!"