Commentary on Luke 2:41-52

My cell phone creates montages of pictures and videos taken on its camera and invites me to view them. I will confess I have a hard time looking at the photo montages that highlight my daughters because of the profound emotions—of joy and sadness—they elicit. To be sure, I love to see them grow, and with time my relationship with them deepens in immensely rewarding ways. And yet, something about them is lost to the past, and part of me mourns that loss. Like other parents, I realize I must let my daughters grow into their own independent selves and, eventually, let them go.

In Luke 2:41−52, Jesus’ human parents are forced to grapple with the implications of his transition from childhood to adulthood. Luke tells us that Joseph and Mary go yearly to the temple for Passover (2:41). Of the three Jewish pilgrimage festivals, the others being the feasts of Weeks and Booths (Deuteronomy 16:16), Passover attracted the most pilgrims. Though Jews in Galilee lived close enough to make the journey more often than Diaspora Jews who lived further away, this did not necessarily mean that a person or family from Galilee would celebrate Passover in Jerusalem every year. By stating that they went yearly, Luke thus continues to stress Joseph and Mary’s piety.

That this episode takes place during the celebration of Passover resonates with Luke’s aims of presenting Jesus as Savior. Passover commemorates God’s great salvific act on behalf of Israel, the liberation from slavery in Egypt. At the age of 12, on the cusp of the age of maturation into adulthood, Jesus goes with his family to the temple to celebrate the feast that remembers the salvation of God’s people once before (2:42). 

This scene anticipates the salvation of the adult Jesus’ own life and ministry by the length of time it takes Mary and Joseph to find him after realizing he had not joined the caravan heading back home (2:43−46). They find him after three days (2:46), a foreshadowing of Jesus’ final Passover in Jerusalem, when his followers will “lose” him to crucifixion before discovering him alive three days later.

How did his parents lose him, by the way? The way Luke presents it, Jesus’ remaining in Jerusalem is less a lapse on Mary and Joseph’s part than a willful act of Jesus. Jesus uses his agency as a growing boy to “stay behind” (2:43).

When they find him, he is sitting among the teachers (2:46). Keeping to the typical practice of ancient Greek and Roman biographies, which presented the qualities that made their subjects significant as present throughout their lives (even in childhood), Luke depicts Jesus as gifted in the subject of Jewish teaching even as a 12-year-old. Anticipating the great teacher that Jesus will become as he continues to grow, he astounds even the learned adult teachers of the temple with his own learning (2:47). When he returns to Jerusalem as an adult, he will teach daily in the temple, but the reactions to his teaching will be mixed (see 19:47−48).

Joseph and Mary, though impressed by Jesus too, are unsettled by his actions. Mary chides Jesus and admits to the “great anxiety” she and Joseph have suffered (2:48). Sounding like a scolding parent, she refers to herself and Joseph as “your father and I” when telling Jesus how his actions have affected them.

Like many a preteen before and since, Jesus responds by asserting his identity and independence apart from his (human) parents (2:49). From his point of view, he did nothing wrong and was never lost. No frantic searching was necessary. He was where he could be expected to be: accomplishing his Father’s interests. 

The alternate translation in the New Revised Standard Version footnote (“be about my Father’s interests”) better captures the sense of the Greek, which lacks the word for “house” that many translations introduce because of the temple setting. While the temple backdrop is important, Jesus’ point is that, as God’s Son, he must tend to his Father’s affairs, not those of his human parents eager to return to their lives in Galilee.

Tellingly, in 2:49 Jesus refers to his “Father,” using the same word Mary had just used with reference to Joseph in 2:48 (patēr). They do not have the same parent in mind. Jesus knows⎯and Mary and Joseph must accept⎯that he is God’s Son, a relation that supersedes his allegiance to them. Having raised him from infancy, they must grapple with the implications of Jesus’ divine Sonship. It’s a moment in which the prospect of having to let their child go challenges them, and they struggle to understand the implications of his words (2:50).

Thankfully, letting go is a gradual process. The passage ends with a note that Jesus returns with them to Nazareth and lives as their obedient child as he continues to grow in wisdom, age (or stature), and divine and human favor (2:51−52). Mary, for her part, treasures “all these things in her heart” (2:51). Given that Luke has referred to Mary’s treasuring of the events of Jesus’ early life earlier in his infancy narrative (2:19), her treasuring in 2:51 perhaps refers to all that is taking place in Jesus’ childhood and not just to this last episode.

Reflecting on the events in this passage, preachers can expound on our desire for Christian faith to look a certain way. Do we prefer that Jesus conform to our images and expectations, perhaps because of the way we have understood or related to Jesus in the past? Do we give our faith room to grow or surprise us? Perhaps we seek to hold on to the past and shield ourselves from seeing our faith in a new light, especially if doing so challenges us to grow and mature in our faith and practice.

PRAYER OF THE DAY

God of all learning,
When the boy, Jesus, stayed in the temple to learn from the elders, it was the elders who in turn learned from him. Teach us, Lord, as you have taught others, and grant us wisdom and willingness to learn. Amen.

HYMNS

Jesus, what a wonderful child ELW 297, GG 126, NCH 136, TFF 51
Good Christian friends, rejoice ELW 288, H82 107, NCH 129, UMH 224
Our Father by whose name ELW 640, H82 587, UMH 447
Love has come ELW 292, GG 110

CHORAL

Jesus Child, John Rutter
In Stature grows the Heavenly Child, English part-hymn, Thomas Tallis Cantata 154, J.S. Bach (based on Luke 2:41-52; solo voices with chorale)