Commentary on Luke 2:41-52

The lectionary ends this calendar year with the first words of Jesus, but before that a festival and a loss and a frantic three-day search. If we have struggled to hold onto the fullness of the Savior in the merriment or stress of celebrating Christmas, this text invites us to turn back with Mary and Joseph and to remember where he will always be found. 

This singular childhood narrative of the canonical Gospels marks a conclusion to the birth narrative and a transition to the ministry of Jesus, with a shift in focus from the story of his parents, especially Mary, to the agency of Jesus. Verse 43 says not that his parents left him but that Jesus “stayed behind.” 

As the only Passover, or any festival, mentioned in any synoptic Gospel prior to the one preceding Jesus’ crucifixion, this passage points forward to those three days of loss and grief to come, and then to another search and other questions to those who love him: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (24:5), and “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” (24:26).

The theme of seeking and finding, of the lost and found, spans the whole of Luke. Instruction on what human beings are and are not to seek accompanies the promise that God wants to give people the best gifts, notably the kingdom (12:31) and the Holy Spirit (11:13; 24:49). Luke also gives us Jesus’ parables of the God of the lost, who does not give up until everyone is found (15:3–32). 

Jesus’ parents find him in the temple, where Jesus is among the teachers. From this moment on, the only teacher to appear in the Gospel will be Jesus, but here the 12-year-old Savior, Christ, and Lord of the birth narratives is listening and asking questions. Even as a child, he amazes everyone with his understanding—amazement that will occur again when Jesus raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead (8:56) and when the Emmaus pair hear the women’s report of the angels at the empty tomb (24:22).  

Luke’s narrative has begun and will end in the temple in Jerusalem (1:8–23; 24:53), and Jesus’ first words are now spoken there. Jesus will again “set his face to go to Jerusalem” in 9:51 and will be on the way to his suffering, death, and resurrection until the triumphal entry in 19:35–40, with the acclamation of the crowds there echoing the praise of angels at his birth.

The verb Mary uses to describe the desperate search for Jesus, translated in the New Revised Standard Version as “anxiously,” is not the verb normally used for worry (Luke 12:22–31; 10:41). It is perhaps more akin to the soul-piercing sword of 2:35. It appears elsewhere in the New Testament only two other times. In Luke 16:24–25, it refers to the rich man’s agony in the flames of Hades. In Acts 20:38, it refers to Paul’s grief-stricken friends when he says they will never see him again. When Mary rebukes Jesus for having left them, she is referring to their agony at the prospect of losing their child. 

Jesus, like the angels at the empty tomb, asks why they are searching, and then comes the crux of the passage: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

The word for “I must,” or “it is necessary,” is associated with divine mandate, including the necessity for Jesus to suffer and die and be raised on the third day. 

The phrase “in my Father’s house” is not easy to translate because the Greek does not specify to what it refers, but says something like “in the undefined-plural-somethings of my Father.” This has been understood as a place (which, here, is the temple) or as a group of people (in this instance, the teachers) or as an activity (the business or affairs of the Father). But it is perhaps most helpful (although not workable in a written translation!) to leave it open, to think of it as all the somethings—places, people, doings—that advance the purposes of God’s love for the world. 

The substance of this is made clear throughout the Gospel: in the poetic praise of the birth narratives, especially the reversals of Mary’s Magnificat; with Jesus’ rebuttals of the devil in the wilderness; in Jesus’ declaration of his mission in Nazareth, which immediately triggers an attempt to throw him over a cliff; in the Sermon on the Plain; in Jesus’ teachings on prayer and his own regular withdrawal from the crowds to pray; in all the parables. Always and everywhere, we see the somethings of the Father in Jesus’ boundary-crossing life, which will ultimately lead to his death but also to his resurrection and the Spirit-filled life of his followers to come.

The somethings of the Father are not easy for everyone to accept. They do not conform to what the devil wants, and they do not conform to what many people imagine they want (or realize they have) in a Savior even now. They transgress societal and religious norms. They are the opposite of politically expedient because they are, as Mary proclaims in the Magnificat and the angel tells the shepherds, for all people, not primarily for the rich, powerful, or the prominent. The somethings of God are for peace on Earth, not victory for a particular person, clan, or nation. They are for Israel and the Gentiles (2:32), for friends and enemies (6:27–36)—for anyone who most desperately needs a savior, which turns out to be everyone in one way or another.

The “child” of 2:48, nestled between references to his mother and his father, is already aware of the overarching call of God. Like the inbreaking of heavenly glory in a pasture, directing the shepherds to a manger, and the angelic praise pointing to both heaven and Earth, Jesus will always hold both the glory and the flesh in himself as son of humanity and Son of God.

His parents do not understand this child whose understanding amazes all who hear him, but Mary holds all of these things, with the words of the shepherds, in her heart—the holding place for the transcendent wisdom of faith—and we may take this passage as an invitation to do likewise.