My sister Katie
was especially careless, always wandering after anything that caught her eye.
My mother once lost Katie in the mall and frantically ran around looking for
her. Eventually she found her way to a department store security office. My
mother was tired and terrified, and there was Katie happily sitting between the
security officers, smiling, eating candy. Katie said, Mama, why did you lose
me?
My mother didn’t
appreciate the question.
Perhaps some children
are just too “at home” in the world for their own safety. Sadly, children need
to unlearn that feeling of being at home wherever they are and learn about the
dangers around them. We don’t like to do it, but because we love them, we teach
them about these things.
I wonder if Mary
had taught Jesus about these things before that trip to Jerusalem. I assume she
did – she was a mother.
These
pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the festivals were a big deal. Crowded, exciting,
and potentially dangerous – you would want to keep a close eye on the children.
But the journey
to Jerusalem would not be one you would be taking alone. There would be large
groups of people, friends, neighbors, and family members all traveling together
in a caravan.
On their way
back home, Mary thought Jesus was with some cousins or playmates somewhere in
the caravan. Maybe he said to her, I’m going to hang out with Jacob, and Mary
said, that’s fine.
And then at the
end of the day, he was nowhere to be found.
Mary and Joseph
had no choice but to travel back to Jerusalem and look for their child.
Jerusalem was a
big city, crowded with travelers – Jews from all over the diaspora who had come
for the festival of the Passover. For three days they searched, without
success. It must have been terrifying for Joseph and Mary. For three days they
imagined the very worst they could imagine.
Then they went
to the temple. On the third day.
It would seem
that this was the last place they expected him to be. I guess that’s
reasonable. If I were looking for my child, I wouldn’t immediately think, “They
must be at church.” But when they finally arrived at the temple, there they saw
him, sitting amongst the rabbis, enjoying a theological discussion.
Mary called out
his name. He looked up and saw her. And he said, “Why didn’t you know I would
be here? Did you not know that I had to be at my father’s house?”
Why did you lose
me, Mama?
And so we have another
chapter in Mary’s life full of gathering up the mysteries, holding them and
pondering them in her heart.
It would be much
later before she would begin to really understand it, but perhaps eventually
Mary would know that it was all about where Jesus was at home. Where he
belonged. And it is really about the very same thing for each one of us.
We began this
conversation on Christmas Eve, about our notions of home – what it means to us
to be at home. And the ways in which we may find our home in Jesus.
The idea of home
is very much a matter of identity. The scriptures tell us where someone is from
to tell us about a person’s identity. Matthew tells us that Joseph is from the
house of David and this is important for us to know. It tells us something
about who he is. He belongs to the tribe of Judah, to the house of David.
For us, too, if
we say we are at home in a certain environment, we are saying something about
who we are. To what and whom we belong.
Throughout this
season we have used the image of making a house for the holy. We have been
thinking about the church being that house, making room enough for everyone.
But it is not too far a stretch to say that we ourselves, our bodies, are
designed to make a house for the holy, to bring what is holy into this world.
We are made in God’s image and therefore designed to carry something of the
goodness of God into the world – Just as Jesus carried the goodness of God in
his body, when he came to dwell with us.
If we say that
our faith, our identity as Christians, is simply to claim Jesus as our personal
Savior, is to get only part of it. If we say to invite Jesus into our heart is
the all of it, we are missing some essential parts. Because when we let Jesus
into our hearts, we are letting the holiness of God in, inviting this holiness
to flourish so that we might become a force for God’s goodness in the world.
The boy Jesus stayed
behind in Jerusalem. He went to the temple, maybe because he was homesick. He
left his Father in heaven, his home with the holy trinity, separated himself
for our sake. He carried this holiness in his body to show us God’s love toward
us.
To find our true
home, maybe we can do the same.
May each of us carry
the holy in our bodies to show the world God’s loving intentions for all.
Photo by Max Goncharov on Unsplash
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