"God's Family" (Luke 2:41-52)

They grow up fast, don’t they?

Look! We’ve still got the decorations up from celebrating his birth, and now he’s already twelve years old. Where does the time go?

And as twelve year-old boys sometimes do, he’s gone and run off.

He was supposed to be with his parents and relatives, journeying back to Nazareth from Jerusalem. It was an annual pilgrimage they took, dozens of friends and relatives from Galilee.

At first, Mary and Joseph just assumed he was somewhere in the crowd. They didn’t even notice that he was missing!

I know from hiking trips I’ve taken with boy scouts, if you have a group of even 12 or 15 people, you try to stay together, but sometimes you do get a little spread out along the trail in groups, until the group in front stops and waits for the group in back to catch up.

Well, this time, when the group in front stopped, and the group in back caught up, Jesus was nowhere to be seen. So Mary and Joseph said, “you all can go on. We have to go back. We’ll see you in Galilee.”

They turned and headed back to Jerusalem to find Jesus. The others watched them go; and someone said, “Well, they got their hands full with that one…”

It was three days later that they finally found him. He wasn’t playing in the streets. He wasn’t trying to sneak in to a sporting competition… He was… in the temple, engaged in conversation with the religious teachers… and his parents were astonished.

His mother said, “Dear child! Dear, dear child!” She was exasperated and angry and relieved and overjoyed all at once. “Child, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been searching for you; we’ve been worried sick!”

And twelve year-old Jesus said: “Why?...

That’s a twelve year-old’s answer! But then Jesus said:

“Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

We need to pause the story here, because there are some translation issues. The Greek in the original manuscript isn’t clear. We read “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house,” but what Jesus may have said is, “Did you not know that I must be taking care of my father’s interests?” or “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s people?” or “Did you not know that I must be taking care of my Father’s family?”

If the translators aren’t quite sure exactly what Jesus said, neither was Mary. She said to Jesus:

 “What do you mean, ‘your Father’s business?’ Your father’s business is back home in Nazareth… What do you mean ‘your Father’s people, your father’s family?’ Your Father’s family is travelling on the road back to Nazareth.  (We thought you were among them…)”

But Jesus is maturing at a rate that even Mary & Joseph aren’t prepared for. Like I said, they always do grow up fast, don’t they? As our children grow old and gain wisdom, we parents are sometimes surprised to find that we have as much to learn from them as we have to teach them.

Jesus, at the age of 12, has realized that his “family” is more than just his mother, father, brothers and sisters. His family is more than just the people he lives with or the relatives he travels with.

Jesus, at the age of 12, is learning to recognize all children of God – all people – as his family. And, being a child of God, he recognizes that it is – or will be, soon – his responsibility to care for this larger family.

In other words: all people are a part of the one household of God. All are related. All are one.

This is wisdom that is passed through the ages and shared across cultures and religions.

Buddhist teaching: “The whole world is but one family.”

Quran: “Humanity is but a single brotherhood; so make peace with your brethren.”

Black Elk: “All things are our relatives: what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One.”

Dalai Lama: “Every human being is a member of humanity and the human family regardless of differences in religion, culture, color and creed.”

Pope Francis: “We are one single human family.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson: “We are all connected – to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically.”

U.S. Motto: “E pluribus unum” (out of many, one)

Unfortunately, this wisdom is something that not all people have. We are all one… but we divide ourselves into families, tribes, nations, and we think we are separate from everyone else. We think that what affects me is more important than what affects you. We don’t realize that what affects me does affect you, and what affects you does affect me… because we are one.

Jesus did understand this. At twelve, Jesus was already looking beyond his own tribal family, his immediate household, and saw the household of God. The welfare of ALL people was his concern, because all are a part of the household.

There is no separation. We are all connected. We are all one.

Jesus calls his followers to this same understanding. When he called two brothers, James and John, to follow him, they were at that moment helping their father Zebedee with the family fishing business. But Jesus’s call to follow him made them realize that there was another, bigger family whose business needed their help, so they left their father there in the boat and followed Jesus.

Perhaps you are familiar with Jesus’s saying that “Whoever does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters… cannot be my disciple.” And perhaps this saying has troubled you, if you take it at face value.

Well, it is hyperbole, to be sure; I don’t think Jesus really wants you to hate anyone. But it is an attention-grabbing saying – what scholars call an aphorism – and the point is this: there is a bigger family that demands your attention, your love, and your loyalty: the one family of God.

People who don’t see all of humanity as one have a hard time with this. They want to draw lines that divide us from them. But Jesus doesn’t allow it. There isn’t “my family” and “your family.” There is just one family.

In the story today, Mary and Joseph thought Jesus was lost. He wasn’t lost; he was right where he was supposed to be. You could say that it was Mary and Joseph who were lost, and in more ways than one, since they didn’t understand what was going on, what Jesus was talking about.

When he became an adult, one of the things Jesus did was tell stories. And (no surprise here) one of the stories he told was about a son who was lost.

In the story, a man had two sons. The younger son went to his father and demanded his share of the inheritance, and the father gave it to him. Then this son went out and wasted it all in wild, reckless living.

Suddenly without money, he took a low-paying job in desperation. He was hungry and homeless, and finally he came to his senses and decided to return to his father.

When his father saw him returning, he ran to meet him, and immediately called for a huge celebration. Neighbors were invited, a feast was prepared, and the party began.

But someone was absent. The older son was still out in the field. The father didn’t even notice that this son was missing!

I wonder where Jesus got this idea, about a parent who doesn’t even realize his child is missing?

Eventually someone brought this to the father’s attention. (“Excuse me, sir, but do you realize your older son is missing?”) The father left the party and went out into the field. The older son was still out there. He was upset, hurt, and refused to come in.

The father said to him, “Dear child, my dear, dear child, we have to celebrate, for this brother of yours was lost but has been found.”

Scripture doesn’t say whether the older brother accepted his father’s invitation to join the party. In my mind, I imagine him standing there, thinking to himself, perhaps even saying out loud: “But I was lost, too; I was forgotten; I was left out; and you didn’t even notice…”

Along with this story, Jesus told of a shepherd who had 100 sheep, but this shepherd noticed that one of them was missing, so he went to look for the lost sheep.  And Jesus told of a woman who had ten coins; and she noticed that one of the coins was missing, so she went to look for her lost coin.

But this father in the story only had two sons (not ten, not a hundred) yet he didn’t even notice that one of the two was missing!

It kind of makes you wonder if Jesus was, perhaps just a little bitter at his parents for not even noticing that he was missing as they journeyed away from Jerusalem!

More importantly, the story makes you wonder if, perhaps, there have been times when you – the person hearing this story – haven’t noticed when someone has gone missing. If you’re missing money out of your bank account, you notice. If you’re missing some property, you notice. But if the family – the whole family of God – is missing someone; if someone is excluded from the party, left outside; if someone hasn’t received the invitation to come in to the party and join the feast – do you even notice?

Who have we excluded from the party? Who have we kept out, either intentionally or unintentionally? Have we even noticed their absence?

It’s bad enough to accidentally leave out someone, to forget to put their name on the invitation list, to begin the journey and not notice that they are missing. It’s even worse to deliberately, intentionally bar them from attending the party or joining the caravan. It’s bad enough to lose something; it’s even worse to deliberately hide it or throw it out.

Yet that’s what we do when we discriminate. That’s what we do when we insist that anyone is not like us. That’s what we do when we say “Muslims aren’t welcome.” That’s what we do when we deny services to the homeless, to veterans, to single mothers trying to raise their kids. That’s what we do when we kick people out of our families because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

In our one global family, the family of God, who’s missing? Who’s been left behind? Who hasn’t received an invitation?

May God forgive us for not noticing when a member of the family is missing. May God forgive us for not inviting them in.

God’s love is all-encompassing. No one is beyond the reach of God’s love. Nothing can separate any person from God’s love. At the banquet table of God, all are welcome, all are invited, for all are a part of the family.