The Pilgrim’s Way - The Rev. Dr. Elise Feyerherm, Jan. 5, 2025

Luke’s story of the young Jesus in the temple is a gem, and it is one that we hardly get to hear. We do not always have a second Sunday after Christmas, and when we do there are three choices for the gospel reading: the flight of Joseph, Mary, and an infant Jesus into Egypt, our story today, and finally the story of the arrival of the magi, which we associate most with the Epiphany on January 6. Taken together they provide the only glimpse we have of Jesus’ life after his birth and before his entry into public ministry. Each of these stories merits a hearing during the twelve days of Christmas, and hearing only one feels somehow incomplete.

But this story of a twelve year old Jesus is one of my favorites, because of its emotional poignancy and spiritual insight. It is a story rooted in universal experiences: the experiences of an adolescent, poised at the threshold of adulthood, seeking their own meaning and purpose; of parents confronting the risks of their child’s journey and their own helplessness; and of the journey we all are on in our quest for relationship with God and meaning in our own lives. This story has it all.

In the larger scope of Luke’s gospel, this story is more than just filler to bridge the long gap in years between Jesus’ birth and his public ministry thirty years later. Scholars remind us that it serves as one part of a pair of bookends in the gospel, connected in really important ways to the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, as well as to themes that appear in Luke’s gospel throughout. The fact that Jesus is “lost” is a kind of code in Luke to “death,” and being “found” correlates with coming back to life. Think of the parables in Luke – the lost coin that a women sweeps her entire house to find, the lost sheep who is worth leaving the ninety-nine to go in search of, the prodigal son who is lost and who, when he returns home, is welcomed with open arms.

Death and resurrection are not afterthoughts to the story of Jesus; they form the core of Jesus’ identity, and the core of what it means for us, as Jesus’ disciples, to walk with God and become the people we are called to be. Knowing how carefully Luke has crafted his story, how intentionally he has woven these threads together, we are given the tools to interpret this story for our own lives.

I am especially taken with this episode in Luke’s gospel because of the way it invites us into an active relationship with our religious tradition and with God. In this story we see the pilgrim’s way, a journey taken by young and old. Notice that the grounding here is Mary and Joseph’s lifelong faithfulness and practice. They go up every year to Jerusalem for the Passover festival, and the implication is that every year Jesus has gone with them. Yes, the journey was probably tiring and even boring at times for kids. But the pilgrim’s way was something that children only began to love by experiencing it, by walking with their families along the way.

And on the way back home, when they realize they have left Jesus behind, they go back, as all parents would, to search for him. Yes, this is a realistic element of the story, but it is also, perhaps, a symbol of Joseph and Mary’s faith. When Jesus is missing, they go look for him. When one of the most precious visible signs of God’s presence among them is no longer visible, they notice, and their pilgrim’s way takes them in search of it. They go in search of Him.

When we lose sight of Jesus, we could do no better than emulate his parents.

And then there’s Jesus himself. We think of Jesus as somehow remarkable here, as exhibiting the acuity and insight that could only come from his divine nature. He possesses such clarity about his religious and vocational purpose at an unusually young age. But is he meant to seem all that unusual?

Those who do ministry with children and young people will tell you that children have naturally deep spiritual sensitivities, at least before institutions intervene to squash them. Children are aware that there is something inside them that can hear and reach out to God, that there is more to this world than what we can see and touch and measure.

And we see that here: there is a magnetic force that draws Jesus back to the temple, to where people are worshiping and praying and talking about God, and that force is in all of us, no matter our age. It’s just that the older we get, the more the pressures of adult life and the demands of society threaten to squeeze it out of us.

And so I love the description of Jesus when Mary and Joseph find him in the temple – notice he is “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”  What a model for spiritual life and growth: listening, and asking questions. It represents, I think, a basic orientation of receptivity, and curiosity. Of being attentive, of being open, and wondering about the deepest questions of meaning and purpose. Yes, the teachers were impressed by the answers Jesus gave, but I don’t think it is his wisdom that matters as much as his watching, and his wondering.

As Jesus leans into his purpose, we too receive that same invitation, no matter how young or old we are. And it should cause us to ponder, what does it mean to live a spiritual life, a life of meaning and purpose? Is it about having all the right answers? Or is it about embracing a posture of watching, and wondering? Of listening more than telling, and of greeting the world and its Creator with holy curiosity?

This is the heart of who we are as followers of Jesus and as a community of faith. No matter how long we have been journeying with Jesus, there is always more to wonder about. And if we have stopped wondering, what does that say about our faith and our own journey? What has happened to our holy curiosity, and how can we rekindle that flame within us?

At its heart, rekindling our holy curiosity is about rekindling love. The practice of asking questions is a form of love. It is born of love, it embodies love, it leads to more love. Think of a time when you met a new person, someone whom it seemed might become a friend or even more. The questions flow naturally: where do you come from? What do you love, what do you yearn for? How do you play? Our questions reveal a deeper longing – I want to know you, and I want you to know me.

And so we are invited, in the words of the poet Rilke, to “love the questions.” To love the search, the pilgrim’s way. Who is God? What does it mean to say that God creates all things? How does God save us? Why did Jesus suffer and die? What does resurrection mean? Where do we notice the Spirit present among us as we strive to follow Jesus? What do you, God, want from us? How can we know and love you and each other better?

“Happy are the people whose strength is in [God], whose hearts are set on the pilgrim’s way.” Happy indeed.