Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.
(Luke 2:41-52)
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When last we gathered, Jesus was a baby lying in a manger, surrounded by angels and shepherds, on a still night - at least according to the unknown author who wrote the words “little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” Since then, Luke’s Gospel has become a sort of time machine, fast forwarding us 12 years to this scene today. Jesus is no longer a baby, and there are neither angels nor shepherds around. Rather than stillness, the scene is chaotic, filled with people. And in the midst of it, Jesus disappears. Not knowing where he was, Joseph and Mary set out to find him, and they discover him in the temple. After being scolded for running off - as 12 year old boys have a tendency to do - Jesus looks at his mother and says “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Which begs the question from me as well: Mary - did you know?
What a great song! It’s one of the finest examples of contemporary Christian songs out there, and a beautiful addition to the Christmas roster of songs. And the lyrics pose some wonderful questions for us to think about as we reflect on Mary and her experiences as the mother of Jesus:
Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy would one day walk on water?
that your Baby Boy would save our sons and daughters?
that your Baby Boy will give sight to a blind man?
that your baby boy will calm the storm with His hand?
that when you kiss your little Baby you kissed the face of God?
that the little child you’re holding is the great I Am.
Good questions, and they do make me wonder: Mary, did you know?
There are five scenes in the Bible - if I can call them that - where Mary plays a significant role, and in all of them she shows an understanding of what was happening to her or of what had happened to her, depending on when the scenes occur. Mary is a bit of a controversial figure in the church. Actually, even beyond Christianity. You might be surprised, for example, to learn that there’s more written about Mary in the Koran than there is in the Bible. Within Christianity, in Roman Catholic tradition, she’s referred to as the Mother of God, and is an object of veneration herself, as people pray to her for her intercession. Protestants rejected this idea - many leaders of the Reformation were offended by it - and the result was that in many Protestant churches Mary has been largely ignored, except perhaps as a part of a sentimental scene as the holy family gathers in the manger on Christmas Eve. But Mary’s role in the story is huge - because at one and the same time she seems to have understood more than any of us, even though she may not have understood much at all. To understand what I mean, you have to look at the five places where she appears in the Gospel pageant.
She’s there first, of course, as the angel Gabriel visits her and tells her that - against all the odds - she is going to be the mother of a child conceived by the Holy Spirit. Mary doesn’t understand - “how can this be, since I am a virgin,” is her response, and yet she immediately expresses deep faith and trust in God and says “may it be to me as you have said,” and she goes on with a wonderful expression of faith that’s known today as the Magnificat, starting with the words “My soul glorifies the Lord.” The second scene is at the manger, as the shepherds tell her that they’ve responded to the message from the angels and have arrived to see “this thing that has happened,” as they described it. Mary sees them arrive, and we’re told that she “treasured [their] words and pondered them in her heart.” She “pondered them.” She may not have understood exactly what it meant, but she “pondered them.” The third scene is the one we read today. It’s in Jerusalem and it’s Passover. The city is full of pilgrims. It’s a chaotic scene. As Mary and Joseph are returning home they suddenly realize that Jesus - 12 years old - isn’t with them. Some suggest that they must have been bad parents, but the group would have been travelling as an extended family of sorts, so it wasn’t unreasonable for her to think that Jesus must have been with someone else, and in any event at the age of 12 Jesus was almost a man by Jewish standards. Still, this was concerning. Returning to Jerusalem to find him, they discover him in the temple, having discussions with the religious leaders and amazing even them with his knowledge. Clearly, this boy was not your average boy, and I suspect that at least one of the temple priests must have been muttering under his breath “could someone please get this little brat’s parents and get him out of here!” Again, Mary didn’t understand fully, but her response was to treasure “all these things in her heart.” Scene four is at the wedding in Cana in John’s Gospel, where Mary has pondered and treasured enough to know that Jesus was capable of performing a miracle, and she essentially tells the wedding guests to sit back and watch her son turn water into wine! She had absolute faith by this point that Jesus could do it. And then there was Scene five - clearly the most anguishing one for Mary. Jesus is on the cross, in the last moments of his life - and Mary is there as well, watching, probably weeping, probably horrified. But she’s there. From beginning to end, Mary was there with Jesus, and Jesus, at the end, when he could have been focussed on himself and his own suffering, looked after Mary, and ensured that John would look out for her.
What all five of these scenes tell us is that Mary - while she may not have understood everything - understood from the beginning to the end that there was something about Jesus that was different. Her relationship with Jesus was unlike the relationship any of us can have with Jesus. The author Judy Randoli wrote about things that only a mother can understand. One was “once a person becomes a mother, a piece of her own heart is taken and shared with a love like they will never feel for another human being.” As she put it in commenting on that, the mother simply says “I believe in you. I believe in you with every cell of my being.” Mary believed in Jesus. She may not have understood everything fully, but she believed in Jesus. On that very first night, when Jesus was born, Max Lucado writes about the scene that “she looks into the face of the baby. Her son. Her Lord. His Majesty. At this point in history, the human being who best understands who God is and what he is doing is a teenage girl in a smelly stable.”
We are never going to understand Jesus as Mary understood Jesus. But we do learn from Mary to constantly treasure and ponder Jesus’ life and words and to trust him, and we learn that Jesus will care for those who care for him.
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