Simply Lutheran

First Sunday after Epiphany - January 12, 2020

“Jesus Attends to His Father’s Business” Luke 2:41-52
Luke 2:41 50 His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover.42 And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast.43 When they had finished the days, as they returned, the Boy Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem. And Joseph and His mother did not know it;44 but supposing Him to have been in the company, they went a day's journey, and sought Him among their relatives and acquaintances.45 So when they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking Him.46 Now so it was that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions.47 And all who heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers.48 So when they saw Him, they were amazed; and His mother said to Him, "Son, why have You done this to us? Look, Your father and I have sought You anxiously." 49 And He said to them, "Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business?"50 But they did not understand the statement which He spoke to them. NKJV

Dear Christian friends: In reality this boy Jesus is so aware of His surrounding that it is impossible for Him to be lost. This boy Jesus is the Incarnate God; indeed, the Incarnate Word of God, the creator and ruler of all things. He is very knowledgeable of His whereabouts at all times. However, Mary and Joseph didn’t understand what Jesus told them when they found Him in the temple. Jesus explicitly said to them, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” That brings me to two basic teachings of today’s text, namely, that you are the one found, not Jesus; and, the Father’s business is that of your own salvation.

This Jesus wasn’t lost at all but was about His Father’s business then, as a twelve-year-old boy, and even today. This Jesus wants you to find Him only where He wants to be found, that is, in Word and Sacrament. And here it is that Jesus is still about His Father’s business.

Jesus, ever since His conception and birth of the Virgin Mary, was, is, and always will be both true God and true Man. The two natures of the person of Jesus Christ cannot and will not ever be separated. Therefore, it wasn’t surprising that Jesus as a 12-year old boy should be found in the temple using great wisdom and knowledge. Jesus was never lost physically; neither lost spiritually; nor intellectually. Regarding Psalm 8:2, “Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, Because of Your enemies, That You may silence the enemy and the avenger,” Dr. Martin Luther commented:
“Jesus the 12 years old sits in the temple in the midst of all the teachers, listens to them and asks them questions, so that all who hear Him have to ‘be amazed at His understanding and His answers.’ The Apostles are also children, foolish and unwise before the world. They do not understand the world’s wisdom and are miserable and poor. But they have the divine wisdom by which they far surpass the wisdom of the world...So now the one confronts the other. The world struts and swaggers with its great power, reason, and wisdom. And He (Christ) says, ‘Strut all you please. All your power, reason and wisdom are dung before Me; I will set babes and sucklings upon you. With their mouths and word they will erect a power and kingdom to spite and mock all your power and wisdom.”

Even the Virgin Mary issued a rebuke to her Son not realizing that He knew where He was and who He was. Human wisdom and reason had told Mary that her Son was lost, but this was not so. Just as true is the fact that you cannot find Jesus because Jesus was never lost, but indeed He continually seeks to find the lost in their own understanding.

Human wisdom is only encouraged by asking the question, “Have you found Jesus?” as if Jesus is somehow hiding from people and toying with their eternal souls. But St. Paul put the record straight when he quoted Isaiah, “But Isaiah is very bold and says: ‘I was found by those who did not seek Me; I was made manifest to those who did not ask for Me.’ But to Israel he says: ‘All day long I have stretched out My hands to a disobedient and contrary people.’” Romans 10:20 21.

If finding the Lord Jesus were to be a mandate of the Law then we would never find Him and indeed be lost forever. Romans 9:30-32 is an important lesson for all of us: “What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith; but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law.” And, of course, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom.10:17), not by making a decision for Christ; It is the gift of faith that now recognizes and receives that which was there all along. But now, as Scripture would say, today salvation has come to your house.

St. John is explicit when it comes to who it is that found whom. Here it is that the Biblical concept of being born-again, or born from above, tells that man cannot decide for Christ for he/she cannot have a natural knowledge of whom Jesus really is. Jesus must be received by faith; faith that is given to man through the hearing of the Gospel (Rom.10:17). As John 1:10-13 reads:
“He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Jesus today is still about His Father’s business of seeking out sinners, of finding the likes of you and me. As the Lord spoke through the prophet Jeremiah, “No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34) The New Covenant is therefore not conditional, like the many covenants that had the two-letter word “If” attached. The New Covenant God made with Himself in the sacrifice of His Only Begotten Son on that old rugged cross of Calvary; this New Testament is simply known in the forgiveness of sins for salvation belongs to God alone! For those who are penitent; for those who have been driven to sorrow over their sins, there can be no ifs, ands, or buts in the New Covenant since the preaching of the Gospel brings the Holy Spirit and forgiveness of sins. “Be, therefore, reconciled to God!” as Saint Paul pleaded with the Corinthians and as God’s ministers exhort their hearers today in order to be justified.

And that brings me to the point that Jesus wishes to be found in His Word. Jesus is known in the forgiveness of sins, and where there is forgiveness of sin there is life and salvation, as Luther once said. This is the New Covenant God made with His people and He signed it in blood, by the many stripes and wounds laid upon Jesus, and by the nail prints in His hands, feet, and the wound in His side. In other words, the forgiveness of sins came through the bloody death of Jesus’ atonement on Calvary’s cross, and through that, we know the Lord. Hearing this message of Christ crucified is the way God the Father ordained for everyone to attain righteousness by faith.

Jesus once said in Luke 9:25 26, “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?” We all need to be reminded where Mary “found” Jesus, namely in the temple transacting the Father’s business. And it is in the Church where the Father’s business today is transacted, the business of Word and Sacrament. It is there where Jesus wishes to be found; in Word and Sacrament. There, Jesus is preached and confessed; there, we are adopted as God’s children and baptize in Jesus’ name; and, there, Jesus’ body and blood are received physically in and with the common elements of bread and the wine. Jesus sets His own table in the Holy Supper for the forgiveness of sins and for the strengthening of your faith.

Jesus is no longer that 12-year old boy, but Jesus still beckons us to come to His Father’s house. Why should we take the time to go to church? Well, for one thing, to encourage each other in the true faith and to keep our eyes open to the fact that Jesus will again return to gather His church to be with Him, as Hebrews 10:25 states: “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” Also, Hebrews states that Jesus is “The author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2); and, upon that statement, we can see the enormity of the 12-year old Jesus, His incomparable size that could never be lost!

As the Formula of Concord confesses:
“But now since he ascended into heaven, not just like some other saint but, in the words of the apostle (Eph. 4:10), far above all heavens that he might truly fill all things, he is everywhere present to rule, not only as God but also as man, from sea to sea and to the ends of the earth, as the prophets foretell (Ps. 8:6; 93:1; Zech. 9:10) and as the apostles testify that he worked with them everywhere and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it (Mark 16:20).
“Yet, this does not take place in a mundane way, but as Dr. Luther explains, after the manner of the right hand of God…The right hand of God is precisely the almighty power of God which fills heaven and earth, in which Christ has been installed according to his humanity in deed and in truth without any blending or equalization of the two natures in their essence and essential properties… No other human being can do this, since no human being is united in this manner with the divine nature and installed in the exercise of the divine, omnipotent majesty and power through and in the personal union of both natures in Christ, the way Jesus, the son of Mary, is.
“In him the divine and human natures are personally united in such a way that in Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily (Col. 2:9), and in this personal union they have such an exalted, intimate, and ineffable communion that even the angels marvel at it and find their delight and joy in looking into it, as St. Peter testifies (1 Pet. 1:12).”

Do you wish to “find” Jesus? Do you wish to do so in the better Christian manner according to the New Testament? Do you know that the Father’s business is your Salvation? Then take the time to grab hold of Jesus where and when He presents Himself to you! Hear His Word preached on a regular basis; take hold of Him physically in the miraculous, sacramental way of Holy Communion. For if you despise the hearing and preaching of God’s Word, and if you have no desire to commune with Him at His table, then Jesus might certainly be lost to you. Whenever your daily devotions become passé; whenever your schools teach that all the major religions of the world are equally true and valid; whenever your government becomes your civil religion; then Jesus can indeed be lost to you.

Church still needs to be seen as a family affair much like Mary, Joseph, and all their relatives traveled together to go to the temple. Christ’s Church foremost consists of the spiritual and mystical family of all of us present with God the Father, and with our Elder Brother, Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Just see how the Word of God treats what I say on this subject, as I appeal once more to the Book of Hebrews (2:11-13):
For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying:
“I will declare Your name to My brethren;
In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You.”
And again:
“I will put My trust in Him.”
And again:
“Here am I and the children whom God has given Me.”

The Lord Jesus Christ is your elder Brother, and all who place their trust in His atoning sacrifice are the children of the heavenly Father. God doesn’t leave us alone to struggle with the faith that gives us access to His grace; to the faith that He Himself has also given us as a gift.

Friends, salvation is of God; and God grants you, His child, the Holy Spirit that sustains your faith. Why is it, then, that you should ever lose Jesus? Amen.


The painting on the left, of the twelve year old Jesus in the temple, is by the 19th century German realist, Adolph Menzel; and, the corresponding portrait on the right is by Heinrich Hofmann, who also painted "Jesus Praying in the Garden of Gethsemane" (arguably the most copied painting in the world).