Almost-Teenager Jesus has Questions (Lk 2:40-52)
Note: This is the next installment in a series of 2025 reflections summarizing (or in this case, expanding) material found in Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy: Luke’s Jesus and Sabbath Economics. This Lukan episode was the gospel reading for the first (or second, depending on the lectionary) Sunday after Christmas. You can pre-order the book here; use the promo code HARP24 at checkout for 30% off (valid until 1-21-25)
The episode of the young Jesus in the Temple is Luke’s “epilogue” to his nativity story, and unique to the Third Gospel. While there are many later apocryphal tales that speculated on Jesus’ childhood (most of them quite fanciful; see here), this is our only biblical testimony. Unfortunately, it has been “orphaned” in theological circles—not unlike the child Jesus himself! But it’s worth exploring—particularly in the wake of last week’s Feast of the Holy Innocents (12/ 28 in the western church, 12/29 in the east). After all, Matthew’s account of Herod’s Pharaoh-like pogrom against infants (Mt 2:16-18; see Ched’s 2007 reflections here) is a poignant reminder that we still live in a world in which displaced kids are targeted by kings.
I often check to see how biblical scenes have been visualized in art, from ancient to modern, since this media has so profoundly shaped the consciousness of white Christians. Interestingly, Luke’s vignette appears rarely in pre-modern or post-modern religious art. Predictably, however, it is ubiquitous in contemporary “Sunday School art,” typically portraying a pre-pubescent Jesus instructing scribes (which is not in Luke’s text),
as in the unattributed, almost cartoonish piece above. Pious commentators then moralize on this scenario in a “Focus on the Family” vein about how Jesus’ obedience to his Father had to trump his father. As usual, they have missed Luke’s point. So let’s look carefully at this text.
Luke constructs this episode, as he so often does, as a chiasm, as follows:
A 39 When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned [from the Jerusalem Temple] to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. 40 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon him.
B 41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44 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. 45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him.
C 46 After three days they found him in the Temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.
B׳ 48 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.” 49 He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s House?” 50 But they did not understand what he said to them.
A׳ 51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human grace.
The episode begins and ends (A frame) with Jesus at home in Nazareth, growing in wisdom (sophia) and grace (charis). The B frame narrates the plot crisis of Jesus’ going “AWOL” during the pilgrimage in Jerusalem. But this structure functions to draw attention to the brief cameo in the Temple in the middle of the sequence (C).
It begins with the transitional phrase: “Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover” (2:41). It is hard to believe that Jesus’ working class family would have been able to muster the time and expense of making an annual pilgrimage from Nazareth to Jerusalem (about 75 miles on foot; right).
Luke’s earlier Christmas narrative underlined the Holy Family’s marginality through the story of their trek to Bethlehem, Joseph’s hometown, as mandated by an imperial census. The fact that they cannot even find lodging there implies either that Joseph’s extended family rejected him because of the scandal of Mary’s pregnancy under a cloud of illegitimacy (see the parenthetical comment in Luke’s genealogy, 3:23), or that these relatives had also been displaced by the political and economic forces of empire, leaving no kin in Bethlehem.
Consequently, the couple is forced to deliver their baby outside, in a feed trough, surrounded by herdsmen, a class of outdoor workers considered “unclean” due to their contact with animals (2:8, 15–18). But throughout this Nativity narrative, marginalized–but-main characters in Luke’s story are able
to endure hardships, while exhibiting spiritual power in their sensitivity to visions of mysterious messengers who implausibly suggest that somehow this back-alley birth will challenge the dominating rule of Caesar (2:9–14; left: Fritz Eichenburg, “Christmas”).
Despite their poverty, Jesus’ family’s makes another trek to Jerusalem to present their infant for purification (2:24), their low social status reflected in the fact that they offer two doves—the minimum required. And in the very next scene they are back for Passover. Luke is signaling to the reader the importance of apprenticeship to the traditions of Passover and Temple as incubators for the radical story of Jesus to come. And it serves to establish the theme of liberation as a through-line for this story. Though Passover doesn’t appear again until Luke 22, its imaginary has been woven into Luke’s hymnody throughout the Nativity—not least in Mary’s Magnificat (1:46-55).
The historical setting of these pilgrimages is germane. The second decade of the first century of the Common Era was rife with Jewish resistance to Roman occupation. And this political unrest always peaked during the Passover festival! Jesus’ family was somehow part of that. This is not surprising, given that they resided so close to the contested city of Sepphoris, which Judean rebels had attacked just a few years before, prompting the Romans to raze the city and enslave its Jewish population.
This imperial violence happened in literal view of those living in the hills of Nazareth just four miles away (right: ruins of Sepphoris today in foreground, with Nazareth in the distance).
So that’s the context for Luke’s episode, which narrates not the Festival, but the drama of Jesus’ separation from his family upon their departure (2:43-45). The young boy remains behind in the city, something his parents don’t discover until they are a day’s walk out, having assumed Jesus was with others in their large group.
The painting at right, depicting their realization that they’d left him behind, is called “Mary’s Third Sorrow: The Loss of Jesus in the Temple.”Indeed, parents can empathize with the trauma of this moment. Worse, it takes another three days for them to find him back in Jerusalem, since they were understandably looking “among their relatives and friends” (2:44). They locate him instead in the Temple, clearly to their surprise.
Nevertheless, it is the Temple scene, though only briefly recounted, that is the heart of the whole episode, lying at the middle of the chiasm. It is an important space for Luke, bracketing the nativity narrative as a whole, which begins with Zechariah’s vision (1:5-22). And as noted, Jesus’ circumcision and purification took his family back there again, celebrated by Simeon and Anna’s prophecies (2:21-39).
But though the Temple was the center of the Judean sacred and social universe, it is not centered in Luke’s birth story. The first hint of this is the Temple priest Zechariah, who is skeptical about an angel’s promise, in contrast to the two female characters, who enthusiastically welcome their epiphanies outside of Jerusalem (1:24-58; left).
Mary’s story takes place in Nazareth and then Bethlehem (2:1-20), while Elizabeth’s unfolds in “the hill country.” Luke’s message seems to be that the Jerusalem Temple may support, but does not supplant, revelation at the margins. Which is precisely the tone reflected in this epilogue.
Contrary to pious art, Luke 2:46 does not portray Jesus instructing the scribal teachers. Rather, he is listening to and questioning them (right, He Qi.). Standing at the epicenter of his people’s social project, a young Jesus pays attention to what these elders teach.
He is listening—something we activists are often poor at. Yet he is also responding with questions. In the gospels, the Greek verb eperōtaō can connote further inquiry (e.g. Mk 7:17; 9:32; 10:10), but also critical interrogating (Mt 12:10; 22:46; Mk 12:18; Ac 5:29). We can imagine Jesus asking: Why do you read Torah this way? Why are our people captive yet again to empire, this time in our own land? Where do your interests lie? How will we resist our oppression and renew and rehabilitate God’s Way?
Remember, this real world Jesus grew up with the smell of Sepphoris burning in his nostrils. Like so many working people under foreign occupation, he and his construction laborer father were likely forced to build the infrastructure of their oppressors (right, James Tissot, “The Youth of Jesus,” 1886-94). But haunting his imagination was that song his mama had sung to him as an infant about rulers being
toppled from their thrones. So this almost-teenager, about to come of age, this time chooses to break awayfrom the rituals of his fellow pilgrims in Jerusalem, in order to follow Isaiah, Jeremiah and a long line of prophets who brought hard questions into the Temple and its caretakers.
Critical questions get attention, which explains why the teachers apparently began interrogating him back, accounting for the phrase “and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers” (2:47; right). It is into this intense scene that Jesus’ parents walk. In the aftermath, there is tension between young Jesus and his parents. He is getting clear about his vocation; they, however, are not.
The aftermath portrays Jesus returning home and embracing subordination while deepening in wisdom and grace—while surely continued listening and questioning. From that point on in Luke’s story, Joseph disappears, whether by early death or imprisonment we are not told.
Jesus thus journeys through puberty in a single parent home. In due time, he will apprentice to another profound tradition: the prophetic wilderness calling of his cousin John (left). Both of them will proceed to speak truth to power, and suffer the consequences
Thirty years ago, I offered an “application” study (right) to follow up my 1988 commentary on Mark. I focused on the questions Jesus asks in the gospels, and how they might guide our discipleship today. I found that not too many folk in our churches were interested in embracing “interrogatory theology.” Yet this is what our Lukan text here invites us to. And I continue to believe that our biblical tradition is a crucial resource for our struggle for faith and justice in our darkening age.
I leave a last question to a different Palestinian 12 year old. Over a year ago, Defense for Children International told the story of a young girl in Gaza named Dounia (left: the 12-year-old being interviewed at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in Gaza in late November, 2023). She had lost her leg in an airstrike that killed her mother, father, brother and sister.
Dounia was hoping someone would take her abroad so she could receive a prosthetic leg. She only wanted “the war to end,” and to become a doctor so she could treat other children. Shortly thereafter, a tank shell struck the kids ward at Nasser, killing Dounia and many others.
Dounia now rests in the bosom of Abraham, but we might imagine that she still has many questions. This microcosm of the horrific, ongoing genocide being visited upon Palestinians serves as a poignant hermeneutic for our gospel text. May it animate us to support our young folk—and each other—to listen deeply to our tradition, ask hard questions of our world, and continue Jesus’ prophetic ministry amidst our weary history.