The First Sunday After Christmas

“Jesus – The Missing Years”

Dr. R. Tim Meadows

PSALM 148

LUKE 2:41-52

Listen to this Sermon!

Jesus---The Missing Years! So begins the Grammy winning song and album by folk icon and personal favorite John Prine. The song is a rather comical look at what the artist suggests happened during the years of Jesus’ life for which we possess little or no record. While many of Prine’s suggestions border on the outlandish and even irreverent, much of what he offers is as good as anything else that has been offered in response to this vacuum of information throughout history. What we do know about Jesus’ missing years we learn from the Gospel of Luke. Let us look together at Luke’s conclusions:

Jesus Cared About Being Human:

In our obsession with the divinity of Christ, we Christians have often neglected Jesus’ humanity. He did not. The Gospels are filled with stories that demonstrate Jesus enjoying the human experience.

Luke’s summary of Jesus’ missing years shows that he devoted himself to the task of human development just as we must do. If Jesus cared so much about being human, then we know that he understands the challenges of human living; the balancing act necessary to grow intellectually, socially, physically, and spiritually. I think Jesus would say to those of us who struggle for perfection in these areas of living, to lighten up on ourselves, and enjoy life.

We learn from Jesus’ humanity that he never allowed anyone to “should” on him, and neither should we allow such in our lives. With the grace and mercy of God, Jesus went about normal human development, and our development will necessitate that same grace and mercy to be successful.

Jesus Understood That Human Life Is Filled With Simple Ordinary Activity:

Much of what we do not know about the missing years of Jesus we can assume was simply the living out of the normal daily routines of the first century. Even in the years of public life we learn that many of Jesus’ miracles and sermons arose out of meeting the routine needs of the people around him. Hunger, sickness, storms, death, etc., often prompted Jesus to act. These significant challenges that came to the lives around him helped Jesus to see the truth that the 20^th century writer Walker Percy captured in his statement that sometimes the hardest thing to do in life is to get through an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.

Knowing that Jesus’ life was also filled with the ordinary brings some comfort to me when I reflect on how ordinary my own journey of life often is. Living in a world so enamored with the spectacular, I am comforted to know that God also meets us in the ordinary. Jesus’ missing years remind me that it is ok to be ordinary for God, because God is constantly using the ordinary actions of ordinary people to make an impact on the world. After all, the most common reaction to Jesus from his culture was “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son from Nazareth?” What could be more ordinary?

Be an ordinary person for God, committed to developing your humanity as fully as possible, is perhaps not the challenge you expected to hear on this New Year’s Eve, but it may be just the challenge you need. It seems after all, to have been the primary focus of Jesus’ missing years!