Luke 2:15-21

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me….

Not your carol? How about this one: I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams

We have now officially entered the very short, 12 day season of Christmas and it’s already nearly half over. The time of year to keep belting out carols or if you wanna a hippopotamus for Christmas, but me? I want a hula hoop.

In our passage today we read of an incredible Jewish tradition of Jesus’ time whereby every year, families travel to Jerusalem for the Passover. How many of you traveled for Christmas? How many of you traveled as a family to go somewhere else? How many of you used to travel when you were young and remember gruelingly long cramped car rides with all your siblings squashed in the back seat with no seatbelts rolling around every time your dad turned a corner? Anyone misplace a sibling along the way from time to time while on this journey?

How many of you walked for days or weeks on end with all of your extended family, sleeping on bedrolls, cooking over a small campfire, just to get to your destination? In Jesus’ time, this was a fairly normal thing. You set out an appropriate time in advance to reach your destination by the time the holiday arrived. Along the way you stayed at distant relatives homes where you were fed, slept on the floor and then all of you continued along your journey gathering more and more relatives along the way until you got there.

When I was growing up, my family traveled the furthest distance. We lived in a suburb of Detroit while the rest of my family resided in northern Michigan. It took around 5.5 hours to drive there. And did I mention it was northern Michigan? Sometimes it snowed and took even longer… a whole lot longer.

I brought a little friend along with me today. Everyone. Meet Ralph. Yes, he is named Ralph after the dog pianist from the Muppets. I received Ralph as a Christmas present long long ago. I was somewhere between 3 and 5 years old. Ralph if you could see him up close is a little dirty. He’s lost some fur over the years. His eye has a big ole scratch on it. He smells like… a dog. Because Ralph used to go with me EVERYWHERE. I mean everywhere. If I was going to be away from the house for longer than a school day. Ralph came with me.

Ralph went with me to college. He sat on my bed until I got a real dog and she tried to eat him. Now, he resides upon a shelf high up in our living room, watching over life from a safe vantage point away from puppy teeth.

Every time my family made the journey from Detroit, Port Huron, Alma, or whatever other town we happened to be living in to visit family in northern Michigan, Ralph came along. In my unstable childhood of constantly moving, Ralph kept me company.

One journey back and forth from our home to our family’s home stands out to me very well. We were coming home and my dad had to work the next day so my parents thought it would be a great idea to leave ridiculously early in the morning so my dad could get some rest before he had to go to work. They packed up our bags, threw my sister and I into the back seat and we drove off into the night.

Fun fact about me, I get car sick. Not as bad as I used to, I haven’t vomited up green slushie up in a long time by when I was a kid, it happened more often than one would like. And, if I’m awake, I would also quietly harass my sister until she would yell at me, my parents would subsequently yell at her, she’d get mad, I’d smile. Youngest child. And so, Jen sleeping was considered a great blessing on all account for everyone involved.

Until… I woke up. Immediately the first words out of my mouth are “Where’s Ralph?”

My dad answers “He’s probably in your bag in the drunk.” Never use words likely probably when it comes to Ralph.

“Can we stop and get him?”

“No, we’re not stopping until we have to.”

“I need to pee.”

Aren’t you glad I’m not your child?

We stop at the next rest area and lo and behold, there is no Ralph. We look in every suitcase, not just mine. He was not in that trunk.

I can recall very few mental breakdowns in my life. I may have been a bit of a pain in the rear end, but emotionally I’m generally quite stable. But not when it comes to Ralph. It would be weeks before I got him back. My only friend. The thing I cuddled every single night to sleep how could I survive for years without him? It was going to be forever!

Now, my parents were, I like to tell myself anyway, pretty normal parents at the time. I was panicked. I knew there was no way on God’s green earth they were going to turn around. Not a chance. I had been asleep for hours remember, my dad had to work in the morning, very early in the morning. Traffic was terrible. These thoughts did not help my panic at all. I just cried more.

I was so distraught I honestly don’t even remember asking my parents if they would consider turning around to go get him. I was too afraid of them for that. I might have though because not having Ralph with me at night would have been worse than death in my mind. I cried and cried and cried.

Turns out, my not having Ralph to sleep with at night was also a fate worse than death in my parent’s minds too. There was no way they were going to listen to me crying every night.

If I couldn’t live without a stuffed dog for a day, how then could Mary not notice her son was missing for a day? The answer is simpler than you might be thinking. I’ve been to many church potlucks and hundreds of family events where children run rampant because we’re all family and it takes a village to raise a child. If we try to view the Bible from a modern pious standpoint we instantly become critical and disbelieving.

That would never happen! I would never lose my child. Sure you wouldn’t… I’m not going to ask for a raise of hands but how many of you have lost your child or spouse in a department store for more than five minutes? How many of you lost them for more than 5 minutes but it took you 20 minutes to notice you’d lost them so really you were the one that was lost?

So, imagine if you traveled with that village. Aunts, uncles, cousins, random extended relatives that you’re not really sure if they’re even related or if they just joined in years ago and everyone thought they belonged to someone else.

It would not have been common for any mother to be walking with a twelve-year-old at her side, the children would have all been traveling together in a pack, watched over by random relatives. It actually would have been very easy for a child to disappear and not get noticed for a day or two until the family regrouped at night to sleep. Not to mention, they do this every year. For twelve years Jesus has gone to and from this festival with nothing noteworthy enough happening for our author to have documented its occurrence.

In verse 48, Mary and Joseph say to Jesus “Son, why have you treated us like this?” It’s interesting how they instantly take his disappearance as a personal assault.

Granted, we’re not the Son of God, but Mary and Joseph are as normal as human beings can be, just like you and me. I have told you a story of my little friend here because he was quite possibly the most important thing in the world to me at one time in my life and I left him behind.

It’s easy to judge others until you find you are in that position yourself.

Makes me wonder, how many times have you left the gift of Christ behind? Days, weeks, months, maybe even years just kind of forgotten about the most important thing in the world to you? The very thing that makes life worth living?

He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Jesus isn’t hard to find when you lose him but you do have to look in the right place. Like Ralph, you probably won’t find him in the trunk of your car but you will find him right where you left him.

The important thing is to notice that you’ve lost him, preferably as quickly as possible and then, do whatever it is you have to do to get him back no matter how long it takes or how far you have to travel. Try visiting your family and friends. Start asking questions of people who you know that also know him. And when you find him, treasure him.

May, the Lord bless you and keep you;
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you
And be gracious to you;
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you
And give you peace