Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text is the Holy Gospel reading which has already been read.

Dear Friends in Christ, this morning's Gospel reading is remarkable because it is the only account that we have of the life of Jesus between Him being a toddler and the beginning of His public ministry in His thirties. It gives a small glimpse into the life of Jesus as a child. Many of us wish we had more stories like this about the young Jesus. In the second century AD, long after all the books in the Bible were written, many legendary stories about the early life of Jesus were written, and you might hear about them on History Channel shows claiming to tell you "the lost stories of Jesus' childhood" that the Bible left out. In recent years, the novelist Anne Rice has written a couple of fictional books that depict Jesus in His younger years. The thirst for information about that "lost period" of Jesus' life is as strong in the twenty-first century as it was in the second century.

But God in His wisdom has chosen not to satisfy our curiosity. Instead, He has given us just what we need to know about the life of Jesus, and today's Gospel reading tells us all we need to know about Jesus Christ, age 12.

Joseph and Mary were faithful Israelites, so they went each year to Jerusalem for the Passover. At age 12, Jesus too would go along for Passover, and at that great pilgrim festival, they celebrated the Lord's redemption of Israel out of Egyptian bondage. It was an annual remembrance of God's saving acts and His promise of future redemption. And the pilgrim festivals like Passover also provided an opportunity for young men interested in theology to go to the Temple and question the leading Bible scholars of the time. Jesus was one such young man.

Now this seems almost silly to our sinful human reason. At Christmas we have just heard that God the Son, the Word, was made flesh in the Man Jesus, and so our sinful way of thinking begins to question, "If Jesus is God the Son, then why would He need to ask questions about the Old Testament? Wouldn't He know it all already?" Again and again we sinners stumble at the mystery of God's Incarnation. We think that somehow the divinity of Jesus trumps His humanity in such a way that Jesus is a superhuman, with superintelligence and unlimited knowledge. But look at Jesus in the Temple, sitting there listening patiently and asking questions. He had to learn the Bible in the same way we do, by faithful study. But in no way does this diminish His divinity, either. Jesus is the God-Man, fully and completely human and divine.

If we cannot understand this or conceive how Jesus could be fully God and fully man, the reason is that we sinners try to place limits upon what God is able to do. If we think that God is incapable of doing things that we cannot conceive, then we are placing ourselves above God and breaking the first commandment. If we doubt either the divine or human natures in Jesus, then we rob Him of His glory. So either God can do what we cannot conceive, or He is not God at all. If we think that God cannot do what we cannot conceive, then we have formulated an entirely different god in our own minds, and are idolaters. For this we must repent.

Even though we cannot understand how it is so, God the Son studies and learns in the Temple. This also can be understood as an example for us to follow. We too, as followers of Jesus, should be eager to hear and learn God's Word, both in the Divine Service, but also in Sunday School and Bible Class. At the Temple, Jesus was basically attending Sunday School, for hours and hours. Yet many Christians today aren't interested in going to Bible Class for even one hour a week, and when they do go, they have a hard time paying attention. Next time you grumble about the length of the sermon or about "having" to go to Sunday School or Bible Class, remember the example of your Lord and repent.

The example of Jesus puts us to shame; yet He did not faithfully learn God's Word in order to shame us, but in order to save us. Take any passage in the Bible about love for God's Word, and Jesus fulfilled it. For you, Jesus lived out the Psalm verse, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105). Jesus obeyed this passage perfectly in your place, because we who are blinded by sin are prone to rely on the lamp of our senses and the light of our own understanding rather than on God's Word.

Not so for Jesus; He always hungered and thirsted for God's Word, and found His fill in the Scriptures. He said, "Blessed…are those who hear the word of God and keep it!" (Luke 11:28) and in truth, He is the only blessed one, because He is the only one who has kept God's Word perfectly. We then are blessed only by being in Christ, as St. Paul says that God has "blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 1:3).

And the way we receive the blessings of Christ is only through His Word, as we learn throughout the Epiphany season. When Jesus began His ministry at His Baptism, God the Father declared, "This is My beloved Son," and later at the Transfiguration identified Him as the authoritative voice of God in the world, when the Father said, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him" (Matthew 17:5). The Epistle to the Hebrews says, "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (Hebrews 1:1-2).

So the reason we come to the Divine Service and to Sunday School and Bible study is to hear Christ's Spirit-filled Word, to receive His precious absolution, to have our faith in this Jesus strengthened. We need His Word so desperately because our sinful human reason is tempted to disbelieve God's Word and believe the devil's lies instead. But our sinfulness is not cause for despair, because we are in good company. If you struggle with believing God's Word, then just consider that in this morning's Gospel, Mary and Joseph show that they failed to grasp the truth of the Incarnation, even though God had clearly revealed to them that Jesus is His own Son. In our text, when Jesus' mother and guardian could not find Him, they went back to the Temple, where they scolded Him for staying behind. But Jesus says, "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"

In other words, if anyone should have known better, it was them. About thirteen years before these events, the angel Gabriel had told Mary concerning Jesus, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the Child to be born will be called holy-the Son of God" (Luke 1:35). Gabriel had told Joseph, "Do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:20-21).

As if the testimony of God's angel was not enough, when Jesus was born, the shepherds told Mary and Joseph about all that had happened in the fields (Luke 2:18) and Mary treasured them up in her heart (Luke 2:19). At the dedication of Jesus in the Temple, Simeon and Anna also prophesied about the greatness of the child. And the Wise Men bowed before Jesus and worshiped Him, an honor reserved only for God Himself.

Yet Mary and Joseph expressed astonishment at the knowledge He displayed in the Temple (Luke 2:48) and did not understand His answer to their questions (Luke 2:50). Why didn't they get it? I suppose we cannot be entirely certain why they did not understand Jesus' words and actions. Perhaps God chose to hide the knowledge from them for a time, as He sometimes did to the disciples of Jesus (see Luke 9:44-45, 18:31-34). Perhaps the twelve years that had passed since Jesus' birth had been unremarkable and they had concluded that He was just a normal kid. Whatever the source of their ignorance, though, it is remarkable testimony to the true humanity of Jesus, the Word made flesh. God has truly buried Himself completely in flesh and blood, so much so that it was unrecognizable to those who saw Him everyday! This is the mystery of the Incarnation: that God the Son hid His majesty in human flesh so that He could stand in our own shoes, resist the temptations of the devil in our place, and then go up to Calvary to be the Passover Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

And that is why St. Luke tells us that our God did what every child is supposed to do according to the fourth commandment: He obeyed His parents. "He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them." Jesus, God the Son, was no rebellious kid; He had nothing to prove, no chip on His shoulder. He knew who His Father was, and He loved His earthly mother and the guardian that His Father had given Him. As one of the stanzas of "Once in Royal David's City" says, "Christian children all must be mild, obedient, good as He."

But in fact, if we sinners are honest with ourselves, we have not been mild, obedient, and good as Jesus. We have not always been submissive to our parents and other authorities. The Fourth Commandment exposes our miserable state, and that's before we even back up and examine the first Three Commandments. For we have not always loved God and His Word with our whole hearts. And so that is why Jesus came to fulfill the commandments for us, to do what we cannot do and to please God. And our wickedness is why we so desperately needed Jesus to be our Passover Lamb, to take away our sins.

Recall that in our Gospel reading the twelve-year-old Jesus was at the Temple during the Feast of Passover. This is a significant detail that the Holy Spirit inspired St. Luke to add. The institution of the Passover is recorded in Exodus 12. God was going to inflict His final plague on Egypt, the death of every firstborn male. But for the children of Israel, the angel of death would pass over every house that had the blood of a sacrificed lamb on its lintel and doorframes. This final plague opened the door for Israel's exodus from Egyptian slavery. So every year, the children of Israel would celebrate the Passover, recalling God's salvation of Israel. Part of the celebration involved the slaying of a lamb and then a family meal consisting of that lamb and unleavened bread.

St. Luke very deliberately connects Jesus being at the Temple for Passover with His later suffering and death. The fact that Jesus went to the Passover as a child hints at His upcoming role as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). The only other time in Luke's Gospel when the Passover is mentioned is in chapter 22, the account of the Last Supper. Luke makes it a point to tell us that on Maundy Thursday, "the day of Unleavened Bread," the "Passover lamb had to be sacrificed" (Luke 22:7). Through these words, St. Luke tells us that Jesus was the true Passover Lamb that the Scriptures all point to. During His amazing visit to the Temple at age 12, Jesus would have discussed some of those very Bible texts with the scholars, the texts that pointed to the sacrifice of the Christ for the sins of the masses.

At God's House, the Temple in Jerusalem, the body of a sacrificed lamb was given for an offering and then eaten, and the blood of the lamb was spilled out. On Good Friday, the new and final Temple of God, the Temple of the body of God's Son, the Lamb of God was sacrificed for you on the cross, His blood poured out to atone for all of your sins. Yet on the third day, the Father raised up that very Temple and made it a house of prayer, praise, and salvation for all nations, for it is only by Your Baptism into Christ's own Body that you have been given entrance into God's eternal household; it is only by being washed in the blood of that Lamb that you can stand before Your heavenly Father forgiven, blameless, and holy.

And so again this morning, Jesus gives His true body and blood under the bread and wine for you Christians to eat and drink for the forgiveness of all of your sins. And in His Word, He also brings to your remembrance all that He has done to save you. The Passover Feast had now been fulfilled by the Passover Lamb, Jesus, and the Passover has been replaced by a greater feast, the Lord's Supper. The flesh and blood born of Mary, the flesh and blood that grew and learned at the feet of the teachers in the Temple, the flesh and blood that was nailed to the cross to accomplish our salvation-that flesh and blood is now given to you. "Blessed…are those who hear the word of God and keep it!" (Luke 11:28). In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.