Just before Jesus stepped into the spotlight, God raised up John the Baptist “to turn the hearts of the parents toward their children, and the disobedient toward the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:17 NRSV) What does it look like when parents turn their hearts toward children?
Once upon a time, a congregation outgrew their church building. Everyone agreed that they needed to build a new church; but they couldn’t agree on a blueprint, a budget or a building site. In desperation, the pastor invited everyone to join him for an evening of special prayer. One woman came, bringing her five year old daughter, Lucy. As she listened, Lucy understood that they were asking God for a new church building. She made a silent promise to God; telling Him that she would figure out some way to help the pastor.
The next morning, Lucy was up and out of the house before her mother was out of bed. There was a light snow falling. Lucy’s mom saw tiny tracks leading away from their house. She ran outside in her bathrobe, trailing her daughter down the street. She quickly guessed that Lucy was heading for the pastor’s house; he lived two blocks away.
Sure enough, Lucy’s mom found her little girl talking to the pastor on his porch. She had just arrived; the pastor hadn’t even had a chance to invite her to come in and warm up. Lucy was crying, telling the pastor about her prayer and her promise to God. When Lucy’s mother made it onto the porch, she realized that the pastor was crying, too. He was looking over Lucy’s shoulder. Lucy’s mom turned around and discovered that she had run right past Lucy’s toy wheelbarrow. It was parked at the bottom step of the pastor’s porch. There were two bricks inside.
(Don’t you love it? Kids are sweet, but they can be so silly, too. They don’t understand that you can’t build a church out of two little bricks. Lucy’s idea reminds me of the little boy who volunteered to share his lunch with a few thousand people. That kid actually believed that two fish and five loaves of bread were enough to feed a multitude. Jesus was there, He turned His heart toward that kid…and, well…that ridiculous little kid was right! See Luke 9:10-17)
The next Sunday, Lucy’s pastor held up those two bricks and told the people about Lucy’s generous act of faith. The people were stunned. They grew up, almost on the spot, and they worked out their disagreements very quickly. They wound up with a great new church.
Amazing things will happen when we turn our hearts toward our children.
The bible only offers one story about the boy Jesus (Luke 2:41-50). It’s a story about what happened when Jesus (age 12) went up to Jerusalem—in the company of family, friends and fellow pilgrims—to celebrate the Passover. Back in those days, a boy’s coming of age into manhood took place on his thirteenth birthday. When a boy was twelve, he was allowed to travel to Jerusalem and observe the Passover celebration.
In all likelihood, this was Jesus’ first Passover experience. It’s quite possible that this is the first time that Jesus saw spotless lambs sacrificed by those who wanted to receive God’s forgiveness for their sins. By the age of twelve, Jesus understood that He was the Son of God; but it’s very possible that He didn’t have a crystal clear sense about what that was going to mean. While Jesus watched the lambs being sacrificed, I suspect that He experienced an important moment of self-discovery. I imagine it was a time of mixed emotions.
Now the Passover festival was originally intended to be a seven day celebration; but by the first century, the religious leaders had trimmed it down to a two-day ceremony. Once the sacrifices were made, the feasts were consumed, and the sheaves of barley waved as a token of thanks for the coming harvest, almost all of the pilgrims headed home. In fact, the priests came to refer to the last five days of Passover as “half-holy days;” meaning they were less important than the first two.
According to Alfred Edersheim, an insightful scholar who was very familiar with Jewish history and the original language of Luke’s text, Joseph and Mary were probably in the multitude that left Jerusalem right after the main event. If they were, then it might explain why Jesus chose to stay behind in the Temple.
Let’s put it this way: Joseph and Mary probably acted like the majority of modern American church-goers. They did their religious duty, period. They showed up for the main worship service and then ducked out as soon as God finished taking attendance. I would dare to say that Joseph and Mary didn’t connect with God; otherwise they probably wouldn’t have lost track of His Son!
In the latter days of the Passover festival, the religious leaders were known to come out onto the Temple grounds, sit in the courtyards, and talk to ordinary people. This was a rare opportunity for non-professionals to explore spiritual subjects with the local experts. Jesus was drawn to these conversations. He probably had all kinds of questions about the sacrificial lambs: How did this system work? How was it possible for one life to be sacrificed in another’s place? What made a sacrifice worthy or unworthy? Why did the sacrifice wear off after one year? What would it take for a permanent sacrifice to be made on behalf of all people everywhere?
These kinds of searching questions would have seemed very out of place coming from the mouth of a twelve year old boy. People took note of His earnestness. Wouldn’t you? Doesn’t it seem as if twelve years old is way too young for a person to discern a sense of their God-given destiny in life? Maybe not. In the light of this story, we should be open to the idea that children may be more serious about God than their parents.
Mary accused Jesus of running away like a naughty little boy; He responded with a tone of frustration. I hear Him saying something like this: “I didn’t run away from you; you ran away from God. What’s the big hurry? This is where we’re supposed to be. Don’t you know that? Why are you surprised to find Me here in the Temple? Did you forget that there are seven days in Passover week? When did everybody agree to shorten this event down to two quick days? Was God involved in that decision? Is He too busy to spend a whole week with His people—or are we too busy to spend it with Him? Why aren’t you interested in listening to the sacred story of our spiritual history? Why doesn’t anybody want to spend time soberly reflecting on the fact that the punishment for sin is death? What makes you people so quick to seek forgiveness and so slow to stop sinning?”
As a pastor, I’ve been surprised to receive similar kinds of penetrating inquiries from children who are supposed to be too young to recognize spiritual shallowness in the “mature” adult members of our congregation. I’ve discovered that children may be young, but they’re not stupid. This is especially true of our own children. Sooner than we expect, they’re going to figure out what we’re really all about. We send them to Sunday school so they will learn about Jesus. We expect them to live like Jesus. One day, however, they will measure us by our own expectations—and we might be embarrassed by the things they have to say.
It’s one thing to talk to our kids about Jesus; it’s another thing to talk like Jesus in front of our kids. The fact of the matter is: our kids might stop believing in Jesus if we don’t starting behaving like Him.
God wants us to turn our hearts towards our kids.
God wants us to seek a vision for their lives that is larger than a simple hope that they’ll turn out alright. We need to stop trying to make them behave like good little boys and girls and start training them to become godly men and women. But first, we need to determine whether or not we have what it takes to guide them into that kind of future. If we don’t feel like we’ve got it, then we need to figure out what “it” is and go after it. Most likely, we need more Jesus. Author Tim Hansel was fond of saying that “it” is Jesus (see Matthew 14:27, John 6:20)
The good news is that we can succeed in at the grave task of raising our own children—if we’re willing to follow Jesus. Among other things, follow Jesus is going to cost us some of our precious attention. Joseph and Mary held to a culturally acceptable kind of religion that included an assumption that Jesus was following them. They weren’t paying attention to Jesus. They were distracted by their religion.
The story about Jesus lingering at the Temple makes clear the fact that—sooner or later—there will come a point in our children’s lives (maybe around age twelve?) when they begin making decisions about whether or not they want to follow us into the kind of future we have to offer them.
Jesus was unwilling to follow His parents into a future of ceremonial religion and low-level worship. Do you blame Him?
Being the Son of God, of course; Jesus “rebelled” by hanging out at the Temple for an extended spiritual dialogue with the religious leaders. Wouldn’t that be a fine way for our kids to rebel! Let’s not pin our hopes on that prospect. Most kids don’t rebel by running off into a reckless life of holy intimacy with God. The odds are: they’re going to follow our example—the example we don’t realize that we’re setting for them.
I heard a story about a woman who spent all day in a hot kitchen preparing a five course meal for some out of town guests. It was summer, it was 100 degrees outside; it was probably 120 in that kitchen. She worked hard, and everything turned out great.
When everybody sat down to eat, this woman asked her six year old son to say a prayer for the meal. The boy was scared; he wasn’t sure how to pray in front of company. Fortunately, his mother had been teaching him some new bedtime prayers. She spoke up and said, “It’s OK. Just pray one of the prayers you’ve heard from me.”
The young child thought for a moment. Then his eyes lit up. He folded his hands and bowed his head. Everybody did the same. He prayed, in a loud voice: “Dear God! You know that this day is already ruined by my obligation to feed those ungrateful people; why did you make the weather so hot?”
His mother had repeated those words several times throughout the long, sweaty afternoon. She didn’t realize that she was teaching her good little boy a new prayer until it was too late. Children learn from our lives; and quite often, when they know we’re not paying attention to them—they pay extra attention to us.
I want to encourage parents of young children to wrestle with the story of Jesus lingering at the Temple. We need to consider the fact that our children might not be “travelling with us” in the ways that we have assumed. Maybe we haven’t been paying them enough attention, maybe they’ve fallen behind and we haven’t even noticed. Some of us might need to experience a few frantic days, crying out to God and despairing of the fact that we got so distracted that we somehow “lost track” of them.
Let’s ask God to turn our hearts towards our children; let’s study their behaviors and discover what kind of lessons we’ve been teaching them. Be warned: when we turn our hearts towards our children; we might hear God speaking to us through them. So let’s not be surprised if we hear God say that we are the ones who need to grow up!
