The Bible begins baptismally. I know that sounds strange, but think about it for a moment. “The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The Deep. Tehom, those primal, swirling, chaotic waters. Spirit and water, water and Spirit. Remember Jesus to Nicodemus? “Unless you are born again from above by water and Spirit you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Creation and new creation. Through water and Spirit with the Word. Right there in the opening verses of Holy Scripture, a baptismal beginning. Before there was day and night, sea and sky, sea and dry land, plants, fish, birds, and various kinds of animals with man at the top of the heap, in the beginning when the earth was chaotic and disordered, there was water and Spirit and the Word. Now you see why we call Baptism a new creation. It’s also the way of the first creation.

It happens all the time. You misplace your kid. He wanders down an aisle at Toys-R-Us; she goes off on her own in the mall. Kids have a tendency to do that. But when the kid you misplace is the Son of God, the Savior of the world, the stakes go up considerable. When the Word becomes Flesh and dwells among us things are never quite “normal” again.

The normal things was for every Israelite family to go up to Jerusalem four times a year for the major feasts. One of them was the Passover. Kids could stay at home until they were twelve. Then the boys were obligated to appear before the teachers of the Torah in the temple for instruction. Now don’t get any bright ideas about keeping the kids at home on Sunday until they’re twelve. This had to do with pilgrimages to Jerusalem. For Mary and Joseph coming from Nazareth, that would have been about a three or four day trip, not something you do with little kids. But when a boy was twelve, it was time for him to join the men of Israel. That’s why Luke gives us this episode. It records the end of Jesus’ childhood and the beginning of his manhood.