How many 12-year-olds just love going to church? Well, 12-year-old Jesus loved going to church.
“Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival” (Luke 2:41,42).
Church is a healthy habit for Jesus and his family. Every time the Passover festival was on the calendar, they attended. That’s 100% church attendance.
Jesus is the perfect attender, not only based on his attendance record either, because God looks at the heart. Jesus’ heart loved church. He knew he’d hear his Father’s voice there in the Scriptures, presented in a way he wouldn’t think of on his own at home. He’d join other believers there, and take his concerns to his Father in prayers with everyone else together.
“I just have to be there,” he’d later explain with a pure and eager heart. All of it meeting the perfect expectations of his Father for all people, all slackers, all sinners, all church skippers, all who sneak in five minutes after the service thinking they made it but their hearts weren’t in it. You have perfect church attendance (both quantity and quality) before God because of this 12-year-old Jesus.
If that isn’t enough, there’s the blood. Think about this. You’re Jesus, 12 years old, at the temple for the Passover festival, commemorating the 10th plague in Egypt. God had commanded the Israelites to slit the throats of the Passover lambs, and then splash their blood on the door frames of their homes to alert the angel of death that they trusted in God’s plan to deliver them his way.
This saving act of God delivered the Israelites from slavery, without their help. It also became a sign for years to come that the perfect, sacrificial Lamb would come and give his life as a substitute payment for all sinners.
Now, 12-year-old Jesus is at the temple with the lambs and blood during the Passover festival and he knows from his eternal conversations with his heavenly Father and his toddler story times with his mother Mary that he is the real Passover lamb. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
This is his blood dripping from the throats of the sacrificial animals.
Flash forward to today and every Sunday morning. That Jesus meets you in church in ways he doesn’t meet you on the back patio sipping coffee, or on the golf course, or in front of a screen.
That Jesus wants to teach your kids in church in ways he does not do when kids sleep in, play video games, or go to work on Sundays.
In Holy Communion, Jesus’ blood saves you from sin, slavery and death, and that will not happen at even the best brunch in town or the volleyball tournament out of town.
Jesus forgives the past and looks forward to seeing you every Sunday!
PRAYER: Jesus, what was it like for you to go to church perfectly? No distractions? No temptations to sleep in? But it wasn’t easy for you, the ultimate Passover Lamb who was sacrificed. Thank you for your love, and for loving your church. For loving worship and meeting me there. I’ll see you this Sunday! Amen.
FURTHER STUDY: Dive into more of this story in my sermon message from this past Sunday https://crosslifepf.org/messages/vacation-communication/.