We are going to do things a little differently today. Instead of me just preaching you a sermon, we are going to see if we can find the sermon that is hidden inside today’s passage of scripture. I think there are a lot of different messages in this story about the young boy Jesus, and maybe we can sort through them and find the one that speaks to us best today.

The story tells us one of the few things we know about Jesus as a young boy. He and his family had gone to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, something they apparently did every year. When Mary and Joseph started back home, they realized Jesus wasn’t with them. They went back to Jerusalem and it took them three days to find him again. When they did finally find him, he was sitting on the steps of the temple, arguing with the religious …