Sermon preached by The Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
The Second Sunday of Christmas
We are still in the midst of the beautiful season of Christmas. The readings from Holy Scripture are a kind of reflection on the meaning of the incarnation, the embodiment of God in a human being, Jesus of Nazareth. In the Gospel we have now passed from Jesus’ birth to Jesus as a twelve year old boy. It was the feast of the Passover and the Holy Family traveled to Jerusalem to observe the feast. When it was over, they started the journey back home, along with other relatives and friends who had traveled with them. Mary and Joseph assumed that Jesus was with the group, but discovered after they had been gone for a day that he wasn’t with them. Can you imagine how they must have felt when they finally discovered Jesus’ absence?
We aren’t given many details at all about this incident. St. Luke is the only account of the Gospel that includes this story about Jesus in the temple, and it is only nine verses long. Furthermore, it is the only glimpse in all four of the accounts of the Gospel that is of Jesus as he was growing up. There are the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, this story of Jesus when he was twelve, and the rest of the material in the gospels deal with Jesus when he was around 30 years old.
Let’s think a bit about Jesus. We know he is fully human and fully divine, that he is “one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” We know he is a very intelligent person and probably always was a real challenge to his mother and foster father. Gifted children always are a challenge to their parents, and surely Jesus was the epitome of the gifted child. In this story from Luke, he is an adolescent. We don’t know how he came to the realization of his calling, or exactly when that occurred, but my guess is that in adolescence he was beginning to sense his vocation without knowing the details. When Mary and Joseph caught up with him he said, “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” That certainly appears to be a sensing of his vocation.
So Jesus finds himself in the temple along with some of the most devoted people of Israel and he finds himself drawn to these people. His mother and father had prepared him well, so well that adults who were immersed in the faith were impressed by his knowledge. He had found his niche. He was fully at home. He could stay there for ever.
Do you remember when you were a teenager and you found something in your life that you could sink your teeth into? Nothing else mattered. You had found your true home. I suspect that something like this was going on with our Lord at this early stage of his development. He probably had no idea about what was going to happen 18 years later and the specific path his Messiahship would take. He only knew that he was strongly drawn to his heavenly Father, and that was all that mattered.
We are also not given much information about what Joseph and Mary went through as they looked for their son. All that Luke tells us that Mary said when she saw Jesus was, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously?” Anxiously indeed! They had looked for three whole days until they finally found him. They must have been frantic. Put yourself in their position. “What kind of parents are we, anyway?” they might have thought as they were looking. “How could we leave Jerusalem without making sure he was with us? How can we live with ourselves if something happened to him? On the other hand, he knew when we were supposed to leave. We had given him explicit instructions regarding when we would be leaving and from where. This is just like him to do something like this! He is always striking out on his own, not thinking about the consequences. He never thinks about us and how his actions affect us. When we finally catch up to him, he is going to get the tongue lashing of his life!”
I have one question that nags at me when I think about this story of the adolescent Jesus, the very intelligent, very gifted, Jesus, in the temple, and there is no way of knowing except when we get to ask questions in the next life. When Jesus was confronted by his mother and foster father in the temple, where he obviously isn’t remorseful at all at what he put his parents through, I wonder if he was tempted, or maybe if he even did, roll up his eyes into his head when his mother chastised him. You know, that’s a very adolescent thing to do and I’m not sure if it’s sinful or not. If it’s sinful, then obviously he didn’t do it; but if it isn’t, he might have. That’s something to ask in the next life!
At any rate, Mary and Joseph finally found Jesus. They were relieved and not a little perturbed. I suspect it wouldn’t be the last time in his adolescent life that their parenting skills would be tested. We are told that even though he felt he must be in his Father’s house, he returned with his parents and was obedient to them. This is a good lesson for all of the adolescents in the congregation about how you should behave even when you disagree with your parents. You should be obedient to them.
Of course, I don’t know that any of this actually happened, other than the few scant details that Luke gives us. What I have done is look at the story from my own perspective of being a parent, having reared two children, neither of which, I hasten to add, is God incarnate. And even though I’m separated from the temple story by 2000 years, I suspect that there are certain things that are common to parents of any age.
I wonder if Mary and Joseph ever asked themselves, “Am I being a good parent to Jesus? Will he turn out like he should because I have done the right things, or will he somehow take a wrong turn because of something I did or didn’t do?” Or maybe that’s just a modern concern. In the current issue of Christianity Today, there is an article titled “The Myth of the Perfect Parent.” The author, Leslie Leyland Fields, states that “More than any other generation, today’s parents are worried sick that they will mess up their children’s lives.” We have an attitude today that parents somehow have the power to determine how their children will turn out, that, as the Bible says, “As the twig is bent, so grows the branch.” And then, when our children don’t measure up to our expectations, when they make those inevitable mistakes, and when they sometimes fall away from the Church, parents often blame themselves. It must have been something they did or didn’t do.
Of course, what we do as parents is very important, and it is crucial that we bring our children up as faithfully as we can, but in the end, each person is different and makes his or her own free choices. One of the best insights of the article comes toward the end when Fields says, “We will parent imperfectly, our children will make their own choices, and God will mysteriously and wondrously use it all to advance his kingdom.”
When Jesus hung on the cross, I wonder what his mother thought and I wonder if she questioned whether or not she had done something wrong in her parenting that led Jesus to the cross. Whatever questions she may have had must have been answered when she saw her risen Lord.
In this Christmastide, as we continue to reflect on the meaning of the embodiment of God in Jesus, may we give thanks for the role that Joseph and Mary played in rearing Jesus and ask God’s guidance upon all parents that they may bring their children up to know him, to love him, and to serve him, trusting that how that works itself out is not under their control.