Sermon preached by The Rev. Richard Marsden
Luke 2:41-52
Well here we are in a whole new year. The parties are over, and hopefully the effects, too. And we have probably already begun to live out the resolutions we made for this new year. Good luck on that! And it feels that the holiday season is over.
But it’s not. As Christians we are still in the Christmas season. For us Christmas is not only one day but a time. It is the time between the Nativity and the Epiphany.
And if my math is correct, today is the eighth day of Christmas.
You know that traditional Christmas song – the 12 days of Christmas – an ancient French song that was introduced to the English about 1770. No one really knows what it is about, though theories abound.
Well, according to that old Christmas song today is the day when you would purchase 8 maids a milking,
presuming of course, that you had 8 cows and a farm.
And, by the way, if you were to purchase all of the noted elements for your true love, you would now be out about $24,000; given that you already owned a farm, cows, a spacious home, and storage space required for all this.
And, even though we are still in Christmas-tide, and we really still should continue celebrating this holy event of Christ’s birth, practically I think for most of us, we see Christmas as being over with.
In most cases the feasting is over, the visitors are returning to their snow covered northern abodes, and the days of spending are over; the days of paying are beginning. Many have put away or have begun to put away their Christmas decorations, and we are settling back into our regular routines of life.
And as it is for us so it was for the Holy Family. The miraculous drama that had occurred, with its many acts and scenes of angels, shepherds and later the Magi, came to an end and Joseph and Mary returned to their home in Nazareth to raise their new child and re-establish their routines. And thus they lived for years.
And of those years as Jesus grew, very little is known—discounting the mythological and apocryphal stories later created to fill in these silent years of Jesus’ growth to adulthood. But here we have one authentic report from Luke, who probably received it directly from Mary in later years. How else would he know that she pondered these events in her heart, unless she told him?
This event happens during the celebration of the most important of Jewish feasts.
This feast, The Passover, is the heart of Jewish identity. Celebrated in Jerusalem, centered in the temple, this feast went on for seven days, similar to our Christmas-tide. And all faithful Jews were required to come to Jerusalem to participate.
Passover not only recognizes God’s work of freeing the Hebrew people from bondage in Egypt. The sacrifice of the Passover lamb, whose blood, marking the doorposts of the Hebrews, deflected the wrath of the angel of death from them as a group, was the final act of God’s power that convinced the Pharaoh to let them go. It is the event which gave them their identity.
But the Passover celebration invites every faithful Jew to participate in that event of deliverance.
It is similar to our Eucharist; we participate in the saving event of the past in our celebrating the event in the present.
So it is we find Jesus going up to Jerusalem in a great caravan of believers with his parents. Most probably it is his first time, as he is 12 years old, the age that Jewish boys enter a time of preparation for his Bar Mitzvah the next year, when he would be recognized as a “son of the law”. He would thus be required to be in Jerusalem for this event.
We can only guess what might be going through Jesus’ mind at this point. Did he know then, was there an inkling in his soul that he, in a few short years would in fact become that which he was celebrating? That he would become the very Passover lamb? That his sacrifice – his blood shed – would become the means of deliverance for humanity? We can only guess.
It is during the long trek home in the plodding caravan of people, that Joseph and Mary come to realize that Jesus is not with them. Being an older boy, and a good boy at that, he was probably given much freedom in this parade of humanity, free to go where he pleased, because they knew he would be where he ought to be.
How right they would be in their confidence in Jesus, they knew him, they knew his character, but how wrong they would be in assuming where it would take him.
They could never guess that his very nature would lead him not to be with them, but in a far greater work. Is it not like us to think we know the Lord so well that we think we know what he will do in a certain situation? And when our prediction comes up wrong, it throws us into a panic.
Even though Joseph and Mary must have know that their child was somehow uniquely divine in his nature, that there was some great work of God associated with his life, to them, he was still their little boy.
And so they reacted, as parents do today to the realization that their child is lost, with great anxiety and worry. They backtracked, struggling as upstream through the throngs of people returning to their homes, searching desperately for their lost child.
Consider that in this there is a peculiar irony for ultimately it is not Jesus who is lost, it is us: Humanity. And it is not normally the case that we anxiously search for him though it should be, but that he anxiously searches for us that we might be found and thus saved!
It is after three days, tracking right back to the beginning that they find him, in the temple, the center and heart of Judaism, the place where God’s presence dwells. And there in that unique place, in the presence of teachers after three days, Mary and Joseph really see him as he is – yet they don’t understand.
“Son, why have you treated us so? Do you know your father & I have been anxiously looking for you? ” Mary asks her son. One might imagine the scene: Mary would probably looking like any other mother finding her lost child, leaning forward toward Jesus, hands outstretched in questioning frustration, maybe angry, certainly relieved.
This might just foreshadow an even greater and more significant event yet some years hence, where those who loved Jesus would, after three days of anxious separation from him, be greatly relieved to find him again, appearing as he really is, and though overjoyed at being reunited with him, they cannot completely understand.
Jesus is in the temple, in the midst of the great thinkers and leaders of the Jewish faith. And there he is engaged with them, listening to them, and answering them in such depth of reasoning and clarity of thought that they were all amazed at his understanding and answers. As they discussed the significant questions of life and truth, had they any idea they were interacting with one who was the Way, the Truth, the Life, though certainly in youthful form?
At this point, Jesus responds to Mary’s question. He says “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?” – in some translations, about my father’s business.
Jesus indicates a self-recognition of his unique relationship to God as his father. These first words of Jesus quoted by Luke point to this self awareness of being and mission, he is God’s son, and he is about serving his father and glorifying him in all things.
The response of Jesus to his parents then is one that hints at surprise that Mary and Joseph, those who knew Jesus most intimately, were most aware of the miraculous events surrounding his birth, that they would worry about him, or to seek him any where else but the temple. One might hear as a sub tone to this response: It is not about you, mother and father, it is about this making God’s person and will known to the world.
That is where they find him – in the temple, there, engaging
those religious and social leaders, some who years later, might even cry out for his crucifixion. The son of God makes Goad and his will known to them by first listening; engaging them where they are.
The lord listens; he cares what we think. He cares who we are and where we are in life. Even for those who ultimately reject him. And he responds in understanding, he doesn’t compromise on the truth, he doesn’t give exception, but he understands where we are, what our thinking is. He is not disinterested. He wants to engage us, that we might come to know him, and know truth of who he is.
But the fullness of that knowledge was yet to come some years in the future, after a crucifixion, after 3 days in a tomb, after a resurrection, after an infilling by the Holy Spirit. But Luke was content to comment on the rest of Jesus’ early life, that he went down to Nazareth with his parents, and was obedient to them, and he increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.
In that Luke reminds us that as he was born, as he was here in youth and later in adulthood, he was still the Messiah, the Lord, the son of God, called to do his father’s work for our salvation – to be our Passover.
So as we wind down from this Christmas season, we should be reminded that Christmas is merely the beginning, the start of a work which ultimately will result in our being called Christians; people who have encountered Jesus, and chosen to follow him as Lord. Let’s not put that in a box until next year, let us celebrate and live that reality every day.