For many of us Christmas is over. The decorations are down, family visitors have returned home, the trees are either folded up and put away, or lying unceremoniously on the road side, the remnants of their recently past glory forgotten, waiting to be picked up on trash day.
It is unfortunate that New Year’s comes when it does because that day seems to impose on us the end of Christmas. And it really breaks the flow of the revelatory aspect of Christmas.
The entirety of the church year is the unrolling of the mystery of Christmas, revealing more and more of who this incarnated person is, why exactly he came, and its implications for us.
I have the image of a great carpet rolling down a hill, unrolling as it goes, revealing more and more of its intricate design until it uncurls its last inches, bumping against the foot of a cross and the stone door of a tomb; the zenith and penultimate conclusion to the story.
It is the penultimate or 2nd to last event because the ultimate conclusion occurs when Jesus returns, the story is over and the book is closed. The exciting part of this story, the interactive part of this, is that we live in the period between the penultimate and the ultimate end of the story and we have a part. We are involved.
Christmas never really ends. We get another present to open every Sunday that reveals more of who Jesus is, and what he means to us and how he wants us to participate.
Today’s Christmas gift is a bit more of the story. Up to now we know that this child Jesus is unique. First, we have been privy to the revelations from angels, to Mary in the Annunciation by the angel Gabriel, to Joseph announcing his part in this great event, to the shepherds who are told of the birth of this child.
These angelic messages from the throne of God announce to the world who this child is: the son of God, the savior of his people.
Second, this revelation of God’s incarnation has been confirmed by prophetic word: Elizabeth as she greets her pregnant cousin Mary with the words blessed are you among women, and calls her the mother of my Lord; Mary, in the Magnificat, praising God for her part in God’s plan of redemption; Anna and Simeon in the temple proclaiming about this child, that salvation and redemption is here.
Matthew records revelation by signs in the heavens. The wise men have seen a star; as they interpreted it the proclamation of the birth of a king of the Jews
and they followed it (though they are not here yet, they have been on the way, they are only at the second window) they get here tomorrow; another Christmas gift revealing more of who this child is.
Chronologically today’s story happens after all of this. We leave the infant Jesus and skip ahead twelve years to Nazareth where Mary and Joseph have been to raising their child.
Joseph and Mary take Jesus to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, the event marking God’s work of freeing the Hebrew people from bondage in Egypt, where the angel of death is deflected from every family marked with blood of the Passover lamb.
The mark of blood was the mark of life and survival and was the final act of God’s power that convinced the pharaoh to let them go. Passover will in the future be another occasion, where the blood of a lamb on a cross will bring deliverance and redemption.
so Jesus is going up to Jerusalem in a great caravan of believers with his parents. He is 12 years old, the age that Jewish boys enter a time of preparation for their bar mitzvahs the next year, when he would be recognized as a “son of the law”.
It is during the long trek home that Joseph and Mary come to realize that Jesus is not with them. Being older he was probably free to go where he pleased, because they knew he would be where he ought to be.
Even though Joseph and Mary must have known that their child was somehow uniquely divine, to them, he was still their little boy. So they reacted as parents do with great anxiety and worry. They backtracked against the tide of people returning to their homes, searching desperately for their lost child.
I always note the peculiar irony in this, for ultimately it is not Jesus who is lost. It is we who are lost. And it is not normally the case that we anxiously search for him, but that he anxiously searches for us that we might be found and thus saved!
After three days, they find Jesus is in the temple, in the midst of the great thinkers and leaders of the Jewish faith. 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.
Again; a great irony as the experts discuss the significant questions of life and truth, with one who is the truth, the life.
Jesus, the son of God, engages those religious and social leaders, some who years later, might even cry out for his crucifixion.
The Lord listens; he cares who we are and where we are in life. Even for those who ultimately reject him. He understands who we are. He is not disinterested. He wants to engage us, that we might come to know him, and know truth of who he is, and put our trust in him.
It is during Passover, in the temple, that the next great bit of revelation about this child comes from Jesus himself. The very first words we hear from Jesus in Luke’s account are a response to his mother’s question: “Son, why have you treated us so? Do you know your father & I have been anxiously looking for you?”
Jesus responds first: “How is it that you sought me?”
This first part of Jesus’s response hints at surprise. Mary and Joseph, knew Jesus most intimately, were most aware of the miraculous events surrounding his birth. Why then do they worry about him, or to seek him anywhere else but the temple?
Mary and Joseph had spoken with an angel and seen the miracle of Jesus’ birth, yet still their understanding of Christ’s mission was limited. No matter how many spiritual encounters we may have had, we still have to seek discernment in God’s word and in prayer to know the Lord and his will for our lives.
Jesus continues: “Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?” In some translations: “about my father’s business.”
Given the obliqueness of the Greek linguistic construction, either of these is an acceptable translation. And it may be that its obliqueness gives a fuller understanding about Jesus’s first verbal self-revelation.
In my father’s house would indicate he is in the temple, the place where God’s presence dwelt. But it also implies relationship; being in one’s house is to be close, within earshot. It implies intimacy, friendship. It also speaks to submission and authority of a sort; it is not his house but his father’s. And he wants to be there, is compelled to be there.
Jesus reveals that he understands his unique relationship to God: what it means to be God’s son. And he reveals that his first priority in life is his relationship with his father: God. Who he is and what he does is rooted and flows from that primary relationship.
The other translation “about his father’s business” is as significant. It speaks to Jesus knowing his father’s will, what his father wants to do, and how he is to take part in accomplishing these purposes.
Nothing else mattered. His only desire, his only purpose, was to do what his father desired, regardless. His words in the garden a few years later reflect that commitment; not my will but thine be done. Jesus desires to intentionally live a life that fulfills God’s purposes so that all he is, all that he does is understood to be done by and for his father.
It should certainly raise the question for us.
Certainly God’s presence doesn’t dwell here in the same way that his presence was located in the temple, but his presence is just as genuine he is here in us, as individual temples of the Holy Spirit, as the communal body of Christ where two or three are gathered he is present, in the word proclaimed, and the sacrament received.
Do we seek above all to be in the lord’s presence to hear him, worship him, to know the security of being in his house under his authority and protection? Is this the primary relationship that determines who we are, and what we do?
Jesus understood himself to be about his father’s business–a part of God’s plan. We know that Jesus plan is to make his saving grace known to the world—he gives that charge to the church. The last of Jesus words recorded in Matthew call the church to go make disciples, baptize them and teach them all I have taught you. The last words of Jesus recorded by Luke are in Acts where the assembled believers were told they would receive the Holy Spirit and then be his witnesses in the world.
Do we live our lives with the intent to fulfill God’s purpose? Using the scheme of our strategic plan, do we take our place in God’s plan to make Jesus-God saves- known to the world? And how do we participate in that business? How in our lives, with our gifts, talents and abilities do we participate in making Jesus known in the environments in which we work or live?
So don’t think that Christmas really ends. It continues as we come to know more of who this child is, and come to realize how he affects us, and has plans for us. As the mystery of God incarnate continues to be revealed, may we come to apprehend that mystery and its meaning, and likewise may we be apprehended by it, and caught up in it with Jesus. May Paul’s prayer for the church be answered in our lives:
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the
‘riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe’
Amen.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Richard C. Marsden
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota, FL
2 Christmas
5 January 2014