Who is This Child?

today's sermon at Faith United Church, UCC, International Falls, MN

Text: Luke 2:41-52

I always have such a difficult time with moving on so quickly after Christmas. I remember when we lived in California—when the kids were little—taking a walk around the neighborhood the day after Christmas and it just made me sick to see Christmas trees thrown in the gutter for trash pickup on the afternoon of December 26!

It’s only 2 days after Christmas and we have the story of Jesus in the temple at the age of 12! Wait! He was just BORN a little over 48 hours ago! Don’t we need more time to think about the wonderful story of the manger birth, the singing angels and the shepherds trooping off to Bethlehem to see this wondrous thing that has happened?

Of course there aren’t many stories about Jesus growing up. There are a few that didn’t make it into the bible that tell of him performing child-like miracles as a toddler and young child, but the first and only biblical account is an important story when Jesus was 12 years old.

I have a set of books that provide cultural settings for all the gospel readings in the lectionary. The author provides helpful background information for our understanding of what is happening here between Jesus and his parents. As in many other cultures and times, a son in the Middle East at the time of Jesus (especially the oldest son) usually had a strong emotional bond with his mother and a marked sense of his own importance, to the point of being "spoiled" and of concluding that "his every word to women is like law." Having been raised in the tender protection of the women in his family, it's understandable that he eventually felt the need to join the men in the community; at this point, the young boy was "unceremoniously shoved out of the comfort of the women's world into the harsh and hierarchical men's world."[1] It seems that Jesus was probably in the midst of this kind of transition, in the gray area between one time in his life and another when he went with his family to Jerusalem.

It was in that gray area that Mary and Joseph both lost sight of him. Parents today can hardly imagine how anyone could travel any distance without realizing their son was missing, but scholars tell us they were probably traveling with a large group, including numerous kids, and everyone probably thought Jesus was with another part of the group.

When they finally found him, he was sitting squarely in the middle of a gathering of adult men, not, in some unnatural way, giving them all the answers to their questions, but engaging them "man-to-man," in an adult conversation about the questions pressing on them all. And the scholars of the Sanhedrin, like all those who heard the report of the shepherds, like Mary and Joseph hearing the prayer of Simeon on a previous visit to the temple, were "amazed" at what they heard.

According to another scholar, "It was not unusual in ancient times to tell stories of renowned people who at the age of twelve or so gave an indication of their coming stature." But this is no miracle story about Jesus, as much as we may have been taught otherwise: in fact, this one glimpse of Jesus as a youth left later sources dissatisfied, and that’s why they created stories of Jesus as a child performing the kind of miracles one might expect from a six-year-old.[2]

Instead of "miracle" stories which read more like stunts than the great wonders recounted in the familiar Gospels, this week we hear a quietly impressive story about Jesus the youth: "The text does not assume that Jesus is engaged in a contest and besting his opponents as though this were some first-century version of Jeopardy. [Instead], Jesus is engaged in a lively and respectful conversation and demonstrating a wisdom well beyond his years."[3]

Jesus seems to think that his parents should have known he’d be in the temple, but perhaps they weren’t really ready for that yet. So the story tells us he went home with them to Nazareth and implies that he was a “normal” teenager, aside from the fact that he “increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.”[4]

But getting back to the Christmas story… it has to be one of the most amazing stories ever because it has inspired thousands of other Christmas stories, songs and movies. These stories are not just about the birth of Jesus… many of them are about the seeming “magic” of Christmas, or the change of heart that sometimes happens to people during the Christmas season.

Several years ago I read David Baldacci’s wonderful book, Christmas Train, the story of a journalist taking the train from New York to Los Angeles at Christmas time because he’s been banned from flying. The things that happen and the people he meets on the extended train ride awaken in him a long-lost Christmas spirit.

This week I read a book by Garrison Keillor called The Christmas Blizzard. It seemed really appropriate! It’s about a depressed wealthy man who wants his wife to go with him to spend Christmas at their Hawaii home instead of in their Chicago high-rise. His wife isn’t feeling well and as he’s debating whether to go on ahead or not he gets a call to go to his hometown in North Dakota to visit an uncle who may be dying.

He gets stranded there by a blizzard and has some very odd experiences—some may be hallucinations—in some ways almost a modern-day Scrooge-like story. But in the end he has a Christmas awakening that turns him around and sets him on a better and happier path in life.

Although the biblical Christmas story isn’t magic, it is wonderful because it reminds us how much God loves each and every one of us! God’s gift of love isn’t just for the wealthy or the powerful, it’s for the poor and the unnoticed and the “dregs” of society like shepherds who live in the fields with their sheep. It’s for you and me and for the average and the smart and the successful and the homeless and for every classification that human beings can come up with to put on one another. It doesn’t matter to God who we are or what we do, God loves us and gives the gift of love to everyone.

And that love is like a light shining in the darkness—it grows and brightens every corner. And as the Christ Child grows into the boy in the temple and the man who made a difference to everyone he met, that light shines brighter and brighter, bringing hope to all the people and joy to the world. AMEN.

Endnotes

[1] John J. Pilch, The Cultural World of Jesus Year C.

[2] Paul J. Achtemeier, Feasting on the Word

[3] William Herzig, New Proclamation 2006.

[4] Luke 2:52, NRSV.