First Sunday After Christmas Dec 27, 2009 Nancy Meehan Yao
Psalm 148
L=1Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise God in the heights!
2Praise God, all his angels; praise God, all his host!
3Praise God, sun and moon; praise God, all you shining stars!
4Praise the Lord, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!
5Let them praise the name of the LORD, for God commanded and they were created.
6God established them for ever and ever; he fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed.
7Praise the LORD from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps,
8fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command!
9Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars!
10Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds!
11Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth!
12Young men and women alike, old and young together!
13Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for God’s name alone is exalted; his glory is above earth and heaven.
14God has raised up a horn for his people, praise for all his faithful,
for the people who are close to him. Praise the LORD!
Luke 2:41-52 p 833
Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.
They grow up so fast, don’t they? It seems just a few days ago that Jesus was a cute little baby, in his crib, with adoring people smiling down at him.
Now, he is a pre-teen, nearly a man, or at least he thinks he is. If we ever needed Scriptural proof that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human, here it is- Jesus is being rude to his mom, not following his curfew, taking off and not bothering to tell anybody where he was.
When his parents finally get to him, they are “astonished”- which, I think, is Greek for they wanted to shake him until he saw stars. His mother, Mary, who “pondered all these things in her heart” after the angel showed up, has been pondering all right- pondering where the kid was, all the way thru the frantic searching among the relatives, among the traveling party, and all the way back to Jerusalem--. She asks what I believe is an entirely reasonable and calm question—“Child, why have you treated us like this?” Jesus, being twelve, nearly 13, answers, essentially- “What” in that kind of teen age grunt and shrug answer that is a non-answer. What? What’s the big deal? I don’t get it- why were you searching for me? Duh- you should have known this is where I would be, in my Father’s house…..”
When Jesus was twelve years old, the Holy Family went up, as usual, for the festival. The Holy Family goes to church—and they bring their children. And, as we have seen, those children are not always obedient or well behaved, or polite, or even following their parents wishes. They make a fuss and a problem and a disruption. But I want us, as the family of God, to note just a few things
1) Jesus is in the Temple- it is where children are supposed to be, it is where he obviously belongs- When Jesus was born, he was brought to the Temple as an infant, Simeon and Anna sang praise to God for him. Here the slightly older Jesus says: “did you not know I must be in my Father’s house?” - and he is there because his family is there- “they went up to Jerusalem as was their custom”—it was a regular practice- it was a habit—they did not decide, every Sabbath, whether or not to go or to stay home in their pjs. It was already decided. They said, as a family, this is what we do, this is who we are.
2) the family was larger than just Mary and Joseph- in the same way that so many, different people are involved in the Advent/Christmas story- many people are involved in Jesus’ life- he travels with a large group of people who care for him- aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, the kindly lady who bakes those good cookies- and they all watched out for him and for each other. Mary and Joseph are not especially worried when they can’t find Jesus at first- he is with other adults who love him and care for him. The people traveled together, for safety and companionship. So should we as we travel through life.
3) there are teachers- Jesus goes to Sunday School- I imagine they did not have Vacation Bible School in Jerusalem in 12 CE- but we have VBS- and Sunday School, and youth group- it takes a village, or rather, a church, to raise up children- Proverbs tells us “train up a child in the way he should go, and he will not depart from it”….
4) the children, and the teens, when they are in worship, will not behave well. They will not be quiet, they will not be decorous—they will make a fuss, they will ask unfortunate questions, they will make us want to shake them until their heads spin….but they need to be in worship anyway.
5) The children will, while growing in the faith, take off in directions we do not know or expect. Jesus, after going up to the Temple, did not at first return home with Mary and Joseph. Their faith life, nurtured in the pews, in the Sunday School classrooms, in youth group, will take them, perhaps, to places we are not sure we want them to go—but grounded in faith, raised in faith, we give them the skills and tools necessary to ask those questions, to lead worship, to make decisions about life. We also trust that God is in this process- that we do not only have that child, but that God has acted first—in the child’s life, and in our life.
William Willimon, former dean of the chapel at Duke University and currently a bishop serving in the United Methodist Church, tells a story about a day, while he was the dean of the chapel at Duke, he received a phone call from a very irate father. The father exploded on the other end of the line, telling him furiously, “I hold YOU personally responsible for this!” The father was angry because his graduate-school-bound daughter had decided (in his words) “to throw it all away and go and do mission work in Haiti with the Presbyterian Church.”
The father screamed, “Isn’t that absurd! She has a B.S. degree from Duke and she is going to dig ditches in Haiti! I hold YOU responsible for this!”
Willimon said, “Why me?” The father said, “You ingratiated yourself and filled her with all this religion stuff
Will Willimon is not easily intimidated. Upon hearing the father’s accusation, he asked the man, “Sir, weren’t you the one who had her baptized?”
“Well, well, well, yes,” the man stammered.
“And didn’t you take her to Sunday school when she was a little girl?”
“Well, well, yes.”
“And didn’t you allow your daughter to go on those youth group ski trips to Colorado when she was in high school?”
Yes . . . but what does that have to do with anything?”
“Sir, YOU introduced her to Jesus. Not me!”
The church introduces children to God. The church is a provisional demonstration of the kingdom of God. We model Godly love and justice, we live out compassion and peace--We talk about God—in our Old Testament study this fall, we talked about how the bible says “When your children will ask you” in the days to come—not if, but when—and we are to tell of God’s love and care. The whole family of God—mothers and fathers, grandparents, Sunday School teachers, ushers, vacation bible school volunteers, we all, as the family of God, have a part in each child.
When we baptize a baby, we ask the parents questions: do you desire that your baby be baptized? We ask the parents if they renounce evil and the ways of sin, and turn to Jesus Christ. They answer this not only on their own, but on behalf of the child, who cannot yet answer or decide for herself. And then, the elder turns to the congregation: and asks:
“ Do you, as members of the church of Jesus Christ, promise
to guide and nurture this child by word and deed, with love and
prayer, encouraging him to know and follow Christ and to be a
faithful member of his church?”
And we always reply: We do.
At baptism, we declare that the baptized one is now a member
of the household of faith---did you here that? Not an institution,
not a doctrine, not a club—the household of God. The family of
faith. God, who claims us before we can say yes, is calling us
to live out our “yes”, our “We do”- to our children, and to all
children- that they may grow up in faith, with adequate food and clean water, with health care and love.
Mary and Joseph, Jesus parents, we are told “did not understand” what Jesus said to them. The family went back to Nazareth, and Mary “treasured all these things in her heart”.
The miracle of baptism is that God claims us before we can even begin to reach for God—God claims us, comes into our life first. That is grace. We do not understand it. We simply have to live, in the family of faith, in the household of God. And we can ponder all these things in our hearts, even as we, old and young, grow in stature and wisdom and faith. Amen
note: the Willimon anecdote: http://www.trinitycamphill.org/Sermons/Sermons2008/Contemporary%20Service/2008-01-20%20-%202%20Epiphany%20-%20C%20-%20Vicar%20Michael%20K%20%20Louia.pdf Vicar Michael Louia, although I first heard this story in a sermon preached by the Rev Dr John Hunter at Memorial Presbyterian Church, St Augustine, FL.
