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The 2nd Sunday of Christmass, 01/04/2015
Sermon on Luke 2:40-52, by Paula L. Murray
40The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.
41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44Assuming 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. 45When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.48When 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.’ 49He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ 50But they did not understand what he said to them.51Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor. (NRSV)
There is a natural affinity between the very old and the very young that goes well beyond the conspiracies routinely hatched between grandparents and grandchildren to get around parental routines and rules. Grandmother’s chocolate chip cookies somehow take the space on the plate Mom reserved for good-for-you broccoli, and bedtime is repeatedly pushed back for another viewing of Frozen. And it is Mom and Dad, of course, that then gets to take little Hurricane Hannah and Harry home and bring them down enough to get them to bed. Having been the victim of such conspiracies in the past, I hope for an opportunity in the future for payback. But the affinity of which I speak is more than the natural desires of both grandchildren and grandparents to stick it to the boss for a little more fun. This affinity exists even between elders and youngsters who are not related or even acquainted.
Seniors, like all human adults are naturally wired to look fondly on little people with big heads and eyes and to care for them. This is biology, and it is one reason why humanity has survived its homicidal tendencies. You have to work really hard to overcome this baked in the nervous system characteristic. The pity of it is that so many adults actually do overcome that programming meant to protect and provide for children who are, by their nature, unable to protect or provide for themselves. But the affinity between our elders and our children has to do more with experience, or the lack thereof, than even biology.
Children lack experience; that’s in part what it means to be a child, to be one who has little experience with life or any of its parts. A healthy child is a fabulously thirsty sponge seeking to know and to feel and to act everything, and though much of culture is designed purposely to give them the experience they crave children get little respect. Our elders also tend to get less respect than their due, for they are veritable repositories of experience, but the end of work life corresponds too readily for some with an end to usefulness. Our elders, then, and our young ones, held in similar regard by those in the middle stage of life, also complement one another, for the elders have what children lack, experience. That natural affinity the older ones among us have for the youngest is there in part because children are willing to be recipients of a lifetime’s worth of knowledge. And older adults want very much to share the lessons of their lives for posterity’s sake and for the good of the young.
But it does not end even there. There comes a time in all of our lives when we become aware that there are more years behind us than in front of us. A child is the future on legs for those whose legs are less reliable. To educate, to share some portion of hard won wisdom and maturity, is to become a part of the future, even if in absentia. It is to form, in the mind and spirit of a child, what comes to pass long after we are gone from the face of the earth. Much of what an elder passes along comes in the form of traditions. Traditions are the habits of culture passed from generation to generation for the preservation and the building up of culture. The most important aspects of any culture are the spiritual, for it is the spirit that is the engine for any other human activity that matters.
The evangelist Luke comprehends and lifts up the importance of the passing of faith from our elders to our children. The stories of Simeon and Anna and Jesus’ playing hooky with the teachers of the Temple are found nowhere else in the Bible. These stories form a natural transition for us who are accustomed to recording every major and most minor events in our children’s lives. However, the Bible is focused on who Jesus is and the role he plays in salvation history; few words if any are spent on material that does not pertain to his ministry no matter how natural or charming we think it. Even this story of Jesus’ boyhood told in today’s Gospel reading is primarily geared to revealing his special relationship to God the Father.
That there is a special relationship between the child Jesus and God the Father is without doubt. The birth stories make it clear, and this morning’s text is bookended by words that re-enforce the angelic announcement of “good news of great joy.” Verse 40 says, “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” The story ends on the same note, for Jesus, “as he increased in wisdom and in years” also increased “in divine and human favor (verse 52).
The use of the word favor is interesting. “Divine favor” refers to grace, unmerited in the case of all human beings save Jesus himself, who as the Son of God is both the recipient of the grace of God and giver of the same. Favor could mean something more like the affinity of the aged for the young in the case of Simeon, Anna, and the Temple clergy, except in each of these three cases it is Jesus the Messiah and not Jesus the baby or Jesus the twelve-year old boy who attracts an adoration that is worship in the case of Simeon and Anna, and approaches worship in the fascination of the Temple elders with Jesus’s answers to their questions. Clearly, his knowledge and wisdom is far beyond anything expected of a child of his age. The question is only, what role will he play in Israel, teacher, prophet, or king?
Note, though, that Jesus asks questions and listens to the older priests’ and scribes’ responses. Jesus does not himself proclaim as one with all authority under heaven and earth, not at this point of his life. Anna and Simeon know they have held the infant Messiah in their arms, for they themselves received that prophecy personally. Simeon has been told by the Holy Spirit that he will not die before he sees the Messiah. Anna’s case is more interesting, for though she is introduced as a prophetess so devout that she lived in the Temple precincts for 84 years after her husband’s death devoting herself to fasting and prayer, there is no specific reference to Anna’s having received a prophecy like Simeon. Still, her unexpected appearance on the scene and her constant talking to others who pray for the “liberation of Jerusalem” about Jesus suggests she knows him to be the Messiah. The Temple personnel, though of higher rank than Anna and perhaps Simeon, too, have received no such intimate revelation of the advent of the Messiah. They know their Isaiah and Jeremiah, but perhaps are not as devout as the two elderly prophets and not as close to God or as diligent in fasting and prayer. They clearly believed they had a young religious genius in their midst, but there is no indication that they believed they looked upon the face of the Messiah. In fact, the sad irony is that it will be these men or men like them that some 20 years or so in the future will plot the death of the religious prodigy they admire.
The future death of the twelve-year old Jesus at the hands of such as these is foreshadowed in the behavior of his parents. Theirs is a very devout household. They make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover often despite the fact that their faith requires that they only do it once over the course of a lifetime and it is an expensive, lengthy, and dangerous journey. On the return home they eventually determine that Jesus is not with the pilgrims. If this sounds unusual, remember that Jesus is 12 and they are traveling with neighbors and family members and they may have assumed he is with friends. Once aware he is gone, they search for three days, becoming increasingly anxious and fearing the worse one would think, as parents do. Jesus’ absence suggests death, and the three days they search for him remind us of the three days Jesus spent in the tomb after his crucifixion. Mary and Joseph retrace their steps and eventually find him in the Temple, learning from his elders in the faith even as he teaches them the faith they think they know.
I like to think that Luke did some very careful editing here, because I know that if I had spent the last three days looking for my lost child I would not start with a quiet, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” Once the hugs ended the interrogation would begin, and it would not be gentle. Nor would Jesus’ response have been sufficient, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Any son of mine who pulled a stunt like this would be 35 before he got his learner’s permit; he would be 40 before he could drive.
But my son would not be the Son of God. When the boy Jesus answers his mother’s question he tells the leaders of the Temple who he is. He claims God almighty as his father, and his Father’s business as his business. On the cusp between boyhood and adolescence, the young Messiah begins his apprenticeship in the family ministry. But this apprentice is more than even his teachers. The apprentice will teach his elders in the faith, even as they pour their life’s experience with faith into his head and Spirit.
When we look at a church’s activities schedule or its ministry structure, we see neat little boxes labeled preschoolers, youth class, or adult learning opportunities. In effect, our congregations replicate the theory and structure of education found in both public and private schools. But the school of faith is different, for it is dependent first on the grace of God, given in Word and Sacrament, and then on the relationship between justified sinners and their Lord. That relationship is not best strengthened by dividing our elders from the youngsters within the church. Faith is not necessarily age dependent; the oldest among us can learn faith, can learn to see God’s grace, from the youngest. Even so, the wisdom, experience, and tested faith of our elders are blessings to our younger members when sharing of faith is encouraged. For instance, the grandfather of your son’s best church friend can, almost as an honorary Godfather, speak to our common hope in Christ in ways that a parent cannot. Your child may not remember that event in all its particulars later on in life, but he will remember being treated with respect as a Christian, being loved by a brother in Christ, and being taught his discipleship from a disciple with long experience as a Christian walking, and sometimes tripping, along faith’s pathways. The relationships between disciples of Jesus Christ of different generations teach faith, witness to the grace of God we see in Jesus Christ, and model the habits of faith including repentance, prayer, worship, and service. Children are not our future so much as they are our present. But their elders in the faith, to the extent they share the faith with those younger than themselves, may be.