Sunday after Christmas
December 27, 2015
Luke 2:40-52; I Samuel 2:18-20,26; Col.3:12-17
At first hearing, today’s gospel reading seems out of place on the first Sunday after Christmas.
Only 2 days ago we were hearing about shepherds and angels.
What about the wise men or the flight into Egypt?
What about the presentation in the temple?
What about the prophecies of Simeon and Anna?
We have waited so long for the birth of the Christ child, and it zooms by!
Jesus is already 12 years old!!
Today’s gospel reading is so down to earth:
an adolescent who chooses to follow his heart,
a frantic mother who fears the worst when her child is not quickly found,
parents left scratching their heads over what their kids say.
There is also the story of Samuel.
His mother, Hannah, had given him to the Lord. He is being mentored by Eli.
Every year she visited her son with the gift of a robe lovingly and prayerfully made for him.
Mom leaving something of her heart with each robe.
It doesn’t get more real than this!
Samuel and his family, Jesus and his family are so human,
Human–just like you and me,
Human–just like your family and my family.
We are reminded again that Jesus came from a family that lived the ritual life of Judaism.
Earlier in Luke we learn that Jesus is named according to the instructions given to Mary by the angel Gabriel.
And, as is Jewish custom, his name is not revealed until the 8th day after his birth.
As instructed by Jewish law Jesus is presented at the temple and a sacrifice made. He is circumcised.
Today’s reading informs us that every year the family went to Jerusalem for Passover. This was no small undertaking…it was a difficult trip, taking three days.
Because we perceive Jesus through our “Christian” lens, it is easy for us to overlook the religious context in which Jesus was raised.
In the 1870s the German Max Liebermann painted “The Twelve Year Old Jesus in the Temple”.
It was displayed at Munich’s First International Art Exhibition in 1879 and was reviled. Critics found it deeply offensive.
The root of the problem was that anti-Semitism was on the rise in Germany.
Liebermann was Jewish and he had painted a Jewish Jesus talking with rabbis who are listening to the child—perhaps not convinced by his arguments but considering it. One critic wrote that Jesus was “the ugliest know-it-all Jewish boy imaginable” and the teachers “a rabble of the filthiest haggling Jews.
To appease his critics Liebermann later overpainted the figure of Jesus. Instead of being a dark-haired boy he becomes a blond haired cherub.
Fortunately a preliminary sketch that Liebermann drew survived and we can see what his original vision was.
The challenge is to hear what the text is saying rather than read into it what we want to hear or overpaint it.
It is not an easy task. But it is one we must attempt.
Here is my attempt at the task.
This 12 year old Jewish boy is almost an adult.
At age 12 or 13 Jesus would officially become an adult Israelite and accept responsibility for fulfilling the law.
But he is not there yet. Neither are his parents. It is still a parent-child relationship:
Jesus creates a crisis for his parents when they realize their son has not returned home from celebrating Passover with them.
Finally they find Jesus in the temple…deep in conversation with the temple teachers.
Not a bad place for a Jewish son to be, don’t you think?
He’s not at the local bar or hanging out with the wrong crowd.
But because his parents are so anxious, where Jesus is found is not relevant to them:
“Why have you treated us this way??”
Jesus tells them:
Did you not know I must be in my Father’s house.
Or, as many translate it, “I have to be about the affairs of my Father.”
Before looking at this exchange, let’s stop for a moment:
Who do you identify with?
Are you the anxious parent or the misunderstood adolescent?
Are you one of the teachers?
Are you someone who has been looking for Jesus?
Are you a bystander watching the whole thing?
What is triggered for me is my memory of parent’s hostility towards my conversion experience in college. I took a path they did not approve of.
I can identify with Jesus addressing his parents and telling them he has a greater loyalty.
(pause)
Jesus’ greatest loyalty is not to the two people, his parents, standing in front of him.
His loyalty is to God whom he has the audacity to call Father.
Jesus is claiming for himself a special relationship to God.
It is not surprising that his parents are puzzled.
Would Mary remember that she had been told by the angel that Jesus would Son of the Most High? Maybe later she would.
Jesus is beginning to articulate what will become one of the central themes of his ministry, that loyalty to God must be central.
As a grown man, Jesus would proclaim:
Who are my mother and my brothers?
Here are my mother and my brothers!
Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.
(Mark 3)
Already the tension is there for Jesus…who is his family? Where is his true home?
Jesus does go home with his parents to Nazareth but I strongly suspect the family dynamics have shifted.
Richard Rohr notes that every boy in their early teens must break with their mother’s world and enter the world of men.
That is what Jesus is doing as he stays behind and engages with the teachers of the temple.
He is no longer mama’s boy. He is declaring his independence.
He is finding his own community.
I am sure it was not easy for any of them…not for Jesus, or Mary or Joseph.
There is so much we parents don’t understand about our kids, particularly when they are teenagers.
But can we allow them to be their own persons?
Can we not make them over in our own image?
Can we trust them?
And if you are an adolescent or teenager;
your quest is to be authentic to who you know yourself to be.
Pay attention to what is stirring in your heart. This is not always easy, peer pressure is very real.
Mary treasured all these things in her heart.
I bet her reflections included thinking back over the life of her child.
Did she remember what the angel Gabriel told her?
In my experience of being a parent, the uniqueness of my 30 year old daughter was present when she was a young child.
I remember filling out a questionnaire in anticipation of her entry into pre-K. There were the usual questions:
name of pediatrician, allergies, contact person, food likes and dislikes.
The last question gave me pause: “Please describe your child”.
Well…I asked myself, what is unique about her? What do I write?
After giving it some thought I wrote down that Amy was a good problem solver.
I have no memory now of how I came to this conclusion 26 years ago when Amy was 4 years old.
My assessment was accurate. She is an excellent problem solver.
In her job at Epic she is a problem solver.
When I can’t make heads or tails of a knitting pattern, I call Amy!
I could tell you countless stories of her growing up and being a problem solver.
What did Mary remember as she tried to make sense of the crisis and conversation of that Passover trip to Jerusalem?
Lastly, we are told at the beginning and end of the story that Jesus grew in wisdom.
Jesus would become a wisdom teacher par excellence.
Cynthia Bourgeault writes:
Jesus is first and foremost a wisdom teacher, a person who clearly emerges out of and works within an ancient tradition called “wisdom,” sometimes known as sophia perennis, which is in fact at the headwaters of all the great religious traditions of the work today. It’s concerned with the transformation of the whole human being. (The Wisdom Jesus, p.4)
Wisdom:
Sophia.
Wisdom is not the same as knowledge.
Knowledge is facts and stuff that we learn with our heads and store in our heads.
Wisdom is heart knowledge that calls forth transformation.
Even as a child, Jesus was growing in wisdom.
This quality is waiting to be called forth in all of us, regardless of our age or education or religious upbringing.
It matters not whether we are Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim or whatever.
What matters is whether our hearts are open and we are seekers.
Wisdom is nurtured by community:
Jesus found that community at the temple.
We seek to create a wisdom community for our children with baptism, with children’s liturgy of the word, with Wisdom Reads which will be inaugurated in a few weeks
As adults we nurture wisdom in our worship together, in our various small groups and interactions, as we diligently practice our spiritual disciplines.
I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions because they are quickly forgotten and broken.
They are generally an ego driven activity.
But what if it truly is our heart’s desire to grow in Wisdom and tap into this well that is accessible to all?
Imagine how we and our communities would be transformed.
Imagine building bridges rather than constructing walls.
We would become the incarnation of today’s reading in Colossians:
Clothed with love which binds everything together in perfect harmony
The peace of Christ ruling in our hearts
Gratitude in our hearts.
These are qualities sorely needed in our world today.
Jesus increased in wisdom and in years.
My prayer is that as we live day by day, as each of us grows older, that we, too will increase in our wisdom, becoming more and more like Christ who is our trailblazer.
As we are transformed, so is the world.
Amen.