Second Sunday after Christmas,
Penelope Bridges
We are experiencing a bit of a time warp today, as we celebrate the last day of the Christmas season, look forward to Epiphany and the visit of the wise men tomorrow, and acknowledge that the world around us has moved on. Have you seen the Valentine’s Day merchandise everywhere?
The lectionary – the church’s schedule of Scripture readings – adds another twist to this time warp. We have three options for the Gospel on this second Sunday of Christmas: the Epiphany story of the wise men; the sequel to that story when Herod sets out to murder the babies in Bethlehem and the holy family flees to Egypt; and this story that we just heard, of the adolescent Jesus in the Temple. I chose the latter Gospel, because we don’t often have two Sundays in the Christmas season, so you may not be familiar with this story. And it is a unique passage, because it’s the only mention in any of the Gospels of Jesus’ life between his infancy and his adult ministry.
Jesus and his family have made the 90 mile trek to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. As a 12-year-old, Jesus is on the brink of adulthood: you could almost think of this as a bar mitzvah experience. They are traveling with a group of relatives and neighbors from Nazareth. As they set out for home, it’s easy to assume that Jesus is somewhere in the big, noisy crowd. When they stop for the first night of camping out, Mary and Joseph realize that Jesus isn’t with them. If you’ve ever lost a child in a big crowd you know the gut-churning anxiety that immediately grips you. They spend a whole day walking back to the city, and then they start to search. The Old City of Jerusalem isn’t a large area, but it is a warren of interconnected buildings and passageways, not an easy place to search. Another day goes by without finding the boy. Now, imagine that your child is a member of an oppressed minority in a city under martial law. We know all too well what can happen to young men who are caught in the wrong part of town, even in our own country. In today’s Jerusalem a Palestinian teen wandering on his own might be in terrible danger.
When Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the Temple, Luke says they are “astonished”. This choice of words seems to me like a masterpiece of understatement, and the word Luke uses is distinctly different from the word he uses for the amazement of the rabbis, underlining the contrast between the impressed teachers and the incandescent parents. His mother rebukes him, calling him “Child” – a reminder that, even if he is 12 and on the brink of adulthood, they still see him as their little boy.
But Jesus replies – and these are the first words he utters in the Gospel – “Why did you have to search? Don’t you know that this is where I belong, with my Father?” Coming from a 12-year-old, this is pretty impertinent; but in the context of who we know Jesus is, it emphasizes that Jesus, as the son of God, belongs in the Temple, where God is most closely present to God’s people. The story ends with Jesus returning to Nazareth with his parents – presumably accompanied by some uncomfortable conversations between parents and son. And the postscript – he increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor – fast-forwards us through the rest of his growing up and on towards the next chapter, which describes the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River and the beginning of his adult ministry. We will get to that next Sunday.
The Temple in Jerusalem is central to Luke’s message. This Gospel began in the Temple, when the father of John the Baptist, Zechariah, received an angelic vision while he was ministering there, and he learned that he would be a father. The Gospel ends with the disciples in the Temple continually blessing God, after the ascension of Jesus. The Temple is where Jesus spends his time teaching and calling for reform. It is where the elders of Jesus’ people, Anna and Simeon, recognize the infant Jesus as the Messiah. And it is where, in this story, Jesus indicates his first awareness of his mission and is recognized by the leaders of his own community as a gifted scholar and teacher.
“Did you not know that this is where I belong?” This rhetorical question reaches out to us: where do I belong? Where do you belong? The translation that we read says, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” The Jews knew the Temple as God’s house, the dwelling place of the most high. It was their pre-eminent symbol of belonging; and when the Romans destroyed it in 70 AD, the loss was cataclysmic. It took a long time and a huge cultural shift for the Jewish people to find a new way of belonging.
In some ways I wonder if the Christian community is going through a similar shift today. For centuries the church was the dominant building in any town throughout Christendom. Christians still identify ourselves by the church we attend: I go to St. Paul’s, someone else goes to First United Methodist, someone else again to Our Lady of the Rosary. We associate our belonging with a building, a place. But that is not where the church is to be found. The church is the gathering of God’s people who follow Jesus. It is a community called out by God to do the work of reconciliation in the world, regardless of where we worship on a Sunday or which worship book we follow.
If you are familiar with the Harry Potter stories, you will recognize Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Slytherin and Hufflepuff as the four houses of Hogwarts school. When my boys were growing up, our New Year’s Eve celebration regularly consisted of a family trip to see the latest Harry Potter movie in the theater. The idea of school houses probably seems very quaint and odd to most Americans; but in the school I and my sisters attended in Ireland, we also had four houses, called Oak, Hawthorn, Holly, and Beech. The idea was to give us a place to belong, an incentive to do well and bring honor to our house, to be part of a community within the larger community of the school.
Yes, it’s quaint, but it also appeals to a facet of human nature: we need to belong. The current epidemic of loneliness is caused in part by a cultural rejection of the clubs, associations, and institutions that have provided community and purpose for people often living far from their families of origin, a place to belong. Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone (Robert D Putnam Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster 2000) gives a compelling account of the breakdown of this civic structure and its negative consequences.
The story of the boy Jesus in the Temple is in part about Jesus growing in his faith, reaching beyond his nuclear family to the wider Jewish community. In his adult ministry he traveled constantly, with no fixed home address. His mission field was the whole Jewish world. He belonged everywhere and nowhere. Part of our own growth in faith is the process of learning that the body of Christ is not restricted to the people we know, or to the people whose theology we agree with. We learn that we belong to something that is far bigger than a family or a village or a denomination: we belong to a mystical community that transcends time and space.
This maturing in faith is a lifelong project, initiated in our baptism. On this first Sunday of a new year, I invite you to consider a renewed commitment to that project. Dig deep into your assumptions. Ask the questions that have troubled you. Learn more about Scripture. Deepen your sense of belonging to this faith community and invite others to belong with you. There are a lot of people out there who haven’t yet found somewhere to belong: St. Paul’s can offer a safe space to belong, a place to doubt, to grow, to make a difference. When Jesus’ parents couldn’t find him, they thought he was lost, but he was in the place where he belonged. Let’s make it our mission to seek out those who are truly lost and bring them into this smart, loving, inclusive community that seeks to Love Christ, Serve Others, and Welcome All.
