Luke
2:41-52 (NRSV)
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.
(This is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.)
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‘Twas
the week after Christmas, when all through the house
Not
a creature was stirring, not even your spouse.
The
stockings which hung by the chimney with care
Were
dumped out and empty and thrown in a chair.
The
kids all slept late, they’d stayed out ‘til two thirty,
Which
was fine, since that girl that your son thinks is flirty
Surprised
you by coming to your Christmas dinner
and
said that you cooked well … for a beginner.
And
your daughter, who’d just left for college last fall,
Decided
that she wouldn’t come home at all.
But
then, in a miracle, changed her decision,
When
you told her she could pay her own tuition.
When
out in the living room rose such a clatter
You
sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Though
not quite, for these days, you’re slightly less springy
Than
your mangy old dog or a deflated dinghy.
But
surprise! For it had been your mangy old mutt
Who
had clattered and clamored and shaken and strut
And
who, in the interest of lending a hand
Had
just knocked the Christmas tree clean off its stand
And
just as your frustration started to taper
you
tripped over a pile of torn-apart paper
the
good stuff—you’d bought it from old Sally Foster
but
now it seems clear she was just an imposter
for
the paper lay shredded all over the floor
from
presents already returned to the store
and
your once-gorgeous home now looked like it could be
Norman
Rockwell’s, if Rockwell were on LSD
The
Christmas for which you’d been working so hard
Was
chewed up, and broken, left battered and charred.
But
ah! What is this? Your son is awake!
Perhaps
he will share some leftover pound cake!
Or
some ham, or a story, or anything, really,
But
you ask, and he acts like you’re speaking Swahili
and
keeps walking, but before he gets too far
turns
and says, “Merry Christmas. Can I have the car?”
Well,
the church calls today the Feast of the Holy Family, a name which I find to be
absolutely hilarious, because you come to the Bible expecting an idyllic scene
of Jesus and Mary and Joseph loving one another and serving one another and
staring adoringly at each other, and instead, we are presented with Mary
telling Jesus, “Why have you treated us like this?” and Jesus responding, with more
than a little lip, “Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?” as
if you could argue with that particular response.
After
the Christmas story, it is a little jarring to be presented with a disagreement.
Surely, this is not what Mary expected when the angel came to her and
proclaimed good news of great joy. Look, Stacey and I may only be a year into this
child-raising thing, but believe me: it is not the arguments I relish. I relish to the quiet moments, the holy
moments, the kind of moments you’d expect to hear about on the day we call the
Feast of the Holy Family. I relish the kind of moments you prepare for, that
you long for at Christmas.
But
this is life, isn’t it? You wrap the gifts, you take the kids to see Santa and
cook a huge meal, and just before the end of the movie, your son breaks his
glasses and thinks he’s shot his eye out, the neighbor’s dogs come and vanquish
the turkey you’ve spent all day cooking, and before you know it, the whole
family is in a Chinese restaurant with the Christmas Peking duck.
And
so I am glad to see that you have successfully
made it out from underneath the reams of wrapping paper that littered the living
room. Looking around at attendance today, it seems clear that not everybody
has.
I
remember being a kid and waking up on December 26, disappointed to discover
that though Christmas had been wonderful, the 26th was just another
day, and maybe there was some candy left, but it would eventually get eaten,
and the new clothes would be worn and the toys would become old, and soon
enough, Christmas would give way to a certain ordinariness, a reminder that
while holidays are wonderful, life is lived in the everyday; faith is lived not
in perfect moments, but in everyday life.
I
think about that first Christmas, that silent night when glories streamed from
heaven afar and heavenly hosts sang alleluia, and what it must have been like
the morning after, when the shepherds had gone home, when Mary, exhausted from
giving birth, awoke and remembered that yes, she was in fact in a barn of all
places, that the whole night before had not been a dream. And the baby starts
to cry, and the baby won’t stop crying, and suddenly it’s twelve years later,
and Jesus still has a little
attitude. You can just about hear the desperation in his mother’s voice. Why
did you do this to us? Why did you do this to me? Do you not remember the story of just how I came to be pregnant
with you, of how I narrowly escaped being stoned for giving birth to you? Do
you have any idea how difficult it is for me to be your mother?
The
trip to the temple had started out well enough. Being good Jews, Mary and
Joseph and their family traveled to Jerusalem three times a year for the high
holy days, the most important holidays of the year. It is a nice ritual, I
think, to return to the temple on these big days. If you have been here at the
church on Christmas Eve, you can imagine the hubbub at the temple. People
selling things, reunions with friends and family, a chance to catch up with
people you had not seen in a long time. It was chaotic, but it was lovely. It
gave a people who were scattered a chance to be together.
Mary
and Joseph made this trip every year, and if you think that navigating the
parking lot at North Dekalb Mall at Christmastime is bad news, just think about
what it was like for Jesus’s family to travel for days, fifteen miles a day, in
order to be at the temple by Passover.
Fifteen
miles on foot! Every day, for days! I tell you what, I get tired just thinking
about that. You know, that kind of hike makes me think back to being at camp.
Did you ever go on one of those hikes that never seemed to end? I was a camp
counselor for ten years at a camp in Arkansas, and I used to be the one to lead
those never-ending hikes.
Each
summer, the crowning achievement of the Outdoor Living Skills class I taught was
to take the campers on a campout at the base of the mountain where the camp was
situated. We’d cleared a little campsite there, and so we took the kids down
every couple of weeks to set up tents and make foil pack dinners and roast
marshmallows for s’mores.
And
so one Sunday night a couple of counselors and I took about ten or twelve kids
down the mountain, and as soon as we
got far enough down the mountain to make a trip back impractical, it started to
rain. Now, if it had really begun to pour before we left, we’d have rescheduled
the campout. But it waited until we’d already left, so we trudged down the
mountain in the rain, with twelve seven-to-fifteen-year-olds, and it’s almost
enough to make you understand how Jesus’s parents must have felt on the way to
Jerusalem. We’d walk a few feet, somebody would slip in the mud, and then we’d
pick them up and keep going until it happened again, which it inevitably did.
Somehow, we eventually made it down the mountain, mostly by sliding I think,
and we started to set up the tents. Everything was going fine—even the rain had
stopped—and I thought to myself, this is not so bad. I’ve led plenty of campouts
before. What could possibly go wrong?
Well,
let me give you a piece of advice. When taking twelve
seven-to-fifteen-year-olds through the woods, never say to yourself, “what
could possibly go wrong?” The campfire wouldn’t light, of course, so we had
peanut butter crackers for dinner. I think we roasted marshmallows over my
lighter. To crown it all, in the rush to beat the rain, I’d forgotten my
sleeping bag, so once it came time for bed I took the change of clothes I’d
brought with me and arranged them over myself in order to try and keep warm.
And
after we went to bed, about two in the morning, as it again started to rain, I
gave thanks that at least my camping hammock had a rain fly, you know, sort of
a waterproof tarp to sleep under. The tents the kids were sleeping in had rain
flies, too, so at least we’d all stay dry. And just as I thought that
thought—just as I thought it—I felt a tug on the side of my hammock. I unzipped
the top of the hammock and stuck out my head, only to find a shivering, soaking
wet seven –year-old boy who proceeded to inform me that his rain fly had a hole
in it, and he and his tent-mates were getting soaked.
I
thought about lecturing him up and down and using this opportunity to learn a
lesson about checking your tent before you left for the campsite, but then I
looked at this poor, freezing child at two in the morning, and I remembered
that I am not, in fact, a monster, so I did what you do and took down the rain
fly that covered my hammock to cover the hole in his. And as I got ready to set
up the rain fly and stepped out of the hammock into my shoes, I remembered with
a crunch just where I’d left my glasses the night before.
So
I pulled the twisted carnage that remained of my glasses out of my shoes, put
the rain fly on the camper’s tent, and spent the rest of the night freezing,
and soaked, no blanket, no rain protection, no clue why I’d signed up for this
particular assignment.
That
dark night of the soul was only ended at dawn when I heard another one of the
campers quickly unzip his tent and make it about three steps before getting
sick all over the campsite. So I packed up my things and prepared to take the
kid back up the mountain to the infirmary, when I realized that I was going to
get sick, myself, if I didn’t find a dry shirt. Being the only male counselor
on that campout, the only dry shirt that came close to fitting me belonged to
one of the female counselors, a tie-dyed t-shirt with the word “Bahamas”
stitched onto the front which was so clearly made for a woman who would be
wearing something underneath it, that the slightest skin contact with the back
of that stitching would have never passed the Geneva conventions. Well, I trekked
up the mountain with this poor kid, wearing soaking wet blue jeans and a
woman’s t-shirt that would have been tight on a Barbie doll, and by the time we
made it back to camp, I was grumbling so successfully that I don’t even
remember anybody laughing at me, which I am sure they were.
I
want you to know that I spent the next week of camp in a bad mood, recovering
from that campout, and the only thing that shook me out of that funk was
hearing some of my campers on the last night of camp talk to their parents.
These were kids who had grown up on video games and hot pockets; before coming
to camp, outside was just a place between the front door and the school bus.
But here were kids going into great detail about how proud they were to have
survived a night in the woods, even in the rain! All they had eaten for dinner
was peanut butter crackers and raw marshmallows and yet they did not die! I
wish you could have seen the pride on their faces as they talked to their
parents; it was as if their worlds had split open and birthed new possibility.
I
learned something important that day. The journey is far from perfect, and the
results do not always measure up to expectations, but God is there!
Mary
and Joseph spent days traveling to the temple for Passover, had survived the
chaos of the experience, and now they trudged back down the mountain with their
twelve-year-old son. Or so they thought. Jesus was missing. For three days,
they panicked, looking everywhere.
They
had no idea where he was.
Now,
let me stop here briefly and say that it may surprise you to learn that
preachers and Biblical scholars struggle with this story a lot, because it does
not look like much else in scripture. I love this story because it is the only
story in the whole Bible that tells of Jesus as a boy. Everywhere else, it goes
from Jesus as a tiny baby to Jesus as a full-grown adult, as if he somehow
escaped the curse of being a teenager. But Luke reminds us that Jesus really
was fully human, and I just don’t know of any more maddeningly human time than
the age of 12 or 13. I don’t know that Jesus would have fully appreciated the
experience of being human if he had missed that wonderfully, horrifyingly
awkward, holy time of life.
So
he is twelve, not yet old enough to be off on his own, and he is lost for three
days. Now, one reason biblical scholars don’t know what to do with this passage
is that it just seems so strange to imagine a situation in which the son of God
is lost for three days. It doesn’t really fit with the God we sing about in
hymns, the immortal, invisible, God only wise.
So
we do all sorts of things to try to make sense of this story. I’ve read all
kinds of explanations. Oh, you know, he was lost for three days! And, it says
later in Luke, on the third day he rose from the dead! This must be a story
about the crucifixion and resurrection. Or, oh! Jesus was sitting with the
teachers of the law! This must be a story about Jesus’s authority, that he can
hold his own with the teachers! Or, look, of course he is in his father’s house!
This is where he belongs, and where you should be too!
Just
like we yearn for the perfect Christmas, we want to make this story into
something clear and helpful. I mean, it is Jesus,
and we are in church. It must all mean
something.
Everybody
wants this story to be about something, so I was delighted when I came across a
video on the internet from a preacher in Minnesota who gave this story to a
bunch of mothers, some of small children, some of grown, and said, “Tell me
what you think.” That’s it. No theological magic tricks, no plucking meaning
from thin air. Just tell me what you think. And to a person, they said some
version of the same thing: this story is terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. Losing
track of a child for three days is one of the scariest things I can imagine.
And
when you think about it that way, I am not really sure how to sanitize it. The
story is terrifying. You can imagine
Mary’s exasperation. I have no trouble imagining her tone of voice. I think it
is pretty clear. Why have you done this
to us? It is a mix of overwhelming relief and white-hot anger. And rather
than apologizing, rather than using divine power to assuage her fears and calm
her down, Jesus stokes his mother’s fire, saying something that simultaneously
makes perfect sense in light of all we know Jesus to be but which, scripture
tells us, his parents did not get. Did you not know that I would be in my
father’s house? And they did not understand what he said to them, the writer
says.
And yet, though she did not understand, though
she was terrified and furious and exhausted from the search, though this was
not what she thought she’d signed up for, Mary treasured these things in her
heart. Even in the midst of loss, even in family argument, even after days and
days of travel, she found herself, once again, in the presence of God. Even at
times when life became almost unbearably difficult--and, for Mary, at times, it
did--she treasured all of this in her heart.
This
is how God works: not in the perfect moments, because in the final analysis
there is no such thing as a perfect moment. In God’s world, children get lost
and are found, sons speak insolently to their parents, wizened old teachers
learn from a twelve year old boy, our very savior is executed as a traitor.
And, of course, God is born in a barn, among animals, among the smells of life,
and while this might not be the most pleasant thing you can imagine, the smells
of the manger are indeed the smells of life! They remind us that theology is
lived, that the Gospel happens when we live it. God was made flesh at Christmas and God
continues to be made flesh through us.
So
don’t worry if Christmas was not what you dreamed
For
the promise of God is that life is redeemed
not
a storybook life, or as told through a poem
nor
as something that only can happen at home
but
in real life, the real world, for Christ was made flesh.
Remember
this next time you put out the crèche
for
the smells that he smelled and the miles that he went
are
the same smells, the same miles, the same hours we’ve spent.
Oh,
the promise of Christmas is not about gifts
It’s that even in long-standing family rifts
The
God who has been at our side since the start
Still
is with us. So go treasure THIS in your heart.
In
the name of the one who creates you from dust
And
the one who redeems you and leads you to trust
In
the one who sustains you wherever you go
God
is with us. Go tell everybody you know!
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