First Sunday after Christmas: December 31, 2006.

1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26

Psalm 148

Colossians 3:12-17

Luke 2:41-52

First Reading

Many common threads weave their way through today's lessons. The first lesson and the Gospel share stories of parents who make annual pilgrimages to the Temple, who have extraordinary sons who remain behind in the Temple (Samuel for good, and Jesus for a few days), and both lessons conclude with statements about how the young men grew and gained favor with God and other people. The first and second lessons share in common the image of clothing, as Hannah brings a robe for Samuel to wear each year and Paul writes how God's people are clothed in attributes that come from our participation in God's family. In this context, it is especially interesting to note that Paul includes a sentence about forgiveness between two sentences about being clothed. The Hebrew word for "to clothe" someone can also be a word of forgiveness (see, for example, Gen 3:21).

Yet again, the verses and their connections tempt us to see things from our point of view. We see two sets of parents worrying over their children. We see Paul exhorting the community to particular attitudes and behaviors. What goes missing is what God is up to. And in these texts, especially the first lesson and the Gospel, one has to use special care to get at the answer to that question.

The easiest place to look, generally, is at what Jesus is doing. Here, the adolescent Jesus takes leave of his family (without their knowledge or permission) and remains in the Temple in Jerusalem to sit with the "teachers" who are there, to listen to them and to ask them questions. Luke alone relates a story from Jesus' childhood, and only this one. It serves as a narrative bridge between the stories of Jesus in the Temple as an infant and the adult ministry of Jesus. At stake is the identity and the messianic ministry of Jesus. Questions about these matters will come up again and again throughout Luke, though Luke works to establish the answers early on--here, and again at Jesus' baptism (chap. 3) and his first sermon (chap. 4). The issue: Who are Jesus' true parents? Where does Jesus "fit" into his context?

Here we have the first of many times when Jesus must redefine the answers to the questions of identity and mission. "Your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety!" states Mary, posing as every parent of every lost and found child. "I had to be in my 'Father's' house," answers Jesus, not defiant, but explaining where Mary's statement was off the mark. Words about Jesus' identity, clues to his connection to the God of Israel, have been offered already and will be given throughout the rest of the Gospel. Jesus challenges cultural taboos by placing his core identity with his Abba God rather than with his earthly parents. Jesus challenges the official religious teachers of the Temple, puzzling them with questions (a form of teaching). Interestingly, Jesus, not his cousin John, draws parallels with the boy Samuel, though the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah is more akin to Hannah and Elkanah.

If we are to find good news in this passage, it is likely in the fact that God in Christ is among the people, growing as we do, learning as we do, being shaped by the piety of his parents as all of us are. God shows a commitment to the creation by following our path into adulthood. But God in Christ does it in such a way that we are aware, from early on, that God is also doing something new. God challenges the creation and humanity within it to become more than we have been. God challenges Israel to take up its vocation once again.

Pastoral Reflection

Homiletics professor Paul Scott Wilson suggests that a sermon contain four moves, or pages: Trouble in the Bible, Trouble in the world, God's action in the Bible, and God's action in the world. (3) It may be possible to use those moves to good advantage in a sermon on the Gospel text.

In this text, the narrative trouble is that Jesus is not with his family and is lost. The family searches for three days only to find that Jesus is not lost at all. God (Jesus) in this text is not lost but is about the business of a child of God. God is, in fact, found where God ought to be, challenging us to be more fully human and more connected to God. This theme of connection and disconnection might work very well in a sermon. Jesus disconnected from his family (or they from him), and Jesus connected to his Abba and with God's people.

In our world, the search for God and the search for meaning have become a pivotal aspect of our culture, as we either pursue it or avoid it. People are at the same time hungry for God and for something spiritual in their lives and also despairing of ever finding that, especially within the organized religious establishment. People flock to churches and do not find God even there, at least not the God of the cross, the God of authentic humanity and authentic divinity. Paradoxically, Luther writes of that God as revealed/hidden. God is there, putting the religious establishment on notice and puzzling even those of us who think we know what God is up to. God is there, in the middle of our mess, and just when we think we know where to look, God eludes our gaze again.

In the shadow of the certainty and the captivity of the baby Jesus in a manger, this story serves as a stark reminder that "God with us" is not domestic or safe. We will seek and seek in vain, only to find God with us all the time. But God is with us to challenge us to grow in ways we often don't want or think we need. And God will always direct us to the notion that there is a deeper way for each of us to be human and that, by being human in just that way, there is a deeper connection to our Abba as well. (4) LLB 

3. Paul Scott Wilson, The Four Pages of the Sermon (Nashville: Abingdon, 1999).

4. Douglas John Hall, The Cross in Our Context (Minneapolis, Fortress, 2003), 127.