This morning we are dramatizing the first two chapters of Luke. All the main characters in the story are represented including Mary, Elizabeth, Zechariah and the Shepherds who were given “good tidings of great joy.” It is probably the first time in our own church’s history that the “audience” is also the cast in an hour long drama. In keeping with this morning’s festivities, I would like to focus on the ending of the Lukan “birth narratives.”
Luke 2:41-52 concludes his coverage of Jesus’ early years with the incident of Jesus in the Temple where he sat with the Jewish teachers and amazed them with his penetrating questions and brilliant answers. Jesus and his parents had come to Jerusalem for their annual observance of Passover. Jesus was 12 years old, the age when young Jewish boys typically prepared to take their place as “men” in the Jewish social-religious order also known as the boy’s Bar mitzvah. So this was supposed to be an occasion for learning but in Jesus’ case it was, perhaps, a time for Jesus to enhance his self understanding as God’s Son. At the heart of this pericope is Jesus’ keen sense that while he certainly had an earthly mother and father, that is Mary and Joseph, he also was uniquely the Son of the Heavenly Father. If that awareness had not as yet been full blown, then the crowds of Jewish pilgrims visiting the city, the sights and sounds in the temple, the prayers, the sacrifices and the intriguing sessions with the rabbis for sure confirmed for Jesus what was already welling up within him that he had a unique relationship with the Heavenly Father. Suddenly, it had become clear to Jesus if you please that he was not in Jerusalem just to attend a national pageant, but he was there to be about “His Father’s business.”
But Jesus’ “emerging self-perception” is in sharp contrast to his parent’s perceptions that Jesus had been carried away by all the “hoopla” and had forgotten his place in the family which included his duty to be aware of his parent’s whereabouts and to be with them whether in Jerusalem or on the road back to Galilee. When Mary and Joseph left Jerusalem with their caravan of pilgrims returning to their town, Jesus stayed behind or was so absorbed in “His Father’s business” that he lost track of his parents. Meanwhile, they expected him to be with them and were shocked to discover their son was missing. And so, an anxious day was spent returning to Jerusalem to look for him and at least part of another day searching before it dawned on them to look in the temple area where Jesus was “holding court” with the teachers and sages. It seems to me that this might have been the last place they looked for him instead of the first place once they arrived in Jerusalem.. In that one observation I see a message for you and me.
As we contemplate anew the meaning of Christmas and seek to have a deeper walk with Jesus and seek clear direction for the coming year, let us not reduce God to the realm of our own thoughts and expectations, but let us “conduct our own search for Jesus” by looking and listening in the “right places;” that is, searching for him where he really is and not where we expect or demand him to be. While Jesus’ parents naturally became distressed to discover him missing and later astonished to find him among the sages, let us turn astonishment into rejoicing, and anxiety into celebration as the Lord reveals “his whereabouts” to us and brings us to where we ought to be in HIM. “He that cometh to God must believe that he is and is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him (Hebrews 11:6b). Amen and Merry Christmas.
No comments:
Post a Comment