A reading from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2 verses 41 to 52. Let’s us listen now for God’s word to the church.
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 the Lord..
Thanks be to God.
Recently, Officials working for the department of customs and border patrol announced changes to protocols regarding children in custody, including performing medical checks and working with other government agencies to alleviate capacity problems after Felipe Gomez Alonzo and Jakelin Caal Maquin died while in their custody. Both children were refugees from Guatemala brought to the United States by their parents who were seeking asylum and a better life for them in the US. (Family love = protect children = loss)
City schools in flint Michigan have been providing bottled water to students since 2015 after tests of the water system in Flint showed dangerous levels of Lead in the local water system. The United way working in Flint estimates that somewhere between 6000 and 12000 children were exposed to lead in their water. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality says that while great strides have been made in fixing the schools water systems, around 9% of tests still show that the water in the schools in unsafe for use. (Community love = protect children = some improvements)
Jazmine Headley was arrested for sitting on the floor of a Brooklyn social services office. In the process of her arrest her toddler was pulled from her arms and the event was captured on video. Jasmin Headly has said that she knew she should have left the office, but she didn’t because if she had, her son would not have had the things that he needed. The social services commissioner has stated that the department is looking to improve both its own procedures and coordination with fellow city agencies. (A mother’s love = a fight for her child)
Ali Hassan, the 22-year-old father of 2-year-old Abdullah Hassan is quoted as having said “My wife called me crying out of happiness (because) she’s going to see her son for the last time!” Father and son are American citizens. Mother is a Yemeni citizen. 2 year old Abdullah Hassan has been terminally ill and on life support in the US. He passed away just days after she was able to make it to his side. His mother was in Yemen, twice denied a visa to travel to the United States. Public pressure recently brought a waiver to the middle eastern travel ban to allow Abdullah’s mom to say goodbye to her little boy. (Family togetherness in the face of adversity = love and peace during loss)
Let us hold these images in our minds as we explore our gospel reading.
Our Gospel reading this week takes us to Jerusalem with Mary, Joseph and Jesus for the annual Passover celebrations. Three days after leaving Jerusalem with their caravan home, it is discovered that Jesus is not with them, which sets the parents on a trip back to Jerusalem to find their boy.
That Jesus’ family made the trip to Jerusalem for the Passover celebrations tells us that his family was reasonably devout – it was important to engage in the annual Passover pilgrimage, not just as a religious obligation, but as a way of educating the children of the family in the structure and practice of their faith. We can also deduce that this family group was not just the immediate Jesus, Mary, and Joseph of lore. The family was likely traveling with a large group of relatives and kinsmen thus when they left, everyone assumed that Jesus was with some other part of the family. Three days later when they figure out that Jesus isn’t there, Mary and Joseph alone head back to Jerusalem to find young Jesus. They find him in the temple, teaching and interpreting scripture.
When I read this i can imagine an angry and relieved Mary and Joseph, wound up from fear and traveling, and overcome with relief when they see their son in the temple. I can imagine them coming into the temple to ask Jesus exactly what he thought he was doing and to why his butt was not where it belonged, with them, traveling home? That mix of fear converting to anger which is also mixed with relief at having found him unharmed, even if he wasn’t where his parents expected him to be. (Family concern and care because of love)
And Jesus’ response?
Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know I would be in my father’s house?
We might recognize that tone – the one that says “Hey I wasn’t lost. I knew exactly where I was. Why didn’t you?” It is the same way that we recognize Mary and Joseph’s anger and frantic tone. It might be that we recall it from our own memory of how we responded to our parents after being questioned for some infraction – perceived or real, or in that moment when we hear our own words being echoed back to us from someone younger. (Safety with family)
It might be a bit surprising to hear it already from Jesus – gentle Jesus meek and mild, a babe in the manger, whose storied birth we were celebrating last week.
But hearing those words in that tone from jesus, reminds us of his humanity. It reminds us that he too – our gentle jesus – was a child and very human. I think it is interesting that Luke uses this story of a young Jesus to help underscore that point. Remember that this is the same Jesus that will come back to the temple as an adult to flip tables and call out the moneylenders, clearing the courtyard screaming that you have made my father’s house a den of thieves!
But we aren’t there yet.
Here we are with a young Jesus who is coming into his own as the son of God and as Mary and Joseph’s son.
Scripture tells us that Jesus was then obedient to his parents, and traveled home to Nazareth with them and that he grew in years and in human and divine favor much to the pleasure of his mother.
Hold that story of Jesus in your mind for a moment and lets return to our earlier reading from 1st Samuel. When we encounter Samuel, he too is in the temple ministering to the Lord. His parents have made their pilgrimage to the temple, but they have come to bring their annual sacrifice to the lord and to visit Samuel. As you might recall Samuel was dedicated into the lord’s service as an infant. That means he was put into the care of the temple priests and was taught and trained as a priest for his whole life.
Every year, when his parents travelled to the temple to bring the annual sacrifice, as part of the same trip they would also bring Samuel a new robe. You might take a moment and think about the love and care that Hannah, Samuel’s mother, put into each robe that she made for him. Every stitch a reminder of her love and thankfulness. You might understand that this garment was her opportunity to care for him every year. Every year when she finds him in the temple, he is wearing the ephod which is an apron-like garment that marks him as a minister of the Lord, and the robe that she had made him the previous year. (Family caring = love)
Scripture tells us that the high priest Eli would bless the Hannah and Elkanah and their family offerings and then they would return home, leaving Samuel to his work in the temple. A few verses later we are told that Samuel continued to grow in stature and favor with the Lord and the people.
The commonality? – all of these stories point to how we are faithful as parents and teachers of children and as children to our parents and teachers. They point to how we care for one another. Parents and caregivers go to all sorts of lengths to provide and care for their children. They take on new jobs, travel to foreign lands and sew new robes. They offer prayers to God, pay smugglers, seek clean water, and spend hours in government offices to receive benefits. They travel miles and miles to do what they believe is right for those entrusted to their care. We choose to do what we believe is right and correct in order to make the lives of those in our lives better.
As parents, caretakers, and members of Gods community, we trust that God has chosen all of humanity as God’s own community. It is the trust in the fact that God cares for us as God’s beloved community that gives us the freedom to make the decisions that we must in order to care for those entrusted to us. ‘We are called to clothe ourselves in love, which binds everything together’
Jonathan Edwards reflected on the nature of human freedom and its relationship to God’s sovereignty. “The will always is,” he taught, “as the greatest apparent good is” We are free to pursue and to choose what seems good to us. Human beings, Edwards concluded, are free to do what we want. But we do not choose our wants; we do not determine our desires. We may act on our desires, but we do not choose what our desires will be. We are both free and constrained.
In contemporary society, we are often reluctant to confront or even acknowledge constraints on our freedom. We are often hesitant to acknowledge the degree to which our identities are shaped by forces beyond our control.
Our reluctance to acknowledge any constraints on us can lead us to overestimate the depths and breadths of our freedoms. Those of us in positions of privilege may not understand what drives a family to make the journey from Central America to the southern border of the United States. We may not see the love of a child that drives parents to make choices we have never been faced with.
The parent that chooses to take their child on a perilous journey toward perceived safety does not do so without awareness of the risk. They do so because the depth of their love is stronger than the risk. The teachers who work in the same unhealthy environs as their students do so because they believe that those children need them and that need supersedes the risk they take. A mother who forces an aid office to hear her out at risk to herself and her child does not do so for fun. That mother believed strongly that her child would suffer if she did not put herself in that place in a way that could not be ignored. A sick child should not be forced to be without their mothers embrace because to be in the place that provided the best medical care meant a place their mother was not allowed to follow. All of these instances are shaped by those who must live them every day, those who are forced to make hard choices that we cannot begin to understand
Our refusal to acknowledge how we have been shaped by our lived experiences and the communities we participate in may lead us to believe that we have earned our privileged lives and, consequently, that those who live on the margins have also, somehow, received what they deserve. We may even come to believe that we may somehow merit the favor of God.
The fact that God redeems all of humanity without regard for merit or other qualifying factor – that God chooses humanity to the point of becoming human and loving us to God’s own death on a cross – flies in the face of our reluctance to confront our own limitations. God claims us, not because we are worthy, but because we cannot be. Affirming that God has freely chosen us means that the central fact of our identities—that we belong to God—is beyond our control, beyond our choosing. We simply follow the desires of our hearts toward the God who made our hearts and their desires for God’s own self.
We love and choose love because we are loved; because God first loved us.
Amen.
Matthew Messenger 