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First
Reading
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Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
Jeremiah 31:7–14 |
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Ephesians 1:3–6, 15–19a |
Luke 2:41–52
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As Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the magi discovered, whenever God enters our lives, God doesn’t necessarily do what we expect. We learn that we are changed in ways we did not anticipate. On one level, Christmas Day celebrated the birth of a newborn baby. While it’s easy to think of a baby as totally dependent on us, be very careful, for when the Son of God comes upon us—it doesn’t work that way. Mary and Joseph undoubtedly found themselves bewildered in a strange place. They were far from home, surrounded by rough shepherds and visited by foreign magi, people they never knew and could not understand, who also became part of their child. Mary and Joseph quickly learned Jesus wasn’t simply their own possession.
King Herod was so scared of this birth that he behaved as tyrants usually do—he used trickery and half-truths on the magi to ferret out where Jesus might be. Then he sent in his troops to settle things by violence. Despite the terrible tragedy it brought upon innocents, Herod’s actions failed, as eventually deceit and murderous opposition to new birth and new ideas usually do.
We have only one story in the Gospels about Jesus growing up. It is a curious story found only in Luke. The family has gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover. Jesus is said to be twelve years old, and we may wonder if Luke is not implying that this was the culmination of Jesus Bar Mitzvah, the ceremony celebrating the passing of childhood into adulthood. On the way home from Jerusalem, Joseph and Mary discover that Jesus stayed behind. They find Him in the temple debating with the religious experts and scholars of the law. They learn again that Jesus is not merely their own and when God works through people, surprising growth happens. The way the world would like to predict and arrange things is thrown into question.
Luke’s story parallels another ancient story and likely served as a model for his own. The book of First Samuel contains the story of Eli and Samuel in the Lord’s Sanctuary. Samuel was a young boy who was assigned to serve the aged Eli. Later legend has it that he too, like Jesus, was twelve years of age. Eli was the senior priest of the tribes of Israel, bearing the full weight the past. However, the voice of the Lord had become rare and Eli knew that God was displeased with him and was ready to anoint another leader outside of Eli’s family. While lying down in his bed Samuel hears a voice and thinking it is the old man calling, runs to him, waking Eli up. No, go back to bed, I did not call, Eli gruffly corrects the boy. After several times Eli recognizes that it is not Samuel’s imagination or an idle dream, but is the voice of the living God summoning the boy.
Let’s give old Eli credit. He could have tried to suffocate the voice. He could have tried to deceive or lie to Samuel. In a real way the boy was definitely a threat to the authority of Eli, as Jesus was to Herod. However Eli was wise enough to know that the wisdom he had learned from his own journey would only go so far. God was now bestowing authority on Samuel and adding a new chapter to Israel’s history of faith.
Next Sunday, the collect for Sunday, the prayer that attempts to collect the larger theme of every Sunday, refers to the baptism of Jesus and the public initiation of Jesus’ ministry. Right away John the Baptist realizes the roles should be reversed, Jesus should baptize John. But that was John’s reasoning and way of doing things, and John accepted that the way of God was different. Jesus was pushed under the water, symbolically drowned, and then pulled up, alive, anew. It would be a moving and a unique experience for both John and Jesus.
Yet that is what this season celebrating God’s new birth among us, is all about. It reveals new situations where relationships are transformed and things aren’t the same as before. It’s about babies who develop into adults, and people, who find a profound change has come over them, and in the surprising transformation, discover the presence of the living God.
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
