A sermon preached by The Reverend Canon Dr. David Anderson at St. Jude’s Anglican Church, Oakville, on the First Sunday of Christmas, December 29, 2024. (Text: Luke 2:41–52).
I speak to you in the Emmanuel, God-with-Us.
I sincerely hope you have thus far enjoyed a very blessed Christmas. I say, ‘thus far,’ because Christmas, no matter what the wider culture tries to tell us, is not over. We are still in the season of Christmas, today being it’s first Sunday, and it’s sixth day. If you are wondering about the sixth day of Christmas, I will save you the trouble of working it out, its gifts are “six geese a laying. five gold rings. four calling birds. three French hens. two turtle doves. and a partridge in a pear tree.”
So how is it going? I know that for many people—those who find Christmas an anxious time and those who do not—the days following Christmas can come with a sense of let down. Perhaps it is because the ‘holiday season’ failed to live up to its hype. Perhaps its because something we had hoped for under the tree did not appear; no partridge, no pear tree. Perhaps its just because we have arrived at these days exhausted and just a little (or perhaps very) worn-out. All of this, given the pressures of the season, is quite understandable, and even ‘normal.’
But this experience might cause us to ask the question, ‘What were we expecting?’ Or ‘What were we looking for?’ We kept the Season of Advent, the time of waiting. What were we waiting for? The fact is that we may have all sorts of expectations about Christmas and about hope fulfilled. Some of these expectations may have been spiritual, but many may also have been emotional, psychological, or material. There are many ways we may feel the let-down of these days after the big day. And it seems to me that its worth reflecting on the shape of that empty feeling we are left with. For some, the answer to that question will be obvious. There was an empty chair at the table of your Christmas feast. You have our deepest sympathies—you really do—because almost all of us have been there. For others, that empty feeling may be harder to name. What is it that you are missing? What is it that you are looking for?
Today’s Gospel Reading is all about the search. Jesus has gone missing! His parents, Mary and Joseph, are frantic. When they find him, Mary says to Jesus, “Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety” (v. 48b). Biblical scholars tell us that this translation of Mary’s description of her and Joseph’s emotional experience as “great anxiety” hardly covers it. The words describing these feeling in the Greek of the text describe a feeling more akin to the soul-piercing sword which Simeon prophesied for Mary earlier in this same chapter (2:35). The Greek word for this sort of agony only appears elsewhere in the New Testament two other times. In Luke 16 (vv. 24–25), it refers to the rich man’s agony in the flames of Hades. In Acts 20 (v. 38), it refers to Paul’s grief-stricken friends when he says they will never see him again. We are talking about profound anguish here. When Mary rebukes Jesus for having left them, she is referring to their agony at the prospect of losing their child. Most of us can only imagine; some of you know exactly what the text is talking about.
The theme of seeking and finding, of the lost and found, spans the whole of Luke’ Gospel, as we will hear in our Sunday Gospel Readings throughout this year. Instruction on what human beings are, and are not to seek accompanies the promise that God wants to give people the best gifts, most notably the kingdom of God (12:31), and the Holy Spirit (11:13; 24:49). Luke also gives us Jesus’ parables of the God of the lost, who does not give up until everyone is found (15:3–32).
This all bring us back to our question, doesn’t it? What is it that we are searching for? Our reading invites us to ponder that question, even as Mary pondered things in her heart, and points us in the direction of Jesus as the one to
Jesus’ parents find him in the temple, where Jesus is among the teachers. After this moment in Luke’s telling of the story of Jesus, the only teacher to appear in the Gospel will be Jesus, but here the twelve-year-old Saviour—Christ, and Lord of Christmas story—is listening and asking questions. Even as a child, he amazes everyone with his understanding. ‘Amazement’ becomes another theme in Luke. Amazement will occur again when Jesus raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead (8:56) and when the Emmaus Road travellers hear the women’s report of the angels at the empty tomb (24:22).
Luke’s story about Jesus has begun and will end in the temple in Jerusalem (1:8–23; 24:53), and Jesus’ first words recorded in Luke’s Gospel are now spoken there. Words spoken in the temple will also be among his last words; they will be words that will be twisted and used against Jesus to support accusations that will lead to a death sentence in a sham trial.
Amid the frantic search of the parents, and only after days of searching, they find him. Jesus’ response seems strange. Jesus, like the angels at the empty tomb, asks why they are searching, and then comes the crux of the passage: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
Jesus says, “I must.” What does he mean? What are his poor parents to understand? What is this ‘must’? We tell our children that ‘they must not’ wander away, especially without telling us where they or going or what time they will be home. But Jesus will use this phrase again in Luke because when Jesus speaks of this “I must,” is referring to God the Father’s call upon him, including the necessity for Jesus to suffer and die and be raised on the third day.
Jesus says, “I must be in my Father’s house.” His words, “Father’s house,” are also worth our attention this morning. I’ve looked at this closely, and the original language does not actually specify to what Jesus refers. The word ‘house’ doesn’t actually appear; it is at best implied. The grammar only tells us that Jesus refers to something plural. A literal translation might say something like “I must be about the undefined-plural-somethings of my Father.” Jesus is, of course, in a place, and with a people, and about an activity when he says this, so the context of Jesus’ enigmatic saying provides a definition of the otherwise undefined “plural-somethings of the Father.”
But for our purposes this morning, as we try to ask the question about what we are looking for in our lives—and perhaps more importantly, what might be the vital thing to look for—it is perhaps most helpful to leave open this little undefined space in our reading, to think of it as all the ‘somethings’—the places, the people, the doings—that advance the purposes of God’s love for the world. These are the things that Jesus is about, and along with himself, these are the things he invites us to seek.
The substance of this is made clear throughout Luke’s Gospel: in the poetic praise of the birth narratives, especially the reversals of Mary’s Magnificat; with Jesus’ rebuttals of the devil in the wilderness; in Jesus’ declaration of his mission in Nazareth; in the Sermon on the Plain; in Jesus’ teachings on prayer and his own regular withdrawal from the crowds to pray; in all the parables. Always and everywhere, we see the ‘somethings of the Father’ in Jesus’ boundary-crossing life, which will ultimately lead to his death, but also to his resurrection and the Spirit-filled life of his followers to come. All of these are the ‘somethings of the Father’—the business of the Father’s kingdom of love.
The somethings of the Father are not easy for everyone to accept. They do not conform to what the devil wants, and they do not conform to what many people imagine they want (or realize they have) in a Saviour, even now. They transgress our societal and religious norms. They are the opposite of politically expedient because they are—as Mary proclaims in the Magnificat and the angel tells the shepherds, ‘for all people’—not primarily for the rich, powerful, or the prominent. The somethings of God are for peace on Earth, not victory for a particular person, clan, or nation. They are for Israel and the Gentiles (2:32), for friends and enemies (6:27–36)—for anyone who most desperately needs a saviour, which turns out to be everyone in one way or another.
The ‘child’ of twelve years-old we encounter in today’s Gospel Reading is already aware of the overarching call of God. Like the inbreaking of heavenly glory in a pasture, directing the shepherds to a manger, and the angelic praise pointing to both heaven and Earth, Jesus will always in himself hold both the glory of God the Father, and the flesh of our humanity, as son of humanity and Son of God.
His parents do not understand this child whose understanding amazes all who hear him, but Mary holds all of these things, with the words of the shepherds, in her heart—she held a place in her heart for faith—and we may take all of this, this morning, as an invitation to do likewise, as we find Jesus in his Father’s house yet again, at the holy table, and in the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist. +
