Sermon: A Little Christmas... But Not Too Much

Luke 2:41-52

A Little Christmas… But Not Too Much

James Sledge                                                                                       December 27, 2015

I’m not sure what prompted me to use song lyrics in sermons two weeks in a row, but for whatever reason, as I studied the verses we just heard from Luke, a line from a Christmas song popped into my head. It’s a song I heard many times on the radio growing up, but I actually knew few of the words. I had to look it up and then discovered that it’s actually from the musical Mame. The opening chorus goes,

For we need a little Christmas Right this very minute,
Candles in the window, Carols at the spinet.
Yes, we need a little Christmas Right this very minute.
It hasn't snowed a single flurry, But Santa, dear, we're in a hurry;

The song ends with variation on the chorus.

For we need a little music, Need a little laughter,
Need a little singing Ringing through the rafter,
And we need a little snappy "Happy ever after,"
Need a little Christmas now.

With all the terrible things in the world, I’m sure that a lot of folks felt like they could use a little Christmas this year. Candles and music, a little laughter, and wouldn’t some happy ever after be great. Yes, who wouldn’t love a little Christmas. But not too much. A little will do for most of us, which may be why Luke tells the story we just heard, as a reminder of what Jesus’ birth is really all about.

When you think about it, it’s amazing how little we know about Jesus outside the last years of his life. Mark and John’s gospels make no mention of his birth or childhood. Matthew and Luke have brief stories connected to Jesus’ birth. And Luke alone has a single story of Jesus as a 12 year old boy in which Jesus speaks two brief sentences.

Christians have been curious about Jesus’ childhood from the beginning. There are writings that purport to tell of Jesus the boy, written during the church’s early centuries. But when the New Testament was put together and made official, those got discarded, and for good reason. They were fanciful accounts of Jesus animating clay animals, causing the death of a child who bothered him, even raising a playmate from the dead so he could testify that Jesus wasn’t the one who pushed him to his death.[1] Such stories were written by people of faith who imagined what Jesus might have been like, sometimes in absurd fashion, but Luke is not doing that.

No one knows where Luke learned of this story, but he clearly uses it to connect Jesus with Israel and its covenant with God. The story continues allusions to the Old Testament hero, Samuel that began with Mary’s Magnificat, a song quite similar to one sung by Hannah, Samuel’s mother. Luke isn’t trying to fill in Jesus’ biography here. Rather he is trying to point us to just who Jesus is and what his work and ministry will be about.

From the start, Luke tells us that Jesus comes at God’s initiative, that Jesus is no typical child. He is human, but he is also in some way divine. We see this in our story this morning. Jesus possess an amazing wisdom that wows the religious scholars at the Temple. But Jesus also grows in wisdom and in years, just like any person.

Today’s story is interesting in its own right, a sort of reverse version of Home Alone where Jesus gets left at the trip’s destination; an understandable mistake given the extended community of travelers that made the trip together. We’re not talking about riding in cars here. All these people are walking.

But the crux of the story comes when Jesus’ frightened parents locate him back at the Temple as he wows those scholars. Mom responds as we might expect, upset at Jesus for causing them such pain. But Jesus’ reply is most curious. "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"

Jesus’ words sound absurd. His parents clearly had no idea where he was or that he must be in his Father’s house. And he goes home and is obedient to his parents afterwards, which I assume mean he didn’t disappear off to the Temple again. It might be tempting to reflect on Jesus as a surly near-teen, but I think that would miss Luke’s point entirely. Luke is not providing any psychological insights into the young Jesus. Rather he is letting us know that for Jesus – and for his followers – living into God’s purposes, living as members of God’s family, is going to create real problems for other loyalties and relationships, including those with biological families.

As the adult Jesus later says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” In the prophetic hyperbole Jesus employs, “hate” means something akin to “love less,” but the demand is still stark. The work Jesus is about requires a loyalty that supersedes every other, even to one’s own well-being. No wonder we might just want to stop with just a little Christmas.

But it would be a mistake to hear this as nothing more than harsh, seemingly impossible demand. The Jesus we meet in Luke’s gospel cannot stop talking about the mercy and love of God that runs to welcome the prodigal home and risks everything to look for one lost sheep. The call to reorient our loyalties is something more. It is a call to become like God, who in Christ is willing to die for the sake of those who hate him.

Angels sing their Glorias at the birth of Jesus, not because a tribal God has done something to help the members of the tribe, but because God has acted as never before, reaching across all boundaries and loyalties to embrace the entire world in love. And when, by the power of the Spirit, we are joined to Christ in the waters of baptism, we become part of God’s love that reaches out to all the world. We are created anew, formed to reach out in love to all, across all boundaries and loyalties.

Christ is born! And no one told the upstanding members of his faith family. Only dirty, ruffian shepherds got invited. Then later, some foreigners, from the wrong religious family, showed up with gifts. Something wonderful and new and different had begun, and we are invited to become a part of it.

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[1] Paul Achtemeier in Feasting on the Word, Year C Volume 1, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) p. 167.