Luke 2:41-52
Christmas Loyalties
James Sledge December
30, 2018
Some
of you may have heard this story before, but with today’s gospel reading, I
couldn’t resist telling it again. I once lost one of my daughters in a drug
store. She was four or five years old and standing right there next to me as I
looked for some item. But when I looked away from the store shelf to where she
had been seconds before, she was gone. I called her name and quickly looked on
the adjoining aisles. My panic growing, I traversed the store multiple times,
looking down every aisle over and over without finding her. As the minutes wore
on, I experienced a feeling of sheer terror.
In
desperation, I finally left the store and ran down the grocery store where we
had planned to go next. Hoping against hope I ran to the bakery section of the Harris
Teeter, where they handed out free cookies to children. And sure enough, there
she was, getting her free cookie. She had simply decided that she would go there
on her own. Never mind that it was not next to the drug store but at the other
end of a strip mall.
If
any of you have a had a similar experience, you know how frightening it feels.
My terror last but a few minutes, though it seemed much longer. I can scarcely
imaging how Mary and Joseph must have felt. According to Luke, they searched
for Jesus for three days, retracing their steps to Jerusalem and hunting all
over the city before finally finding him.
It
sometimes surprises people to learn that this is the only story in the Bible
about Jesus as a child. Jesus does come from a humble background, and so makes
some sense that little would be know about his early days. Still, stories about
great heroes typically include some from childhood, episodes that point to
their greatness to come.
I
don’t know that it’s taught in school any longer – we live in a more cynical
time – but when I was in elementary school I learned the story of George
Washington chopping down the cherry tree. Asked if he was the culprit he
proclaimed, “I cannot tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.” In all
likelihood the event never happened, but that is beside the point. The story’s
main purpose is to illuminate something about the character of the man, to
demonstrate that his greatness was rooted in a deep, personal virtuousness.
Abraham
Lincoln has his own childhood stories that give clues as to the man he will
become. For that matter, there are stories about the young emperor Augustus,
who ruled when Jesus was born, that point to the great leader he would become.
Augustus achieved great learning at a very young age, and, in a story that was
likely known by the first readers of Luke’s gospel, Augustus gave the funeral
oration for his grandmother Julia Caesaris, sister of Julius Caesar, at the age
of twelve.[1]
Luke,
writing his gospel for Gentile Christians, seems eager to present Jesus as
greater than Augustus, filled with remarkable learning despite not having any
of the instruction and education that the emperor-to-be had received. Jesus
wasn’t simply groomed to be a great ruler. He was born for the role, part of
God’s unfolding saga of salvation.
But that is only part of our gospel this
morning. Luke could easily have told the story of a miraculously precocious
Jesus without the part about Jesus disappearing on his parents. Jesus could
have wowed them at the Temple while the family was there for Passover. This
part of the story is about something else altogether.
On
the afternoon of Christmas day, I looked through my Facebook feed, viewing the
many posts that showed people celebrating the day. One friend had posted a
collage of family Christmas pictures with a caption that ended “Family… nothing
more important!” But I’m not sure Luke, or Jesus for that matter, would agree.
In
my imagination, the conversation when Mary and Joseph locate Jesus at the
Temple was not a happy one. I think that translators, perhaps out of reverence,
too often soften the force of scripture, and I would translate Mary angrily
shouting, “Child, why have you done us like this? Your father and I were in agony
searching for you!”
Agony
sound appropriate to me, but Jesus shrugs it off. “Did you not know…” Luke
presents a Jesus who is not only precocious with regards to theological
learning, but also keenly aware of loyalty deeper than that of family. And lest
we think that this loyalty problem is for Jesus alone, Luke’s Jesus will later
say to would-be followers, “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.”
I
should add that Middle Eastern speech uses hyperbole in ways that we do not. We
should probably hear Jesus speaking of loving father and mother, spouse and
children, even our own lives less than we love him rather than actually hate. Still,
this is clearly not, “Family… nothing more important!”
Neither
Luke nor Jesus are saying that families are bad. After all, Jesus will
dutifully return home with his parents and be obedient to them. But the new
thing God begins with Jesus will not fit easily into the patterns of the world.
And so Luke tells of a king who is born in the most humble and obscure fashion.
His birth is sung by angels but announced only to ruffian shepherds. And well
before Jesus begins his ministry, Luke lets us know that Jesus will call us to reoriented
loyalties.
The
Christmas carols loved by so many know this well. They sing of a newborn king,
of a Lord, a ruler. They call us to worship, adore, and offer ourselves to this
one who comes to be God in our midst. As these carols well know, Christmas is
not an end but a beginning. The calls to worship and adore and serve are calls
to refocus our lives, to re-center them on Jesus. They are calls to discover
life in all its fullness by walking in the way Jesus will show us.
O
come, let us adore him, above all others. Let him rule in our hearts,
superseding loyalties to race, clan, nation, family, and self. O come, let us
discover to true meaning of Christmas as we give ourselves fully and totally to
our Lord.
[1]
Naveen Sarras in “Preach This Week, December 30, 2018, Commentary on Luke
2:41-52,” WorkingPreacher.org
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