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Advent Part 5
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2:If we haven't met yet, my name is Yelena, and I joined the team here at Commons five months ago. And I can tell you, I've been really enjoying getting to know the community and working with our amazing staff and volunteer teams. One of the things I do around here is supporting all the different ways we do and build community between Sundays. And this includes over 30 home groups across both parishes. And all of our home groups are different, but at the core, they are about a small group of people who decide to journey together for a season, learning to listen to God and each other in community.
Speaker 2:And the thing is, community can be a big word, but it starts small. When we take steps to open up, share a meal, say a prayer for each other, and just trust that God is in that new relationship. So if something like this sounds interesting to you and you would like to explore our groups, just go to commons.life, and there is a tile that says groups, and you can fill out a form and I'll get it right away, and I'll be happy to help you connect in this way. Well, today is the 2018. And according to the calendar, we're all about to start a new life.
Speaker 2:Marked by healthy eating habits and regular exercise. Right? We'll limit our screen time on Facebook and Instagram, and we will even unsubscribe from Netflix. We will commit to spending less, and we'll curb our caffeine consumption and start on the read the bible in a year plan or two. If you need one, I can help you find one.
Speaker 2:But all this will happen in a couple of days. For now, we're still in this transition time when we're trying to decide how our life will change in the New Year. And in the church calendar, this first Sunday of Christmas is part of the season traditionally called Christmastide. The season lasts for twelve days and culminates on the feast of Epiphany on January 6. It is one of the oldest Christian feasts on which the Eastern Church usually celebrates the baptism of Jesus and the Western Church, the visit of the Magi.
Speaker 2:But no matter which event from Jesus' life gets highlighted, the idea behind this is to celebrate a visible manifestation of God becoming human. The word epiphany itself means appearance. And even though those those the the feast marks those two particular events, scripture has other epiphanies, smaller moments of the divine becoming visible in the human. And our story today is one of those smaller epiphanies. But it also takes time takes place during the time transition for Jesus and his family.
Speaker 2:So when I was talking about those New Year resolutions, I was only half joking. Because there are seasons in our lives when we need to sort things out and set some goals. And those calendar moments give us a natural opportunity for that. And it is important to use them well and take the time to look back and see how we've been doing this past year. And is our heart okay?
Speaker 2:And to discern what really matters to us and to what we want to pay more attention in the new year. And I hope that our story today will encourage us all in this process. So as we begin, would you join me in prayer? Our loving God, thank you for the gift of your love and care made visible and real in your son, Jesus, and the life of this community? As we come together on this last Sunday of two thousand eighteen, would you bring to our minds all the ways you've been close to us in the times we needed you most this past year?
Speaker 2:And as we look at the story of a lost child who was never lost, may we be reminded that we are never lost to you either, because you know where we are, and you know what we need, and you come alongside us always. In the strong name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. So today, we're talking about making sense of our stories, charting our path and letting go, and growing in company with God and people. During Advent, we already spent some time in the birth narrative in the Gospel of Luke.
Speaker 2:Today, we pick up the story in chapter two, right after Mary and Joseph take baby Jesus to Jerusalem to dedicate him at the temple and to offer the required sacrifices. And Luke ends this section by saying that when Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong. He was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him. And this is where it would have made perfect sense for Luke to finish the childhood narrative Because he has already told us that John the Baptist grew and became strong and was filled with the spirit.
Speaker 2:Now he tells us that Jesus grew and became strong and was filled with wisdom. So we are ready to jump into the real story when the two are grown ups and when John prepares the way for Jesus and Jesus gets baptized in the Jordan by him and the whole action begins. But instead, Luke pauses here to give us a somewhat confusing story of how Mary and Joseph lose a 12 year old Jesus and then find him in the temple among the teachers. Strange episode that appears only in this gospel and does not really fit the structure or the flow of the story. However, I believe that Luke is doing something really important here, both for the early church and for us.
Speaker 2:A New Testament scholar, Raymond Brown, believes that if we want to properly understand the infancy and childhood narratives, we need to appreciate how the early church developed their understanding of who Jesus was and how it influenced the process of gospel formation. Let me explain. So the Christian community living in the post resurrection time made sense of Jesus by reading his story backward. The earliest preaching, as we see in the book of Acts and in the writings of the apostle Paul, focuses on the resurrection. Because for them, it was the event of the resurrection that confirmed that Jesus was divine.
Speaker 2:And then the followers of Christ grew in their understanding of Jesus' identity, and they realized that he did not become divine at the moment of his death and resurrection, but that he was already the son of God during his preaching and teaching and healing ministry. And then they kept unfolding the story backward. So now, when we look at the four gospels, we see that Mark pronounces Jesus the son of God during his baptism. Luke and Matthew push it all the way to conception and birth, and John describes Jesus as preexisting with God and being God. And this backward reading actually makes sense.
Speaker 2:When we reflect on our own journey with Christ, we also start with where we are, and then we look back at how we actually got here, and then discern what was our first intuitions or experiences of the divine. A couple of years ago, I attended a conference in Jakarta that gathered people from all over the world to see how personal stories fit into the larger story of God and how the whole global church is actually united in one story and should work together. Several months before the conference, I was placed on a small group of six people, and we were given an assignment to visually map out on a piece of paper our life journey. Our family, some crucial events that shaped us, our hard times, good times, the people who influenced us, and also to identify where God was in all of those moments. And the exercise was also meant to help us discern with others to what God could be inviting us next.
Speaker 2:When we all met at the conference, each day, one group member had an hour to walk the rest of the group through their life map. And then we would spend half an hour in listening prayer for that person. And it was a very profound experience for all of us, but it also allowed each one of us to see how the divine was there in our lives from the very beginning and that God's work in our lives did not start only at the moment we believed. So when Luke tells us those stories of Jesus' birth and childhood, he does not only reflect the faith and the thinking process of the early church, he also reminds us to look back and see how from the very beginning we were never outside of God's grace and presence. And perhaps you can relate to that too.
Speaker 2:Perhaps your experience of faith began somewhere in a conversation or at a church service. And when you look back, you recognize that actually it was always there, in the background, just waiting for the right moment to emerge. And this is the beauty of faith. It's not so much that we come to it in the moment of our conversion. It's more about that we begin to notice how it's been woven throughout all of our lives.
Speaker 2:Well, now to the actual story. Every year, Jesus' parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. When he was 12 years old, they went up to the festival according to the custom. After the festival was over, about eight days, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. But they were unaware of it.
Speaker 2:Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. And when they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. So the festival of the Passover was a huge deal. It was one of the three festivals for which all Jewish males were required to travel to Jerusalem and to offer sacrifices in the temple.
Speaker 2:And year after year, those feasts would allow the people of Israel to relive the story of how God saved them from slavery in Egypt, gave them freedom, and provided for them when they lived in the desert. But not everyone could travel to Jerusalem three times a year, so over time, the Passover became the primary feast for people to attend. And we don't know if Jesus went with Mary and Joseph every year or if it was his first time. But we know that he was 12. And the mention of this age partly suggests why Luke wants to tell us this story.
Speaker 2:Remember, Luke is trying to write his gospel in the genre of Greek Roman biography, which would conventionally require a mention of some extraordinary episode of greatness of the main character around the same age. So, for instance, the biographies of Alexander the Great and Caesar Augustus talked about them displaying unusual wisdom and eloquence around the time when they were between 10 and 12. But also in the Jewish context, this age was considered important because some of the Old Testament prophets received their call from God when they were 12. And culturally, it was the age of transition from boyhood to adulthood. At the age of 13, a Jewish boy would have adult responsibilities and be required to fulfill all religious obligations, including those yearly pilgrimages to Jerusalem.
Speaker 2:So it is possible that Luke mentions Jesus' age here to signal to his Gentile audience who would be familiar with the genre that someone greater than Caesar Augustus is about to enter the stage of history. But at the same time, he wants to communicate that this situation is a transition moment for Jesus from childhood to adulthood. So Luke ends the baby Jesus story saying that the child grew, and now he tells us the boy Jesus story to show us how this growth was actually expressed. And if you think of the story, it's a nightmare for any parent to lose track of a child in this city that was one swirling crowd of people from all over. I'm not a parent, but I have parents, and I still remember how in grade one, after school, I went to my classmates' house just across the street, so close.
Speaker 2:And I wanted to watch cartoons, but I didn't tell anything to my parents. So I didn't have a watch, and when I left her house, it was getting dark, and I could discern my father's silhouette on the playground. In the meantime, my mom's running around looking for me. Yeah, pre cell phone times, how we did it. And I was in so much trouble that day.
Speaker 2:So here, we also might have questions of how Mary and Joseph could leave without noticing that Jesus is missing, and how could they travel for a whole day without realizing that he wasn't there. And Luke says that they thought he was in their company. And the word he uses for company is psunodiyah, which essentially means a traveling caravan of relatives and neighbors from the same village. The journey from Natheress to Jerusalem would usually take between three to four days. And the roads were not always safe, so people would travel in groups.
Speaker 2:So it's possible that the parents thought Jesus was traveling with someone in the community. And it also explains why they first looked for him among their relatives and friends. And I think the fact that they set out on the journey without even considering that he could stay behind shows out of character it was for Jesus to do something like that. But it also gives us a glimpse into that community where you could trust that someone would look after your kid if needs be. And if we're being honest, as parents, and as kids, and as families, and even as single people, this is often what we're really looking for in our church experience.
Speaker 2:Yes, we want to learn, and we want to worship, but the part of the experience of church is this sharedness of life. Shared learning is great, and we have our podcast and YouTube channel and other online resources. But there's something different about being together in a physical space and trusting each other. And, of course, we take great effort to keep this place safe. We have check-in for kids, and we have a process for our volunteers, and we do police checks.
Speaker 2:But trusting of our families who walk through those doors to each other is all part of the beauty of this community. And as odd as the story sounds, trusting the community that they will care of your child, there is something beautiful in it too. Don't you think? Well, but now, it takes them a whole day to get back to Jerusalem. After three days, they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.
Speaker 2:And everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you. Why were you searching for me?
Speaker 2:He asked. Didn't you know I had to be in my father's house? But they did not understand what he was saying to them. Now, the temple in Jerusalem was massive. It consisted of several courts with increasingly limited access.
Speaker 2:It was the center of the intellectual and spiritual life of the city, and it was common for the teachers of the law to gather in one of the outer courts where women were allowed to enter. And that's why Mary is there. And they would gather and teach in a conversational manner through questions and answers. So everyone who sees Jesus during one of those q and a sessions is very impressed with his intelligence. And Luke has already prepared us for this because he told us that the child grew in wisdom.
Speaker 2:But Mary and Joseph's reaction is far from being amazed. Luke describes it here with the word expresso that carries a hint of being shocked or dumbfounded. A New Testament scholar, Scott Spencer, says that we should not romanticize this encounter and think how proud the parents might have been of Jesus' phenomenal wisdom. He writes, The ancient cultural context suggests a very different scenario. Respecting and submitting to one's parents and teachers constituted a basic tenet of Jewish and wisdom tradition.
Speaker 2:Yet in this case, an independent young man, separated from his family, without their knowledge or permission, dares to take a seat among the distinguished religious elders and engage them in conversation. So culturally, a displaced son like that would bring shame to the family. But I find Mary's Mary's being very gentle here. She literally says to Jesus, little child, why have you done this? Your father and I have been searching for you in great pain.
Speaker 2:To which Jesus gives an answer that Mary and Joseph do not understand and which scholars find frustratingly obscure. The thing is that in order to be intelligible, our English translations need to supply a word that is not there in Greek. In Greek, Jesus says, didn't you both know I need to be in? And here, we do not have a noun. We just have the definite article in plural form, which basically means things or stuff of my father.
Speaker 2:And this part, in the things, usually gets translated in three ways: in the house of my father, or about the interests of my father, or among the household of my father. And the first translation is the most popular one, but the second one also can be justified grammatically, so that is why the NIV supplies an alternative reading for us. Didn't you know I need to be about my father's business? But I wonder, could it be that Luke has all three possibilities in mind here? It looks like he builds the story by contrasting the locations and activities and groups of people to emphasize this growing sense of identity in Jesus.
Speaker 2:Jesus wants to be about God's stuff. So his family goes home to Nazareth, but he goes to where he thinks he belongs. The family goes back to its regular activities, while Jesus feels the need to start getting involved in the activities that will mark his future ministry, engaging people in conversation about God. And as we're all drawn to be around people who can help us grow in our vocation, Jesus is compelled to spend time in that learning environment, among the teachers in the temple, and not with his caravan heading back home to Nazareth. And for many of us here, at different points in our life, the finding of our voice and the charting of our path might have meant moving to a new location, to a new place, learning new things, and making friends in a totally new community.
Speaker 2:And you know how one day something captures your imagination so much that you want to dive into it with all you have, and you want to live and breathe and do this stuff. And here, maybe we realize that it's all good, that our fascination is holy, and our finding and pursuing our passions is sacred. While reflecting on the incarnation, Raymond Brown says that it is not helpful to ask when exactly Jesus realized that he was the son of God, because it is somewhat similar to asking a human being when exactly they realized they were human. And speaking about our human experience, he adds that often we know who we are from early on. It just might take us a long time to articulate it and to fully live out of it.
Speaker 2:In the same way, Luke's focus here is not on the moment Jesus realized he was divine, but on the fact that what we see in the man Jesus was already there in the child Jesus. And the epiphany moment here comes when Jesus responds to his parents that they should have known where to find him because of who he is, the son of God. And the first words that Luke wants us to hear in his gospel, first words of Jesus, are about Jesus being aware of his unique relationship with God. The implication being that everything else in his life will be placed in the context of that unique relationship. And as we shall see, it does not mean that Jesus betrays his family or stops caring for Joseph or Mary.
Speaker 2:It just means that he's set on a different trajectory from what they might have expected or which they cannot yet quite grasp. Have you ever felt that the choices or new beginnings you make do not always resonate with your family? My husband Dennis and I, we grew up in non Christian families and came to faith in our late teens. But even now, our parents cannot quite understand what happened to us. We do not fit their expectations, we do not fit certain cultural assumptions, and our choices just do not make sense for them in so many ways.
Speaker 2:And we love them and care for them, and they love us and care for us. But there is a certain sense of grief on both sides of that relationship. But I don't think it is that much different for families with children and parents who share a faith background, or for any other parent child situation for that matter. There is a time when children start asking questions and digging deeper into things we taught them to believe just because it's time for them to make their faith their own. Or they settle on a vocational trajectory that takes them far from home, and we need to let them go and start a new life and explore things for themselves.
Speaker 2:Or some important relationships in their lives do not work out the way we hoped, and we feel so hopeless and helpless. And this letting go of expectations while at the same time staying committed to the relationship is very hard. But this is where I find in my personal life. This is where a lot of growth takes place as well. When we find ways to journey together while allowing each other the freedom to be and trusting that God is in all of that too.
Speaker 2:So Luke sums up the event. Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and people. So we hear the same refrain again.
Speaker 2:Jesus growing in wisdom and maturity and living a life marked by doing good in the company of God and people. But now the statement prepares us for what comes next, his baptism, when we will hear the divine pronouncement that he is indeed the son of God with whom God is well pleased. And for Luke, there is no contradiction between Jesus being divine and Jesus needing to do some growing up just like any other human being. There were lots of legends of Jesus' childhood circulating in the first century. How as a child he could make live birds out of clay, or how he once raised a dead playmate back to life.
Speaker 2:But those stories treated him more as a magician. And most likely that Luke has reworked one of those here. However, he does not sensationalize the Christ child. He keeps the mystery of the incarnation, but at the same time, he wants us to know that Jesus did not bypass any stage of human development, which included growing up in community, not being understood by those closest to him, developing the sense and clarity of vocation, and preparing for what's next. And for Jesus, growth and change and becoming are not barriers to his divinity.
Speaker 2:It is all part and parcel of what it means to be human made in the image of God. And as you prepare for 2019, remember that your story is also a story of becoming and growth and trusting in the one who holds you through it all. And remember that we do not become who we are on our own. We need neighbors and family and teachers and four day trips with friends and honest questions and the courage to chart and choose our own path. And we also need lots of patience and love.
Speaker 2:So this week, maybe think about some key relationships in your life that you would like to nurture this year. Who are the people with whom you feel at home, and who will tell you if you're off track? Or maybe you need to set yourself free of some unrealistic expectations, either of yourself or others. Or perhaps in this season, you need to take a good chunk of time to figure out what's next. So plan well, dream well this week, and just remember to be gentle with yourself and work together with God and people who care for you and love you.
Speaker 2:Let's pray. Our loving and gentle God, as we prepare to begin a new calendar year, we are reminded that you know how it feels to have a body and to live with the gift and the pressure of time. We pray that as we make plans and set goals, you would protect us from the pitfalls of perfectionism and give us the wisdom to know how to manage our days so that we love well and keep good company with you. Holy Spirit, our guide, fill us with joy and help us see ourselves and this community as your work in progress. May we trust you fully and have the eyes to see where you're inviting us to join you in our relationships, in our city, and even the world.
Speaker 2:Jesus, our hope, strengthen us for the good work you've prepared for us, and may we grow in our love and knowledge of you even more this year. In the strong name of Christ, we pray. Amen.