It was an odd day at church. It was a Service of the Word (no Holy Communion) and I had not really prepared a sermon for the congregation. Our musician called Saturday evening and said she would not be able to make the service because of some unforeseen family issues - nothing disastrous, just unavoidable. All of our music was a Capella and led by me. The congregation was a mighty 17 people. We ended up singing about eight or nine Christmas carols as our Hymn of the Day.
Anyway, here's the gist of my preaching, with no specific order:
- The finding of twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple shows again the human side of Jesus. I imagine that the journey home to Nazareth after this incident must have been an interesting one, especially since Luke says Jesus was obedient to them from then on.
- Twelve is roughly the age of the Bar Mitzpha, where a young Jewish boy becomes a "son of the Law." Jesus' question and answers among the teachers and elders in the Temple shows an interesting understanding of the Scriptures. It also shows that Joseph taught Jesus well, since Joseph would be the one to show Jesus how to be a up-right Jewish man.
- The other stories of Jesus' youth found in the apocryphal Gospels were excluded from the canon of the Christian scriptures because they don't teach us anything about Jesus and don't help us to understand him. They show wonder and miracle but they all glorify Jesus as a wonder-working child rather than a suffering Messiah. They show him as a fantastic revelation of the power of God to do "stuff" rather than revealing the love and mercy of God through a vulnerable and very human person.
- This story of the finding of the young Jesus in the Temple is worth remembering and meditating on because it shows a very human Jesus, studying and discussing the Scriptures, being "about his Father's business" in a way Mary, Joseph, and the rest of the people around them could not understand. He was not going to be the sort of Messiah people would expect; he'd be a better one.
A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all who read this!
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