Second
Sunday after Christmas (A)
January
5, 2020
Text: Luke 2:40-52
The
LORD comes into His Temple. Jesus, our
Immanuel, God with us in flesh and blood, comes. It is still Christmas for the Church, but in
our Holy Gospel, Jesus is no longer a Baby.
A Boy of twelve… Twelve, the number of Israel… Twelve, the number of the
Apostles… Twelve, the number of the Church… Twelve-year-old Jesus comes with
His parents, as is their custom each year, into the Temple for the Feast of the
Passover. And now, not only has the LORD
come into His Temple. The true Passover
Lamb has come.
And
He’s come to do His Father’s will. “Did
you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49; ESV). “Did you not know that it is divinely
necessary for me to be here, accomplishing the purpose for which my
Father sent me?” The verse literally
reads in Greek, “Did you not know that in the things of my Father I must be?” I like the translation, “Did you not know
that I must be about my Father’s business?”
The point is, Jesus has come for a divine appointment. And the whole episode underscores who Jesus
is and what He has come to do. The Boy’s
Father is not Joseph, but God. And that
means this Boy is God. He is in
the Temple, where God dwells with and for His people, for this Boy is the new
and greater Temple. He is with the
teachers in the midst of the Word, for He is the Word made flesh, and the Word
conveys Him and all His benefits. You
should always know where to find Jesus.
Where the Word is. Jesus is in
the Word. And He is where the sacrifice
is made, the Passover, the blood that marks you to rescue you from the angel of
death, the flesh given you to eat in your exodus from slavery, the Egypt of
sin, Pharaoh, the devil. Jesus is the
Passover Lamb. And this whole thing is a
foreshadowing of His death for you.
There He is in the place of sacrifice, and His parents think He is
lost. And for all practical purposes, He
is. But let this not be lost on you: “After
three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening
to them and asking them questions” (v. 46).
After three days, they found Him, in the place of sacrifice, in
the midst of the Word. After three
days… What was lost is found. What was dead… not literally in this case,
but… soon… What was dead, is alive. After
three days, resurrection.
Don’t
be too hard on Mary and Joseph. First,
there is the matter of it taking them a whole day’s travel before they realize
Jesus is missing. No, it’s not that
they’re neglectful parents. For the
three big Jewish feasts, Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles, all the men who
had been bar mitvah-ed had to travel to Jerusalem, to the Temple, and as
many women and children who were able and willing to go. And they all travelled in large groups of
pilgrims, for protection from robbers and the hazards of the road, for
fellowship, singing the Psalms of ascent on their way up to Zion. Now, Jesus was twelve. Of age.
Practically a teenager. Time for
more freedom. The kids ran in packs
among the travelers. Everybody’s parents
looked out for everybody’s kids. There
is no problem that Jesus wasn’t with Mary and Joseph. Until they reached the lodging place. That’s when Jesus was supposed to catch up
with Mom and Dad. Be home before dark,
and all that.
Second,
Mary and Joseph panic when they don’t find Him.
Okay, sure, they should have known He’d be in His Father’s House, doing
His Father’s business. But then, you
should, too, and how often do you forget that Jesus is right here in His
Father’s House, doing His Father’s business, distributing the saving benefits
of His Passover Sacrifice in His Word and in His Sacraments? You’re always looking for Him everywhere but
where He’s promised to be, too. And when
you don’t find Him in all those other places, you panic! He’s lost.
He’s dead. He doesn’t exist. Or He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t care about me. Yes, you’ve done it, too. Repent.
Besides, you parents especially can sympathize if you’ve ever had a
child hide from you at the store, maybe in the next isle or in the middle of
the clothing racks. Mary and Joseph have
to be corrected by Jesus for not knowing where to find Him, but in this way,
they’re just like you.
Third,
Mary thinks Jesus has sinned. Why have
you done this to us? Your father and I
were so worried! Oops! Your father.
God is Jesus’ Father. Not
Joseph. But then, Joseph loved Jesus as
his own dear Son, and Jesus loved Joseph like His father, and for all practical
purposes, Joseph was Jesus’ father. Now
Jesus has to remind them. His real
Father is God. This is not a rejection
of Joseph. Far from it. But it is to say, the greater allegiance is
owed to God. Just as He was about His
adopted father’s business, learning carpentry from Joseph, He is ultimately to
be about His heavenly Father’s business of saving the world, of saving
you. He has not sinned. He is right where He should be, doing just
what He should do. And though Mary will
always be His mother, and Joseph will always be His dad, there is another and
more important relationship. He is their
Lord. And He is their Savior. He has come to be here, in His Father’s
House, doing this, His Father’s business; the business of salvation.
We
must recognize in all this that Mary and Joseph are models for us, models of
faithful Christians, models of Christian parents. Sinners, yes.
But forgiven sinners, who live by faith.
When Jesus is lost, they panic and look in all the wrong places, but
they also do what parents are called to do.
They seek their Son. And even
though in Jesus’ case they get it backwards (He really does this for them),
they try to protect Him, save Him, even discipline Him. Mary has a misunderstanding with her
adolescent Child. Who of us parents
can’t relate to that? And isn’t it a
comfort that even the Holy Family is not immune from that experience in the
fallen world? For what Jesus experiences,
He redeems. And then there is the most
important part: When Jesus does correct His mother, when Mary does hear the
Word of her dear Son, she does what every Christian should do with that Word. She treasures it up in her heart. She ponders it. She memorizes it, thinks about it, meditates
upon it, believes it. For all her faults
in this episode, in that she is a model for us.
Be like her. Treasure the
Word.
Now
even as this Scripture is a foreshadowing of our Lord’s saving death and
resurrection for us, it also proclaims to us the Savior’s active fulfillment of
God’s Law for us. In particular, the
Third and Fourth Commandments. We should
say a word about each one. The Third
Commandment: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do
not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and
learn it.”[1] The Boy, Jesus, loves to hear and learn God’s
Word. Solomon asks God for wisdom. Jesus is the Wisdom of God incarnate. But as a true human being, as the Son of
Mary, He has to learn and grow. So there
He is in the Temple, sitting among the rabbis, listening to them and asking
them questions. I’m sure His questions
were so insightful that He was teaching them, too. But there He is, learning, humbly sitting at
their feet, immersed in the Sacred Scriptures.
As we should be. As we so often
are not. So often we neglect the
Word. So often we despise the Word. So often we fail to recognize that Jesus is
in the Word with all His gifts, the forgiveness of sins, life, salvation. Repent, beloved. And rejoice.
Jesus fulfills this Commandment for you.
And
the Fourth Commandment: “Honor your father and your mother. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not
despise or anger our parents and other authorities, but honor them, serve and
obey them, love and cherish them.” Mary
is angry, even if greatly relieved, when they find Jesus. But He has not dishonored them. He is serving them and loving and cherishing
them. He is doing all of this for them,
for Mary and Joseph, for you, and for the world, this being about His Father’s
business. And He is honoring His true
Father in heaven. His first allegiance
is to God. We should obey God rather
than men. But then we have this very
important sentence: “And he went down with them,” that is, Mary and
Joseph, “and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them” (v. 51). Jesus honored Mary and Joseph. He honored the spiritual fathers among whom
He sat in the Temple. He honored the
government, whose laws He obeyed and to which He paid taxes and even submitted
to death. So often we do not. We despise and anger our parents and other
earthly authorities. We speak against
them and ridicule them. We do not
obey. We do not love and serve. We fail to provide for them when they’re
older. We speak against the government
and dishonor those in office. We speak
against our bosses or our teachers and neglect the things they’ve given us to
do, or do them poorly. We reject the
care of our spiritual fathers and despise the authority of the Word. Repent, beloved. And rejoice.
Jesus fulfilled this Commandment for you.
He
fulfilled all the Commandments for you.
Jesus saves us by His death for our sins and His resurrection from the
dead, but don’t forget, He also saves us by His life! By His active fulfillment of God’s Law, His active
obedience as we call it in theology.
All of this is credited to our account.
His righteousness is given to us as a gift. Justification! And then!
Then we are freed to hold God’s Word as sacred and gladly hear and learn
it. Then we are given to honor our
parents and all earthly authorities, serve and obey them, love and cherish
them. We are freed to be parents without
fear, to raise our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. We are freed to do all the Commandments, with
joy, because our sins are forgiven and we are saved apart from our doing of the
Commandments, on account of Jesus, by faith alone.
What
a Christmas gift! Perfect righteousness
given to us in Christ Jesus. The LORD
comes to His Temple, the Passover Lamb to be sacrificed, to free us form our
sins, from death, and the devil. And
this morning, we know right where to find Jesus. Here, in His Father’s House. Here, doing His Father’s business, the
business of saving us. Here, in the
Word. Here, in the flesh of the Passover
Lamb, in the blood that marks us as God’s own.
Did you not know this? Oh, you
knew it. You know it for certain. Here is Christ for you. Merry Christmas! In the Name of the Father, and of the Son
(+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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