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Colossians 3: 12-17: Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tender-hearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.
Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts. And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.
Luke 2: 41-52: Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. When Jesus was twelve years old, they attended the festival as usual. After the celebration was over, they started home to Nazareth, but Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents didn’t miss him at first, because they assumed he was among the other travelers. But when he didn’t show up that evening, they started looking for him among their relatives and friends.
When they couldn’t find him, they went back to Jerusalem to search for him there. Three days later they finally discovered him in the Temple, sitting among the religious teachers, listening to them and asking questions. All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.
His parents didn’t know what to think. “Son,” his mother said to him, “why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been frantic, searching for you everywhere.”
“But why did you need to search?” he asked. “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they didn’t understand what he meant.
Then he returned to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. And his mother stored all these things in her heart.
Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and all the people.
Reflection:
The two scripture passages which Rev. Slifka read for us today are, in my opinion, really significantly linked – and they have very significant messages for us today. We’re right on the threshold of a new year – and one thing a lot of us do at this time of the year is reflect on the past year and make resolutions about how we’re going to change our behaviour in the coming year.
The Colossians passage offers a beautiful blueprint for such a resolution, calling us to clothe ourselves with the virtues of Christ and live in harmony with one another.
The passage begins with these words: “Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tender-hearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”
That sounds wonderful – and what great goals and what admirable traits — and important virtues. What if we resolved to approach every person around us with compassion or to respond to challenges with patience and humility? Wouldn’t life be wonderful?
The passage continues with an emphasis on forgiveness: “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” This is perhaps one of the hardest resolutions to keep. Forgiveness requires us to let go of bitterness and pride, but it also frees us from carrying the burden of anger into a new season. As we enter this year, let’s resolve to extend forgiveness, not because others deserve it, but because Christ has so freely forgiven us.
I find myself coming down to earth with a thud as I’m bombarded by daily media revelations: videos of innocent people being killed in Palestine and Israel; kidnapping and deportation of children in Ukraine; an incoming president encouraging Wayne Gretzky to become Governor of the new state of Canada. Honestly, I feel far more like knocking a few heads together rather than practising patience and humility – and as for forgiveness? Oh that is definitely a challenge, eh?
I think it’s really important, though, to check out how God behaved in some similarly challenging situations: God saw how the Romans were treating the jews. God saw the torture and the brainwashing and the executions – but did God send a warrior to kill off the offenders? No, God sent that precious son right into the middle of that chaos – to teach people a different way to react to those horrors.
So when Paul advises the people of Colossae to clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts, I think he’s passing on a valuable message from God, through the example of Jesus. I don’t think he’s talking to governments or factions or armies; I think he’s talking to individuals – to you – and you – and me. I don’t think he’s talking to all of us I think he’s talking to each of us.
History has shown that this crazy Christian concept of love instead of hate; of compassion and forgiveness instead of selfishness and retaliation actually works – and that concept has spread around the world over a few thousand years. Every Christmas, we celebrate the beginning – the birth of the baby Jesus– and we think about how we might try, this year, to be better representatives of Jesus, to pass around the love, the kindness, the mercy which Jesus lived.
Now, the next passage gives us one little snapshot – really the only snapshot – of Jesus’ life as a developing child. The passage from Luke gives us that story of Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem to talk with the religious teachers in the temple.
I have, in the past, read the Luke passage from a fairly objective viewpoint. This was a trip that Jesus’ family took every year, so Jesus knows his way around the town and the temple. His parents have little or no concern about him in the larger company of family and friends. So it is plausible that Mary and Joseph had made arrangements for Jesus to travel back with other people – maybe they agreed that Jesus and his friend Jacob would come with Mary and Joseph on the trip there and then the two boys would go with Jacob’s parents on the way back. It wasn’t until the end of the first day that they realized that Jesus wasn’t there. It takes them three days to find him and by then they must have been frantic. It sounds as if they didn’t really pay attention to where he was and what he was doing – the relief – and exasperation – must have been overwhelming.
We notice what he was doing, though – having discussions with the religious teachers in the temple – a pretty odd thing for a normal 12-year-old to be doing, surely – although 12 is an age when kids are beginning to develop a sense of self – and to do things more independently from their parents. Possibly Jesus felt the stirrings of his mission in life and felt called to communicate with religious leaders who would have scholarly knowledge of biblical texts and spiritual matters. That does kind of make sense, from an objective viewpoint.
This time when I read this passage, though, it struck a real chord – a very personal one. When my middle son was about 15, he didn’t arrive home from school one day. I didn’t really start worrying until dinnertime and then I did worry. I phoned all of his friends looking for him, but none of them had seen him. By 9:00 p.m., I was getting close to calling the police, when in he walked. His father and I hadn’t been together for quite a number of years, and he had been at his father’s house, visiting. He didn’t really get why I was so worried, - after all, he’d been perfectly safe at his father’s house - but did promise that if it ever happened again, he would call me to let me know where he was. It was a 15 year old promise, though – the kind that’s meant to stop mom from freaking out. You know the kind - “Okay, I’ll phone you next time.”
However, the next day when he went to school, his friends were all over him, asking him where he had been the last night, as his mommy had been worried and phoning them all. After that, he was absolutely faithful at letting me know where he was.
Now, it does sound as if Jesus never did this again either - Luke does say that Jesus returned to Nazareth with this parents and was obedient to them. Oh to have been a fly on the wall for the conversations that must have taken place on the way home. Probably no hanging out with his friends on that trip – especially Jacob. I wonder how his mother approached the task of getting him to promise not to do that again?
Now last Sunday, we heard Mary’s Magnificat – when she is told by an angel that she’s going to have a baby who is the Son of God – so she was given at least an inkling of the challenge before her.
And there’s that one little line: And his mother stored all these things in her heart. Poor Mary – have you ever noticed how many things Mary seems to ponder and store in her heart? What a challenge it must have been to raise Jesus – fully human and fully divine! Whew!
Of course, the flip side of that is: how challenging it must have been for Jesus, growing up fully human and fully divine. We know that, at 30 years of age, he went off by himself for forty days to figure out how he was going to accomplish his mission. But of the years in between - the rest of his growing up years - we're told virtually nothing – except this little vignette of his staying behind in the temple.
Maybe we can sometimes kind of pass off God as a supernatural being observing this world that he or she created – but we can’t do that with Jesus – because Jesus gets us – Jesus grew up like us, experienced life like us – and through the Holy Spirit, he’s inside us, knowing everything about us – and loving us – all of us –each of us - every single one of us- from the perspective of a fellow human being. That, my friends, is what I see as the extraordinary message of this little scenario from Jesus’ childhood: that we can rest assured that we are understood – loved – cared for – individually – by the One whose birth as a human being we celebrated last week – and will continue to celebrate every year, as we remind ourselves of the staggering, miraculous meaning of that birth.
Amen