Middle School Messiah

 

Jesu Juva

St. Luke 2:40-52                                                                 

January 2, 2022

Christmas 2C                                           

 Dear saints of our Savior~

          This is the Second Sunday after Christmas—only the ninth day of the twelve days of Christmas.  But if you blink, you might miss it.  Last weekend we had the baby in the manger.  Today we have the Messiah as a middle-schooler.  And next Sunday, at the age of thirty, Jesus will wade into the water with John to be baptized.  So, let’s just play the hand we’ve been dealt today; and ponder the pre-teen Savior.  After all, today’s account from Luke chapter two is the only account we have that falls between the Savior’s infancy and the beginning of His public ministry.

          The word of the day is “wisdom.”  Solomon famously asked the Lord for wisdom; and this request pleased the Lord.  And Solomon has been widely regarded as the wisest man who ever lived.  That is, up until a twelve-year-old boy from Nazareth wandered into the temple one day.  Normally we associate wisdom with those who are older.  Those young whipper-snappers can be quick with the facts and opinions; but they tend to come up short when it comes to common sense and wisdom.  Wisdom comes with experience, with gray hair, and the school of hard knocks.  The last person you’d expect to be dishing out wisdom is a twelve-year-old.  Yet, that’s what this morning’s holy gospel delivers—the wisdom of the universe—holy wisdom—packaged up in a precocious pre-teen from Nazareth.

          This was no ordinary twelve-year-old traipsing through the temple courts.  This was divine wisdom in human flesh.  The wisdom embodied in this boy created

and sustains the universe.  There was more wisdom in that boy’s pinky finger than in all the teachers of Israel.  And yet, the boy submits to those teachers as a student, answers their questions and respectfully poses a few of His own.  He also submits to His parents, just like any other child.  And yet He is not just any other child; He is God’s Child—the beloved Son come to save the world from sin, death and hell.

          But the amazing thing is that no one really notices.  The boy’s holiness is hidden from view.  He just simply blends in as one of us because He is, literally, one of us—God with us—Immanuel.  He is the Christ in camouflage—Christ incognito.  He was sinless; yet, somehow, indistinguishable from every other twelve-year-old in Jerusalem.  Nobody ever—not even once—stood up, pointed at Jesus, and exclaimed, “Hey, this kid is God!”  Didn’t happen.

          It’s this humble hiddenness—this low profile for the Most High God—that explains the most shocking and scandalous detail of today’s text:  how He got left behind and lost by His parents.  It’s shocking and scandalous . . . until you realize that this happens all the time—to practically every child and every parent.  It’s normal.  And don’t pretend for a minute that it hasn’t happened to you.  Perhaps it was somewhere deep in the bowels of a big box store, or maybe a sunny day at the zoo, or at a crowded playground.  It happens!  You lose your kid!  I won’t mention any names, but I’ve had plenty of twelve-year-old confirmation students abandoned on the street out here after class because mom thought dad was picking up and dad thought mom was picking up.  Now, it’s not for me to judge (I mean, sure, I do make a mental note).  But this is totally normal.

          You and I wouldn’t have done any better than Mary and Joseph.  We, too, would have lost Jesus in the crowd.  And we, too, would have had no idea what Jesus meant when He said, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”  That’s how it is with the incarnation—God become man.  It just doesn’t fit into our categories, or our ways of thinking, or our religious notions about God.  God is Man and Man is God in Jesus.  God is a twelve-year-old, whose human parents lost track of Him for about three days.

          The one thing you can’t say about Jesus is that He doesn’t know what it’s like to be one of us.  He is “God with us,” and so hiddenly, so humbly, so subversively that we wouldn’t have given Him a second look.  But that, beloved in the Lord, is exactly how God works with us and among us.  Not in the seen, but in the unseen.  Not in the powerful and mighty, but in the lowly and the humble:  A manger, a cross, a child, a teenager, a man.  He is us.  He is you.

          And this same Jesus—this middle-school Messiah—He comes to you today in the same hidden and subversive way.  In the splash of Holy Baptism.  In the words of this sermon and between the covers of your Bible.  In the bread that is His body and the wine that is His blood.    Don’t ignore Him!  Don’t despise Him.  Don’t reject Him in these humble means.  For God’s Word tells us that there’s something more here than meets our eyes, our senses, our reason.  This is the power of God to save you.

          The final surprise of today’s text is this:  [Jesus] went down with [Mary and Joseph]. . . to Nazareth and was submissive to them.  Boom!  There it is.  This middle school Messiah went home and was obedient—more than that, was submissive—to mom and dad.  He subordinated Himself to them—the mother and guardian His heavenly Father had given Him.  This means that He was “ordered under” them.  It’s the same word used elsewhere in the Bible for the relationship of wives to husbands, servants to masters, children to parents, and the church to Jesus.  Everybody submits to somebody!

          We live under a holy order in this life—holy because that’s how God has designed for us to live together.  As part of that holy order, we are called to be submissive and subordinate . . . and our sinful nature just can’t stand it.  It’s why toddlers throw temper tantrums.  It’s why students mock their teachers.  It’s why teens talk back to their parents and rebel against the rules.  It’s why workers grumble and gripe about their bosses.  It’s why wives try to dominate their husbands into submission; and why husbands and fathers check out of their marriage and family—refusing their God-given role as head of the household.  And the list goes on.  God gives each of us a role to play, a job to do.  But what we’d really like to do it take this job and shove it—rather than be subordinate or submissive.

          Perhaps this is why the Holy Spirit prompted St. Luke to tell us about that time when the boy Jesus went missing for three days.  This child of Mary who is the Son of God, came to be our righteousness—to fulfill the Law precisely in those areas where we could not and would not.  Though He was owed the obedience of Mary and Joseph as their Lord and Savior, He became obedient to them as their Son.  Though over them, He was ordered under them.  Though Lord of all, He became the servant of all.  Though He was the wisdom of God in human flesh, He sat at the feet of the teachers and learned in ordered obedience.  For us.  For you.  For your salvation.  His obedience is your righteousness before God.  He is the one obedient man; and by His death He atones for the sins of all the disobedient—all the rebellious children of God.

          Do you need forgiveness for your rebellion?  Does your life need to be re-ordered in 2022?  Do you need help to be submissive to your imperfect parents, your insensitive employer, your unsatisfactory spouse?  Jesus can help you with that.  You are definitely in the right place.  The wisdom of His Words is preached and proclaimed here with you in mind.  His body and blood is given here with you in mind.  His wisdom is your wisdom.  His Father’s house is your house.  His death and life are your death and life.  His obedient life is His gift to you; and your obedient life is your gift of thanks to Him—to Jesus, who came as a Child to save you. 

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.