Colossians 3:12-17 Luke 2:41-end
Someone, when they noted we didn't have carols and organ music today, said “O, this will be a much shorter service.” To which with mischief, I turned to them and said, “Well, you don't know the length of the sermon.”
And indeed, tying into that, at 8:00 this morning as I walked in to take that service, I turned to one of the vergers and said,
“I'm really living the Christmas narrative. Because the sermon I was intending to preach at 10:00, at 4:00 this morning, in a very vivid dream, I received a different sermon. Do you think perhaps angels are talking to me?”
The verger responded. “Or perhaps your medication?”
This is always a difficult Sunday for me to preach on, not because the context or the concepts are problematic, but because I am visited, in the spirit of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, I am firmly visited by a spectre from my past. Because every year on this the 1st Sunday of Christmas, particularly in our old lectionaries, we will have this particular gospel reading. And every year on the Sunday after Christmas when she was alive, my mother would come and would be part of the congregation wherever I was serving.
In general people tend to be quite kind and generous towards their clergy and to think that they are quite good individuals. My mother had a particular vocation in her life and that was to ensure that people knew the reality. And on this Sunday, my goodness did she feel her call by God. Because, unfortunately, and for a number of reasons, all of which actually lie at character defects in myself, when I was 12 years old, I ran away from home. And the police were called and my poor parents had to go through the anguish of the whole sort of explanation of when canals would be dragged, helicopters were put into action and all the rest of it. They had no chance of finding me when I ran away from home because, and my argument at the time was because I knew they were open, I could be spiritual about it now, I sought refuge in country churches because I knew they would be open, and a statement on the zeal of religion in this country, I also knew that I would be able to be left alone. And eventually when I came home. We were we united and we had to find a way of working our way forward. My mother never forgave me for one thing, which was the police officer when they first arrived at the house saying to her. “Is it your grandson?” That didn't go down terribly well. However, all the rest was fine apart from on this Sunday where my mother would sit in the congregation whilst the gospel reading was being read going. “I'm siding with Mary. What? He needed to do to Jesus. Well there we are. ” and it it always slightly colored how I engaged with this.
However, what I want to explore this morning with you is something that has started really hit home from Luke's gospel, and it's the incidental bits that we sort of forget. In Luke's gospel,we often have people going somewhere with a purpose and then Luke deliberately includes that they then return. So Mary, when she knows that she is going to have a baby, goes and sees her cousin Elizabeth, who is also expecting a baby, and you have that beautiful encounter between these two expectant mothers, the one who is going to give birth to John the Baptist. With the other who's going to give birth to our Lord and at the end of that encounter, you then have a little line that says “and Mary returned home.” Later on in Luke's Gospel, when Jesus is born and his shepherds are told by angels that something exciting has happened, that God is with us, and the sign of this will be “a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a Manger. And they go, and it was as the angels told them. “And they return to their fields. There is both a deliberate action of journeying to and returning from. And this continues on. One of the lepers when healed, returns back to Jesus. And of course famously the parable of the prodigal son where he comes to his right minds and returns back.
At the beginning of Luke's gospel and at the end of Luke's gospel, there are two journeys where people are intending in going to a destination, and on both occasions they then have to return back to Jerusalem. And they are both unique to Luke’s Gospel, the one we have heard today, Mary and Joseph, along with everybody else from Nazareth have traveled for a day away from Jerusalem, heading back when they then realize that Jesus is not with them and so they have to rush back, one feels that they probably got back slightly quicker than a day, and they come back to Jerusalem.
At the end of Luke's gospel we have a similar journey, where two disciples following Jesus's death head out on a journey of about 7 miles to a place called Emmaus. And as they journey on they are joined by someone with whom they have conversations, and they ask questions of that person, not dissimilar to the questions that we heard Jesus, Mary asking Jesus. And of course they're asking the same person. “Do you not? What has been happening?” Mary and Joseph are saying, “Do you not know how anxious we have been” to this mysterious companion along the road, the two disciples say, “Do you not know what has been happening?” And in both instances Jesus then engages with and gives understanding. And of course, in Emmaus they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. And crucially and often forgotten, when the story is retold, they then return back to Jerusalem. They embark on that journey, which at that time they know to be dangerous because they had actually said to Jesus, do come in. It is now night and it is not a time to be on the road. That they, despite their fears, return back and become a new identity.
For Mary and Joseph, their returning back to Jerusalem is not initially successful. There is that painful three day period as they continue to search for Jesus. And any of us who have cared for others, whether they are our own children or other people's children, can only wonder at the level of despair and fear that Mary and Joseph had. No wonder, my mother. looks of Mary at this particular point, with a certain respect of whom she was. And of course that three day period of looking for Jesus. is something that we will then encounter at the completion of the gospel, when after jesus's death, there is a period of time before we come to the third day and we once more encounter Christ in our midst.
With the first encounter after three days was crucial, it was to see Jesus in the context of the law and the prophets and the building of the temple and that Jesus was not where he was expected to be, but equally was exactly where he could be expected to be. For Jesus was about his Father's business in his Father's house.
Similarly, at the end of the gospel, when we encounter the risen Christ, he is not where we expect Him to be. For initially He is not in where you expect dead people to be, namely a tomb, but he is found behind locked doors, he is found in a garden. He is found as a companion on a journey, He is found in the breaking of the bread, He is found in engaging with people and giving them confidence when they have faced their darkest of fears. And having a new definition, and one which through the Spirit of God, they will grow and develop within.
So this encounter in the temple is full of what I like to call pre echoes of what the Gospel will then reveal to us. But what does that mean for us in our daily lives? Well, the first thing is to recognize that as we celebrate, “God is with us.”
We need also to celebrate that God will be where we should expect God to be. For the prophets had said, the sign given to you will be a young woman giving birth to a child. And yet that young child laid in a Manger was not quite where people had expected Christ to be. Indeed, those called wise who travelled from great distances instead went to palaces to look for the King of the Jews. And not to a domestic home in Bethlehem. And similarly, Mary and Joseph expected Christ to be with them, but in fact he was to be found in the temple going about his Father's business. Just as then later on the disciples on the road to Emmaus didn't know where they expected Christ to be with hem, and yet their hearts were warmed as they journeyed on.
And all of us, whether we are shepherds returning back to our our place of work, or whether we are despairing parents returning back to where we have journeyed from, or whether we are those who have encountered a healing like one of the lepers returning to give thanks? Or whether we are disciples who have come to an understanding of actually what God being with us means and facing our fears of the night and returning back to those with whom we are going to be constituted.
In all of these returns, we find ourselves becoming new creations. Newly defined with a fresh understanding of what the ways of God are. And what the call on our life is to be.
For those shepherds clearly became something different, otherwise we wouldn't know about what had happened to them. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus became something different. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had their account and the honesty within it. Mary and Joseph, the ones to whom the presence of God in Jesus was entrusted, became something different, for they understood the rest of his life, as he grew up with them, as being In terms of eternal values, “for the child grew in grace and wisdom.” Their understanding of him grew in grace and wisdom, both in terms of the world. And in terms of the divine.
So, on this first Sunday of Christmas, as we recall the naturalness of God being with us, may we listen carefully to Luke's gospel. And return to God, and in returning to God then be animated by his Spirit. Amen.