Curving to the Light

Sermon preached by the Reverend Larry Young

December 28, 2003

Scripture:  Colossians 3:12-17 and Luke 2:41-52

Whatever else Christmas is, it is very much a family season—a time when we get together with whatever parts of our family are available for spending holiday time with us.  This is a season when we are mindful of what draws us together as families—and very likely what sets us apart as well.  There is no guarantee that all will be sweetness and light in our families even at Christmas; and some of you may be here today with firsthand experience of that truth.

Luke’s account of the 12-year-old Jesus creating some tension in his family may well be a timely one for this Sunday after Christmas.  From all we can tell, family life in Mary and Joseph’s household had been relatively unperturbed up to that point.  Clearly the family was regular at synagogue worship; and the fact they made an annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover indicates the level of religious devotion they had.  Let’s give Mary and Joseph credit for being faithful in providing their son the best religious foundation they knew how to give him.  However, they were not to be exempt from the stresses and strains that go along with a young person’s growing up and finding his own way.  As a family, they had to come to terms with that.

Now I’m sure every one of you who have had children can identify with both the anxiety and the anger of Mary and Joseph in this story.  To realize your child may be lost has to be gut wrenching.  And then to learn that he went off in pursuit of his own agenda without letting you know and thereby putting you through all that anxiety has to make you more than a little angry.  Now of course for Mary and Joseph, finding Jesus in the temple threw another interesting curve into the situation.  Now they knew that their religious education efforts with their son had been more productive than they could have imagined, and they couldn’t help but take some pride in that.  But then how would it be to have your son say to you, “I didn’t need to tell you where I was going because you should have figured it out yourselves.”  They must have really bit their tongues on that one!

There was a deeper level to this experience, which is what must have stayed with Mary and Joseph when the heat of the moment had passed.  The end of the passage tells us that Mary pondered all these things in her heart, just as she had when she first knew she would give birth to a very special son.  I think that what she must have been pondering this second time was the realization that this son of hers was not going to fit her or anyone else’s expectations as to how he would grow up and what he would live for.  Luke says he was obedient when he went home.  Yet Jesus really didn’t conform to the expectations of his family mold; and indeed he had to go beyond them in order to do the growing that was his to do.

Now I’ve already suggested that Jesus’ going off to the temple had a much different meaning to him than it did to his parents.  Remember that Jesus was twelve in this story—the age at which a Jewish boy would be regarded as no longer a child and would be expected to begin assuming adult responsibilities and outlooks.  It’s not clear there was anything like a bar mitzvah in Jesus’ time; but if there was, he would have been the age for it.  So while Jesus was advanced in his level of religious understanding and initiative, he was on schedule in getting on with the personal growth that he was pursuing in the temple.  In his case he’d outgrown what the Sabbath school had to offer.  It made sense for him to go to the adult teachers of the temple to get the learning opportunity he needed.  In other words, this story is telling us that Jesus was on a serious learning curve—a curve that would lead him to the light that he was called to manifest in his adult life.  If you will, Jesus was curving to the light!  To a religiously intense boy, pursuing that agenda must have made mundane things like keeping the family informed pale into insignificance.  For him it was time to leave home, religiously speaking, and get on with his growing. 

The afterglow of Christmas may be a good time for us to remember that we too have growing we need to get on with in our religious lives.  In some ways Christmas is our most basic religious festival, for it celebrates the “square one” fact that God’s good news has come to us in Jesus the Christ.  But now that we’ve been given this gift, what are we going to do with it?  At Christmas we marvel at the wonder of God come among us, and we affirm what a beautiful thing that is.  But now what?  You see, the good news of Christmas isn’t just a lovely gift to be admired.  Rather it is a precious gift to be opened and savored and explored.  If Christ truly is the light of life, then one of the most important things we can do is to learn what it means to have that light shining on the contours of our lives.  What does it mean for us that Christ came that we might have life in all its fullness?  You see, what I’m suggesting is that Christ’s coming calls us to a learning curve—a curve that leads us to appropriate Christ’s light in a meaningful way for ourselves.  We need to allow our wondering faith of Christmas to grow up and lead us where it will—just as Jesus grew through childhood and adolescence to the mature faith that shaped and guided his life path.  We are called to be growing Christians—even knowing that will mean at points pushing past the molds of our upbringing in order to find the shape of truth that we can claim in our own experience.

Three and a half days from now we’ll be launching another new year.  And with that will come another whole round of opportunities for living and growing—or stagnating—or butting our heads up against seemingly intractable objects—or likely all of the above.  Some years ago my clergy friend Jim Hamilton of Sepulveda itemized in his church newsletter some of the opportunities as follows:

            There will be new friends, old friends leaving; there will be pain, there will be

            joy; there will be mistakes, there will be learning experiences; there will be

            another Christmas, another Easter, another birthday, another chance to say

            “hello,” “goodbye,” “I love you,” “go jump in the lake,” “I’m sorry,” “you’re

            forgiven”; there will be new electronic games, new kittens, new surprises, old

            expectations; there will be new arguments over old stuff and old arguments

            over new stuff.

So what do we intend to do with these life opportunities?  Are we simply going to take everything as it comes and roll with the punches—or are we willing to make these opportunities occasions for growth?  Remembering the light that has come to us in Jesus, will we explore whether that light is relevant in particular situations?  Does it give light to our path, or another level of meaning, or a different way of seeing things? 

Sara Bardwick tells the story of an evening when she came home tired and cranky after a hard day’s work as a social worker.  Her husband suggested they go out to eat at a local sandwich shop, which she readily agreed to.  When their sandwiches arrived, Sara quickly took a bite out of hers, which prompted their 7-year-old daughter Jessica to exclaim, “Mother, you forget to pray!”  Sara felt duly called to account and quickly recited the rote prayer: “Come Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blest. Amen.”  At that moment a homeless man in tattered clothes who had been watching them came over to their table.  “Please, sir,” he said to the husband, “I haven’t eaten all day.  Can you buy me a sandwich?”  Perhaps he thought he had a better chance with a family who prayed.  Sara’s first thought in her weariness was, “I don’t need this now!”  But having just prayed, she had to recognize that the homeless man’s need called for some response; so she winked at her husband, and he got up and went with the homeless man to order his sandwich.  Young Jessica was wide-eyed at this, and she asked her mother why her father was doing this.  That really pushed Sara to reflect on the scene with the eyes of faith.  “God doesn’t want people to be hungry,” she told Jessica, “and it makes God happy when we help others.  Jesus once said that when you give a cup of water or some food to one of God’s children, it’s like giving it to Jesus.”  “Just like giving it to Jesus?” Jessica asked incredulously.  “Wow!  Excuse me, Mom.”  She slipped away from the table and ran to stand with her father and the homeless man as they awaited his order.  And the expression of awe on her face was unmistakable.  When she and her father returned to their table, she said to her mother, “You see, Mommy, your prayer was answered.  You asked Jesus to be our guest, and he really did come!”

The season for New Year resolutions is upon us, and resolutions on behalf of spiritual growth are certainly in order.  What I’m talking about goes deeper than just a resolution that may be forgotten before January is half over.  It’s a basic way of coming at life, a learning curve stance.  It’s seeing that curving to the light is our agenda on a week-in, week-out basis.  We may well plan some particular growth occasions such as a Bible study group or devotional reading.  But we also look for growth at those times when we don’t plan it ahead, because we take the light of Christ with us in the everydayness of life; and we know God wills all parts of our lives to be shaped by the light.

My guess is that some of you will see how this has worked in your lives as you think about significant events in your past.  Perhaps you came up against obstinate problems that tried your soul, or you faced illness or the loss of loved ones—and in the process you were given new insight and understanding.  Maybe a struggle with a friend or colleague over some issue proved to be a crucible event when you knew your spirit grew in awareness and compassion.  It may have been that travel, or a play, or an unexpected encounter were part of your learning curve.  Well, friends, the year ahead will offer a similar range of opportunities, if only we are open to learn from them and let the light of Christ shine on them.

One year a certain religious publication asked its readers to send in recollections of Christmas for an article; and one woman wrote about her grandmother’s Christmas tree.  Many of the ornaments were what you would expect—angels, shepherds, stars, doves, a nativity, and so on.  But one ornament was different.  It was the figure of a chimney sweep, all in black, carrying a wire brush and a ladder.  What was that ornament doing on her tree?  The grandmother had explained it this way.  “It seems to me,” she had said, “that the Christian faith calls us to sweep the clutter and cobwebs out of our mental chimneys.  We need to get rid of the soot left over from fires of the past, so we can give ourselves to the burning issues of the now.”  I find that an intriguing thought, especially at Christmas.  Christ came to bring more fire and clarity and brightness into our lives; and that means we need to get rid of the soot and debris that would obstruct the cleansing and energizing and light-giving that is Christ’s gift to us. 

How good it is that Christmas leads so quickly to the beginning of a new year.  Christmas is the good news that light has come among us; and the New Year comes as a fresh opportunity to go with that light and search for the new ways it may illuminate our lives.  May God bless us all as we endeavor to curve to the light in the year ahead!