As someone who is regularly
responsible for taking youth groups on trips to different places, I can totally
identify with what’s happening in the gospel lesson this morning. In fact, it’s
one of my worst nightmares—that is, accidentally leaving a youth behind
somewhere either because we counted incorrectly when everyone got back on the
van or because someone rushed off to say hello to a friend or buy a soft drink
at the gas station just before the group moves on. The fact that just about
every youth carries a cell phone nowadays makes me feel a little bit more
secure, but there is always the lingering concern that in the transition from
bathroom break to bus boarding, for example, someone for whom I’m responsible will
get stranded.
I’ll never forget the one
point where we briefly lost Haley Bergh at the ELCA Youth Gathering in New
Orleans in 2009. Granted, we didn’t lose her for a whole day—it was a grand
total of about ten minutes—but it was enough to make us panic a little bit. It
happened as we were making our way into the Superdome with about 36,000 other people.
We got stuck at a bottleneck and most of our youth got pushed through together,
but Haley got held back and ended up in an entirely different section than we
did. Through text messages, we figured out where she was: safe, but behind the
security guards and with another youth group. From where we stood on the floor
of the Dome, we could see her up in one of the sections above us, waving her
arms and smiling broadly. To rescue her and bring her back with our group, I
had to go all the way and plead my case to the chief of Superdome security. From
then on, we decided to hold hands as a group when entering or leaving a large
group of people. Like I said, it is those transitions that are tricky.
And probably something very similar
happens with the young Jesus in the transition from Passover celebration to
homeward journey. There are thousands of people around, and the Nazareth
caravan chaperones thought they’d accounted for everyone, double-counting all
the kids, and then they reach a bottleneck somewhere, things get a little confusing,
and before they know it they are well on their way home when they realize Jesus
isn’t with them. They eventually find him in the Temple, of all places, but not
waving his arms and smiling broadly in hopes of being rescued. Instead, he is
happily listening to the teachers in the Jerusalem Temple, oblivious to the brouhaha
he is creating. While they were pressing on homeward, he was busy impressing
the religious leaders. They had assumed he was lost…but Jesus is never lost.
What’s peculiar to me at this
point is the surprise in their reaction, their lack of familiarity with his
identity and mission. For three days they scour Jerusalem, checking every
bazaar and vendor booth that they may have visited. but never considering the
Temple. For three days they look high and low, but never in the building that
is smack in the middle of things. When they do finally locate him, they’re at
first astonished…and then turn angry. Rather than expecting him to be in the
Temple, rather than expecting him to be wowing the teachers with wisdom beyond
his years, they find it vexing, as if he’s played some impish prank on them. It
seems to me that with all of the fanfare and prophecy surrounding Jesus’ birth—Gabriel’s
visit, the shepherds, the angels in the field, and so forth—Mary and Joseph
might have been a little quicker on the uptake about all this. After all, Mary
had been pondering all these things in her heart, right?
One might say that this is
another case of losing someone in a transition. In this case, it is the
transition from child to adult, from youthfulness to maturity, from the days of
willing obedience—which Jesus always displays, of course—to the years of taking
one’s own initiative.
This story provides the one
glimpse we have from Scripture of Jesus as an adolescent. In the two gospels
which actually contain birth stories—Matthew and Luke—Jesus goes from being a
baby to being a thirty-something adult within two chapters. I would imagine
that in that long transition it might be easy to lose sight of who Jesus is and
what he came for. That is, he is born to be more than a cute little infant, whose
life is full of promise and hope. He is born also to be an adult, whose death
will seal God’s promise and solidify hope of eternal life. Jesus is not only a
sweet newborn to be cradled and nurtured, or even a precocious adolescent who
can wow the Temple elders with his answers. He is also a man who is be mocked
and spit upon and nailed to a cross, whose understanding of the law eventually
runs afoul of all the religious authorities.
You see, Mary and Joseph will
not only have to share their son with the members of their Passover caravan, other
residents of their ancient Middle Eastern village. They will also have to share
him with God, with Jesus’ own purpose. All parents know what it’s like to watch
their child grow up and become independent, to make choices that maybe the
parent doesn’t exactly approve. Here we see Jesus’ parents perhaps coming to
grips with the choices Jesus’ is going to make as he walks the path one who, as
Mary herself once sang, “brings down the
mighty from their thrones…and sends the rich away empty.”
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| "Crucifixion" Giotto Assisi |
It stands to reason then,
that our faith, too, will need to make the healthy transition from Christmas to
Easter, from counting the joys and blessings of the nativity and how wonderful
it is for God to become flesh to the horror and emptiness of Good Friday and
how terrible our sin really is. Our faith and understanding of God’s
righteousness must move from simply cradling the baby Jesus, happy that he can
do our bidding, content to call on him when we need him, to following Jesus and
going where he calls us. Sometimes I wonder how much we try to cradle the grown
Jesus, too, as if he were born just to make us happy.
And, so, on this morning in
mid-Christmas, as we ponder the one Scriptural reference of Jesus’ transition
from childhood to adulthood, as we pause before the transition to Lent, why
don’t we also ponder our own transition of faith, as well? It, too, grows and
changes over time, especially when we feed it and routinely expose it to
questions and challenges. As our diaconal minister Christy Huffman could tell
you, Christian faith formation is an ongoing thing. We often think of
children’s Sunday School as the only time when real learning of faith goes on, but
really it is a lifelong process, as cliché as that sounds.
Unfortunately, many of us Jesus
gets stuck—or, worse yet, lost—at one or more transition in that process. Several
theologians and teachers of the church have broken down faith development into
different stages. In one school of thought, outlined by Thomas Droege, one adolescent
stage is characterized by a “teen’s interpretation of faith as taught by
authority figures.”[1] The
next stage typically occurs in young adulthood when they begin forming their
own opinions about the ways in which God acts in the world, usually after they
have left home.” We spoke in seminary a good bit about how Lutherans are often
very good at everything up to that adolescent stage but drop the ball at the
stages beyond it, mainly because confirmation comes and goes and, despite
everyone’s best efforts, young people rarely find ways to be integrated into
the life of the congregation and worship in their young adult years.
This is why this annoying
pastor stresses to our high school graduates that it is important for them to
find another congregation, if possible, and worship regularly while they are in
college or starting out on their own. During those years their brains are being
stretched and challenged by so many new thoughts and exciting possibilities, whether
they are in classes or starting a career or going through the military. If
they’re going to expose their growing minds to deeper analysis in areas of
chemistry, social science, or psychology, to name a few, why wouldn’t they also
challenge and expose their minds to deeper teachings and new relationships within
the household of faith, as well, let those things have fair conversation with
one another? If they’re going to sit at the feet of learned men and women in
fields of academics or on the field of combat, why not also be found
occasionally, as Jesus was, in the “house of the Lord,” at the feet of all the
children of God who are learning to walk his way? I cherish the witness of our
University of Richmond students in this regard, and how much they have brought
to our congregation in terms of their witness in worship and their questions
about Christian faith. I find I am also enriched by the conversations I have
with adults who are preparing for baptism. I know and appreciate that our
growing in the faith always ends up being a two-way street.
For in the long run, you see,
it is not Jesus who ultimately gets lost in transition. He may seem to be, but,
as we’ve noted, Jesus is never the one who’s lost. Even on the cross, he is somehow always where
he is supposed to be, responding every time in love and obedience to his Father.
It is, rather, we who are lost, even if we’re in faith stage One Million.
Sometimes we know it. Sometimes we are aware of our separation and we wave our
hands wildly, smiling, broadly so that he may come through the barriers and
have us back. At other times we ignorantly wander and meander, neglecting every
attempt that is made to bring us to his embrace.
But, time and time again, Jesus
continues to search, to teach, to lead, to nurture—and, yes, to die so that we
may be named and claimed as his own—as his infants, as his adolescents, as his adults,
and as his seniors…and, ever so faithfully, at every risky transition along the
way.
Thanks be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
[1]
David S. Luecke, “Speaking the Faith in a New Lutheran Church Culture.” Lutheran Forum. Fall 2012
