A Sermon preached on Christmas II, Jan 2, 2022, at St. Augustine’s and St. Christoph
Jeremiah 31:7-14, Ephesians 1:3-6, Luke 2:41-52
There are quite a few so-called non-canonical or apocryphal gospels, that is ones that are not included in our Bible canon. We know of about 20 complete ones, with about the same number only existing as fragments, and of some “lost ones” – known only by being referenced elsewhere. They were all written much later than the four canonical gospels. You may have heard of the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Judas, or the Gospel of Mary – mostly just collections of sayings. And we also have a few infancy gospels that try and provide details about the life of the child Jesus from the age of three to age twelve, a period in Jesus’ life that is hardly covered by the canonical gospels.
After Jesus’ birth, Matthew just has the flight to Egypt, a story which much elaborated in the infancy Gospels, with them returning home sometime between 4 BC and 6 AD. Luke has two childhood stories: Jesus’ presentation at the Temple about 40 days after his birth and today’s story about a 12-year-old Jesus teaching and learning from the elders of the Jerusalem temple, but that’s it. One of the infancy gospels (the Infancy Gospel of Thomas), actually ends with its own version of this event. There it is the culmination of a process of maturity as the child Jesus comes to terms with and learns to control his divine powers and nature, and to use them for good. On the way however he can be quite nasty and arrogant at times. The author “takes what appears to be a quite radical step of assuming that [Jesus] was not born from the womb as a wise and mature person, but that he started out as a little boy and had to learn to handle his neighbours and himself carefully.”[1] These stories were very popular in the middle ages, make an appearance in medieval Christian art and one episode, involving Jesus making clay birds, which he then proceeds to bring to life, even made its way into the Quran.
The authors – and the readers – were partially motivated by curiosity: What would Jesus’ childhood have been like? What happened in those intervening 12 years? But they are also about making Jesus approachable, of showing the fully human side of his nature and how he struggles with it. The adult, canonical Jesus is – thankfully – also not a distant, divine, emotionless entity but a real human being who cries, gets angry, occasionally struggles with his calling, and is even willing to be corrected at times. He has to be, or there would be no point to the Incarnation: “He became what we are so that we might become what He is,” is how the 2nd century bishop of Lyon, Irenaeus of Lyon. The authors of the infancy gospels just went a little too far with that idea and let their imaginations run away with them!
But returning to Luke, what are we supposed to learn then from the only incident from Jesus' adolescence recorded in the canonical Gospels? What does it tell us about Jesus and about us?
This is the first time that we hear Jesus speaking. In verse 49, when he replies to his mother and her very understandable concern with the words “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" Up until now, other beings or people have told us who Jesus is: Gabriel – “He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32), Zechariah and Elisabeth who call him “Lord,” Mary in the Magnificat (Luke 1:47-55), the angels who tell the shepherds “to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord,” (Luke 2:11) or Simeon who calls him your (God’s) salvation and “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” (Luke 2:32). Now Jesus uses the word “Father” to refer to God, alluding to the sense of family relationship and intimacy he feels and has with his heavenly Father.
In his understanding of his relationship with God and in the way he interacts with the teachers at the temple “sitting among [them], listening to them and asking them questions” (2:46) we are shown a Jesus who, on the threshold to adulthood in the Jewish tradition, already has a strong sense of mission and self-awareness, and a clear sense of his calling. The phrase “in my Father’s house, can also be translated as to “be about my Father’s business.” In his first public utterance he is reflecting on his relationship with God and on the will of God. It is not a coincidence that he has begun to reveal himself in Jerusalem, a place he will later return to, in obedience to his Father, to fulfil his mission on the Cross and truly reveal himself as the Son of God and Saviour. His submission to his parents “Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them,” is already a foretaste of that final obedience and a necessary step in his human development. He still needs to increase “in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour,” before setting off on his final journey to Jerusalem, gathering followers, teaching, and healing on his way.
And what about us? “His mother treasured all these things in her heart.” (2:51) she pondered, that is thought about, their meaning and her son’s destiny just as she had “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart” after the shepherds told her what had happened in the fields when the angelic host appeared. I am sure she also pondered what Simeon had meant 12 years’ previously, also in the temple, when he had blessed them and said to Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (2:34-35)
Mary does what Luke wants us, his readers to do as well: To pause and contemplate who Jesus is and what he came to do. What does it mean that Jesus both shares our human nature and God’s divine nature? What is his Father’s business? Well, according to the author of the Letter to the Ephesians, these two themes are intimately connected: “He (God) destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” (Eph. 1:5-6) God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus is the Beloved. Through our shared nature and union with the Incarnate Christ, through God’s will and choice, and through our own positive response to that choice we are God’s beloved children. That gift comes with enormous responsibility. If we share in his nature, we share in his mission. But right now, on the 2nd and last Sunday after Christmas, in this season of great joy for all the people (Luke 2:10) it is enough to give thanks and rejoice and to pray, in the words of today’s collect, that we may grow into the life promised at Christmas:
O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
[1] Stevan Davies, The Infancy Gospels of Jesus: Apocryphal Tales from the Childhoods of Mary and Jesus--annotated & Explained. SkyLight Paths Publishing; 2009. xxii
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