Tag: New Year resolutions

Wherever is Jesus? Where in the world is Jesus? Where on earth is he? Questions for the search team

David Herbert1 Comment

A reflection on the loss of Jesus for the first Sunday of Christmas (year C). The gospel is from Luke 2:41-end when Joseph and Mary lost Jesus.

Crèche, December 2023, Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, Bethlehem. Photo: Munther Isaac

Today is the 1st Sunday of Christmas. Christmas is far from over as we revel in its meaning for us. Tradition has given us the 12 days of Christmas. Today is the 5th day.

What did my love give me on the 5th day? I’m sure someone will sing the answer.

What’s that all about? Maybe we can guess the significance of the 4 calling birds, the 3 French hens, the 2 turtle doves, and the partridge in the pear tree. Can we?

But what are those 5 gold rings, the four calling birds, the three French hens, the two turtle doves and the partridge in a pear tree?

We see the five rings flying on the Olympic flags, bringing separated nations to play games to bring the world together. Five gold rings, each one representing a continent, all of them representing the whole world. On this 5th day of Christmas, has my true love given me the whole world?

On this 5th day of Christmas our true love gives us this story of Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem and the worry he caused. It leaves us with the question “where in the world is Jesus?” “Where on earth is he?”

This story isn’t told in the other gospels. Luke uses the story to transition from the story of Jesus’ birth to the bigger story of Jesus’ ministry. Instead of staying with his parents for their journey home to Nazareth from the temple festival in Jerusalem Jesus stays behind.

The story gives us Jesus’ first words and they’re the words I suggest we focus on this morning – just in case we lose Jesus and struggle to find him.

We can perhaps all relate to the panic of losing someone in the crowd – so we can relate to what Mary and Joseph must have felt when they realised that Jesus was no longer with them. They thought he was walking back with their relatives or friends but he wasn’t to be found amongst them. They had to go back to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions.

Remember, this is the beginning of Luke’s gospel. What’s at the beginning of the gospel should remind us of what’s at the end and fulfilment of the gospel, and vice versa. In the end there is another walk – from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Two people walking along the road, talking together about what had happened  – and joined by a third person who turns out to be Jesus. At the beginning of the gospel there were two walking together only because one had separated himself from them. In the fulfilment of the gospel there are three only because one had joined the two.

This is the gospel of Jesus being found in the gospel of the lost and found.

In both stories it takes three days to find Jesus, and three days is a hell of a long time to have lost someone. It was in the breaking of the bread that Jesus had become known to the two disciples in Emmaus. Subsequently he is found in his speech of just four words: “Peace be with you” (24:36) and recognised in his wounds. And this is where Jesus has been found in the church ever since: in the breaking of bread, wherever the greetings of peace are heard, and in the wounds he bravely bears These are the places to look for Jesus. This is where we find Jesus.

Now, that’s a lot to say about the end of his life, particularly as it’s the fifth day of Christmas and we’ve still got the nativity set up in our homes and minds. But already at Christmas we have a birth as well as a death and resurrection. One draws attention to the other in Luke’s telling of them.

Back to the beginning with Mary and Joseph being cross with Jesus. “Son, why have you treated us like this?” And Jesus’s reply to them, “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” These are Jesus’ first words in the gospel of Luke. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But they didn’t know what he was saying to them.

This is the question I hope stays with us on this 5th day of Christmas, as we leave one secular year behind and are about to enter another – with fresh resolution to find Jesus wherever he may be – with a commitment to finding him and following him.
Where do we find Jesus?
Where do we find Jesus when we’ve lost him?
Where do we find Jesus when he’s stayed behind?
Why does he stay behind rather than going with us?

Mary and Joseph didn’t understand Jesus’ question. Luke tells us they didn’t understand what he was saying to them. Translators have struggled to capture Jesus’ meaning and have offered an alternative in the footnotes of the NIV – Did you not know I had to be about my Father’s business? But they thought he was in the family business – carpenters for the poor families of Nazareth – Joseph & Son.

But we don’t read the question “did you not know I had to be about my Father’s business? “. We read “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” The question is important because it is a question about where in the world Jesus can be found.

The translation in my Father’s house doesn’t quite seem right. Firstly it suggests the place Jesus can be found is so limited, and secondly it suggests Jesus can be found in a building and that leads us to churchianity rather than Christianity – with church buildings and the institution of church being the place to find Jesus when we know there are so many who love Jesus who’ve not joined a church.

Does this work as a question of Jesus for all his followers, for those who’ve lost him and those looking for him? “Did you not know you’d find me in what my Father is building?” Or, “did you not know you’d find me in whatever my Father is building?” Is that the guiding question? Is that the question to guide our search? As we build our resolution for the New Year, is that the clue to intensify our search for Jesus in what his father, our father, is building?

A couple of chapters further on in Luke’s gospel we come to what is called The Nazareth Manifesto when Jesus read in the synagogue in Nazareth from Isaiah the words, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” He commented afterwards, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

The word manifesto  means showing. Here is Jesus showing what he is about. He is about his father’s business. He is in whatever his father is building. It is on that building site we will find him.

They’ve built a shrine for Jesus in Bethlehem. It shows baby Jesus lying in a pile of rubble in the devastation of his people while Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the wise men and ourselves search for him. It’s on the side of the altar at Bethlehem’s Lutheran Church. The pastor there, Munther Isaac, a prominent Palestinian peacemaker says that he wants the world to know that is what Christmas looks like in Palestine these days.

Where in the world is Jesus? Where on earth is he? These questions going through the minds of Mary and Joseph go through our minds too.

This is where to find Jesus, in the devastation, wherever there is oppression and suffering, captivity and blindness. 

He’s in the news – in the good news for the poor.
He’s in the sharing of bread.
He’s in the making of peace.
He’s among the wounded.
That is where to find him.

We need look no further.

Taking the unsweetened Christmas story into our resolutions

David Herbert3 Comments

This sermon was prepared for the first Sunday after Christmas when I suspect many are tired of Christmas and want to get back to normal. We have to hope we don’t – go back to normal, that is – because then the “lowly” and demeaned are left out as normal. It is to them, the likes of the shepherds and Mary and Joseph, that the glory of God takes us. The gospel text is Luke 2:15-21.

This week, the danger is that life will get back to normal, that we will go back to our old ways, to the old gods which hold our thoughts, and that this coming year, 2024 will be just like any other year with its low expectations and vague hopes for world peace, a lottery win a nice holiday and just getting by.

But if we go back to normal won’t Mary’s pain have been in vain? Time turns on Jesus’s birth. There was a time for us “before Christ”, and there is time after his birth, a new time, the time when we know God’s favour – the day of the Lord, the years anno domini – the time that will surely never be the same again.

I suspect that those who will be glad to “get back to normal”, relieved it’s all over will have imbibed too much sugar or tried to do too much.

How much sugar we take with our Christmas is a good question. The way most people know the Christmas story is through sugar-coated carols and cards. Christmas can get so sweetened that we have difficulty getting the real flavour of Christmas as presented, unsweetened, by the gospel writers, Matthew, Luke and John.

There’s usually a “free from” aisle in our supermarkets these days. I suggest that we keep this aisle in church as a free from aisle. Free from sugar and syrup so that we can get into the meaning of Jesus’ birth. Luke, Matthew and John didn’t tell these stories lightly or sweetly. They tell them deeply, from the depths of a whole community’s memory and experience. And they tell their stories darkly – there is a dark reality to all the elements of their stories. We need to feel their weight, not their lightness. We need to feel their weight to grow in worship, resilience and love for the lowly and the stranger.

Our gospel this morning begins after the angel left the shepherds. An angel had appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them. The angel brought good news to them that was to cause great joy for all people. A child, wrapped in cloth, lying in an improvised cot was the sign. The great company of the heavenly host join the angel and the shepherds. They praise God for the news singing at the top of their voices, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests”.

This morning’s gospel begins with the shepherds deciding to go to Bethlehem to see for themselves what God had made known to them. They went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. They made known what they’d been told about the child. Their hearers were amazed and Mary treasured their words and pondered them in her heart.

With Mary we treasure their words and ponder them in the heart of the church. But, please, no sugar because if we put sugar in we miss the point that Luke is here making as he paints the picture of those on whom God’s favour rests, around whom God’s glory shines and through whom, and for whom, God chooses the way of saving the world that is lost.

God’s glory shines around the shepherds. These were men who lived out in the fields, on the wasteland around Bethlehem on land which was no good for anything else than grazing sheep. They were there in all weathers, warding off wolves and thieves, working nights, protecting the lives of their sheep, their livelihood – doing the work which was to inspire Jesus’s own self understanding of being the good shepherd. They were an underclass, living rough. Around them the glory of God shines. The press release of the birth isn’t carefully planned for maximum impact in the corridors of power, but is focused in the isolation of these shepherds.

The sweetened versions of the Christmas story, the sweetened Nativity, can never convey the darkness and will always shy away from the poverty. It is the unsweetened versions, given to us by the gospel writers which shows us where God’s favour rests – around the shepherds, on Joseph (a poor artisan carpenter in an obscure village) and Mary – a young girl whose song of praise Jesus will have heard growing up. In her song, the song we know as Magnificat she praises God for looking “with favour on the lowliness of his servant”.

Lowly is the collective noun for those who have been demeaned. The word lowliness is used throughout the Bible to denote misery, pain, persecution and oppression. In our unsweetened version of Jesus’ birth story, Mary embodies the experience of her people, the Jews – their whole history threaded with misery, pain, persecution and oppression. She knew God’s favour rests there, with her people – and those who have joined Mary have come to realise he favours all like her, all those in misery, pain, persecution and oppression. The glory of God is all about them – Mary, Joseph, the shepherds – and all the lowly who make up the extended holy family, and those who want to relate to them as relatives. The love of God is for them – to turn life round in their favour.

Poet W H Auden puts these words into the mouths of the shepherds in his Christmas Oratario For the Time Being:

We never left the place where we were born,
Have only lived one day, but every day

Have walked a thousand miles yet only worn
The grass between our work and home away.

Lonely we were though never left alone.
The solitude familiar to the poor
Is feeling that the family next door,
The way it talks, eats, dresses, loves, and hates,
Is indistinguishable from one’s own.

Tonight for the first time the prison gates
Have opened.
Music and sudden light
Have interrupted our routine tonight,
And swept the filth of habits from our hearts.
O here and now our endless journey starts.

We’ve come to the end of the year, the end of the Christmas holidays is in sight. We may be relieved it’s all over – we have, after all, consumed far too much sugar. 

But, let’s not go back to normal. 

Let’s join the shepherds just as their endless journey starts when they find a baby wrapped in cloths, lying in a manger – the sure sign that starts us off. 

Let’s join Mary treasuring the words of the angels and pondering their words in our hearts. 

Let’s join those who are demeaned, those who are lowly. 

Let’s make our resolutions for the new year, for new time, a resolution everyday undergirded with daily prayer to join with them; those who suffer misery, pain, persecution and oppression.

Renowned black preacher and theologian Howard Thurman has this to say:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

How about that for our new year’s resolution? How about that as resolution for the rest of our lives? That is coming alive in the unsweetened story of Jesus’s birth and being part of God’s favour and glory.

The gospel of the day – Luke 2:15-21

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’

So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.