Thursday was Epiphany, which is the twelfth
day after Christmas. So Christmas season is officially over and we
won't be singing any more carols till next year. It is time to put
away the tree, and to look forward. It seems sad to let it go, and
we wish sometimes that the joy and good will of Christmas could last all
year. Yet we know that somehow that wouldn't work. We have to
move on from even the best of times. And what about the Christmas message?
In the story of Jesus' birth, we heard about how God came down from heaven
and visited us in the most personal and easily understandable way.
We are rightly shy about trying to understand why God has done what he has
done, but if we think about it, it is hard to imagine a better way in which
God could have given his message of his love and peace to the world than
through the birth of Jesus in the manger. If you had to think up a
living picture of God reaching down to us, one that would be able to reach
every culture and nation, every level of intelligence and education, every
age, every personality, could you come up with a more universal sign for
the world than a human baby? We have all been babies and most of us
have been up close to them! Babies evoke in us a love and a sense of
worth and even wonder that make them a perfect picture of God's love among
us. It is no wonder that the Christmas story has the most universal
appeal of any part of the Christian faith. And yet perhaps we have
to move on from this part of our faith as well. The Christmas story
has the power to convey to us the real and close intimacy of God's love for
us like nothing else. But perhaps even this message is not the whole
of the Christian faith.
These are the kind of questions that our Scripture readings for today address.
And the gospel goes right to the heart of the matter in the most wonderful
way because it shows the baby Jesus growing up. Mary and Joseph go
up to Jerusalem to take part in the Passover feast. When the feast
is over they join the caravan that is going back to Nazareth and they think
that Jesus is somewhere among the crowd. It was only after a day's
journey that they discovered that he wasn't there. They went back and
searched for him frantically. They found him in the Temple, questioning
and being questioned by the religious teachers of the day. Understandably
upset, Mary speaks to him in what I've always thought is a very gentle way:
"Son, why have you treated us so? behold your father and I have been
searching for you in great distress." But Jesus gives an answer which
begins to show that along with the normal character of a twelve year old
boy, he is something more. "Why were you looking for me? Did
you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"
There are many questions about all this, but notice how perfectly it speaks
to our moving forward from Christmas and the Christmas message. Here
is the baby Jesus, but he is not a baby any more. Here is the Saviour,
but not in the easily accessible form of an infant any more. He still
brings the message of God's love and peace for us, but he is no longer lying
in a cradle, to be silently adored. He is talking and discussing with
the religious teachers. He is upsetting the course of day to day life,
worrying his parents, straining the bonds of loving affection, so that he
can seek the wisdom of God in the Scriptures. This is a more challenging,
less immediate view of the Saviour but it is one that we have to embrace
as we move forward from Christmas. I had a friend who said that when
one of his daughters was about 9 months old he found their relationship so
perfect that he wished he had a pill that would keep her at that age forever!
And there is something in every parent that would like to keep their children
in that wonderful lovable childhood state. That is an emotion that
parents know we have to let go of in order to let something bigger and better
happen. And perhaps there is something in us as well that would like
to hold on to the Christian faith in its simplest form - as profound and
yet simple as the Christ-child in the manger. But this too is something
that we have to let go of in order to let something bigger and better happen.
The minister in my church when I was growing up was a man named Dr. Wood.
He was a very mild priestly kind of person. But one thing would make
him quite angry. People would come up to him at the end of the service
and shake his hand and say, "Do you know, I got more out of the children's
talk than out of the sermon." I suppose he tried to be gracious at
the time, but he used to say, "Adults need an adult faith, and especially
in the modern world." The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews must
have been experiencing the same frustration when he wrote: "For though
by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again
the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid
food." It is really all there in the contrast between the Christmas
gospel and the gospel for this Sunday. Who would not in a way prefer
to think about the Christ-child, innocent and perfect in the manger, than
the twelve year old Christ, discussing with the religious teachers and amazing
them with his answers? How much easier it is to love the softly breathing
baby, than the dawning adolescent, who leaves his parents not knowing where
to find him, and then tells them that they should have sought him where his
true home is. But the baby and the adolescent are the same Christ.
And we will not be true to the message of Christmas if we do not go on to
relate to him in a more thoughtful, a more questioning, a more mature and
informed way.
In the old paintings of Jesus and the saints, their heads are surrounded
by a halo, a circle of light. It was a way of getting across the idea
of the holiness that shines through the person. In the paintings of
Jesus, he would look very different in pictures of his birth, and his adulthood.
But the halo that would be around his head would be the same as a baby and
as an adult and that says something very true about him. His holiness
remained the same, but as a man he grew up and that meant leaving behind
the tender lovableness of a baby, so that he could think and question and
learn and become wise. In our Christian walk, we need to keep returning
to the tender simplicity of the Christmas message and that is why we celebrate
Christmas each year. But we also need to move forward when the time
is come, and think and question and learn and become wise. The Christmas
message is all about God coming to us, becoming one of us, sharing our lives
as they are. But if we take that message for granted, if we try to
hold on to it without changing we will lose it. Just as Joseph and
Mary found themselves without Jesus and had to go looking for him, we sometimes
find that by holding on to our simple ideas about him we have lost touch
with him. We then need to take our place beside him in God's house, questioning
and learning, so that we may come to maturity in our Christian walk.
