I Samuel 2: 18 – 20, 26 / Psalm 148 / Colossians 3: 12 - 17 / Luke 2: 41 – 52
This is the homily given at Flohr’s Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA) in McKnightstown, Pennsylvania on Sunday, December 29, 2024 by Fr. Gene Tucker.
“GROWING IN
FAVOR WITH GOD AND WITH OTHERS”
(Homily
text: Luke 2: 41 – 52)
When
we think about Jesus’ coming among us, and about His ministry, it might be
tempting to think that He came, possessed of all the maturity, learning and
understanding of an adult.
But
Luke reminds us, in this morning’s Gospel text, that Jesus came and that He
grew, matured, learned and increased in “favor with God and others”[1] as His life unfolded.
Moreover, Luke provides us with a detailed account of Jesus’ birth in chapter
two, reminding us that He came as a vulnerable infant, in need of the
protection of His earthly parents.
This
morning, we capture the only glimpse we have of Jesus’ childhood[2], that time between His birth
and the beginning of His ministry. We find Him in the Temple in Jerusalem, age
twelve, engaging in a question-and-answer session with some of the teachers
there. Luke tells us that those who witnessed this give-and-take were “amazed”
at His understanding and His answers.
Jesus
undoubtedly had a good foundation in the Law of Moses (Torah), for his earthly
parents were faithful in making an annual visit to the Temple in Jerusalem each
year for the Feast of Passover. It’s probably logical to think that Jesus was
taught the precepts of Torah as His life unfolded.
Perhaps,
along the way, as His years increased, He also learned a lot from observing
what was happening in the society of the time.
Though
we don’t know for sure, we might be able to draw some conclusions about the
things He learned if we look at some of the recurrent themes in His teaching
and in His interaction with others.
Let’s
explore some of those themes:
Clean
vs. unclean: Apparently,
God’s people in the time of our Lord’s earthly ministry were preoccupied with
what (or who) was clean, and what (who) was not. Consider, for example, Jesus’
interaction with the leper who asked for healing (Matthew 8: 1 – 4). Jesus
reaches out and touches the sick man. By the reckoning of the time, when Jesus
touched the man, He, too, became unclean. Unclean people could not enter the
Temple in Jerusalem. Nor could those who had skin conditions, or were lame.
Unclean
people were often excluded from society…think of the lepers who were forced to
live outside the community.
Outward
appearance and religious observance vs. inner righteousness before God: Jesus
calls the Pharisees and the scribes “whitewashed tombs” that are “full of dead
men’s bones”[3] to describe their preoccupation with outward appearance.
In
a similar fashion, John the Baptist leaves the Temple and the possibility that
He, too, could serve as a priest there, as his father did, to go into the
wilderness to proclaim a baptism of repentance for sin. John’s concern is for
inner holiness, rather that an outward, going-through-the-motions sort of
religious practice that may have been common in the Temple.
Corruption
is a factor in this concern. Consider that it is the Pharisees, the scribes and
the priests who conspire to kill Jesus, because His ministry and His popularity
were beginning to pose a threat to their positions and prerogatives.
God’s
blessings and God’s curses: The common belief seemed to be
that, if a person was healthy and was well-off, then that must be because they
were doing all the “right stuff”. God had blessed them because of their
righteous living. Conversely, the opposite was also true: If a person was sick
or was poor, then the conclusion must be that God had withdrawn His blessing
from their lives. (See the account of Jesus’ healing of the man born blind in
John, chapter nine. There, we find those who are seeking a reason for the man’s
blindness ask if it was his parents’ sin, or his, that was the cause.)
But
the Lord tells the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus[4] to counteract this sort of
thinking: It is poor Lazarus that finds favor with God, while the rich man is
thrust out of God’s presence.
The command to love: Inherent in many of the threads we’ve been exploring in this homily is the requirement to love God with all of one’s heart, soul and mind, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself.[5]
Love
bridges gaps. Love enables one to forgive another. Love cares for the welfare
of another.
We
who are followers of Jesus, His modern-day disciples, are called to be
concerned about each and all of these things, things that formed a consistent
concern of the Lord’s ministry.
We
are called to love; we are called to seek inner holiness, a holiness that is
matched by our outward action; we are called to seek out the lost, the outcast,
and the unlovable, in order to bring them into relationship with God and with
others.
So,
come Holy Spirit, open our minds to see the Lord’s call to us, to emulate His
concerns and to pursue them.
AMEN.
[1] Notice that this same phrase is used to
describe the prophet Samuel’s growth and maturity. See I Samuel 2:26.
[2] It is possible to come to the conclusion
that the visit of the Magi, as is found in Matthew 2:1 – 15, happened when
Jesus was no longer an infant, but a very young child, for that is the word we
find in Matthew 2:11.
[3] Matthew 23:27 - 28
[4] See Luke 16:19 – 31. This parable is one
that Luke, alone, provides us.
[5] Matthew 22:37
