Epiphany 1 2020
Luke 2:41-52
January 12, 2020
Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID
The holidays are finally over and for most people they are back into the normal daily routine. Memories and pictures of family trips. One of my favorite childhood memories center around these sorts of trips. Time to celebrate the holiday, practically a family reunion, lots to eat and do, and worship together.
Jesus and His family were no different. Time had come to celebrate the Passover and a family trip was planned to head to Jerusalem to celebrate the holiday. This wasn’t just a trip with Joseph, Mary, and Jesus though. A caravan from Nazareth, cousins, aunts and uncles, animals, all along for the about a 5 day trip covering approximately 65-70 miles. There could have been dozens of people travelling together, singing, playing, picnicking along the way. And so it really isn’t that strange that Jesus’ parents wander off without Him while He stayed in Jerusalem and don’t even notice.
Frantic parents looking for a lost child. The panic they must have felt. You can the imagine the conversation between Mary and Joseph when the realize that Jesus isn’t with them. You can practically imagine Mary’s motherly and stern’s wife voice, “Joseph, where’s Jesus? Why weren’t you watching him? You only had one thing do and now we can’t find our boy. Sorry honey, I thought he was with you.”
And so they go back to Jerusalem to look for Him. After three days they finally found Him, in the temple, sitting among the teachers, the doctors of the law, listening to them and asking them questions. Our Gospel reading presents a striking epiphany to show us that the Youth, listening to the teachers of the faith and asking questions for three days, clearly realized who He was and willing assumed His duty as the Savior from sin. It’s not that Jesus was asking all the right questions and seemed wise beyond His years. The people were amazed at His understanding and His answers. These Doctors of the Law, regardless of their scholarship and wisdom, can only marvel at the young Jesus. He is incomprehensible because He is God.
The boy teaching the teachers in the temple is the one true Son. Christ reveals Himself through His teaching. In a reversal of what we expect from a normal preteen adolescent, Jesus doesn’t seek autonomy. His home is with His Father. Jesus knows Himself to be the Father’s Son. And so when Mary and Joseph ask Him why He has treated them in this way, Jesus answers in a seemingly perplexed way, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house,” or maybe, “about My Father’s business?” Where else would He be but in His Father’s house and going about His Father’s business?
Where do you go to look for Jesus? Some try to find Him out in the wilderness, in nature, or even worse, within themselves. So many are looking for Jesus in all the wrong places. To summarize something Martin Luther once said, “A God who is everywhere is as good as a God who is nowhere unless He is a God who is somewhere for me.”
But you can only find Jesus in one place, and that is where He has promised to be found. Where else would Jesus be? The Psalmist says, “Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells” (Psalm 26:8). There is a reason we call our churches a house of the Lord. Where else would Jesus be but going about the Father’s business in His house. It is here that Jesus teaches us according to His Word and He feeds us with His body and blood. The most learned to the most ignorant, the proud and the humble alike, He schools us in His ways, in His will. The Spirit of the holy and righteous Son of God calls, gathers, and enlightens people by the Word, and only by the Word of Christ. And it is only the Word of Christ that sanctifies a home, a building, a family, a life to be the place of His abode as He does the work of His Father. It is only where the Word is God is taught and the Sacraments are administered that God builds His house. Where the Word is proclaimed and there are ears to hear, God builds His church out of sinners and dwells with them.
Even though Mary and Joseph didn’t understand what Jesus was saying, He still responded to them as an obedient child. Although He was a know it all goodie goodie as the omniscient and perfectly righteous Son of God, He didn’t treat them with disrespect or look down upon them. He obeyed the divine Law and was submissive to them, honoring them perfectly according to the Commandment. As He did so, and as He grew up, He increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. Until upon the cross, where we see Jesus being the perfectly submissive Son to the will of His Father, of doing the work His Father had laid out for Him to do. It was on the cross that Christ’s humanity and humility is shown most clearly, and it was upon the cross that His divinity and His glory is revealed. Always the human Christ’s deity is epiphanied.
The mystery of this salvation lies in the perfect Son of God who comes down to earth that we might become sons of God through faith in Him, and that we too might increase in wisdom and stature in favor with God and man as we are conformed into the image of Christ. This growth and increase doesn’t come by going our way or with wandering away from Jesus. Rather, it comes from sitting at the feet of the Lord in amazement and awe at His Word, as He teaches.
We need to remember that our Lord expects of all His disciples this same devotion to the Father’s work and His house. As He gave His life, so we are to dedicate our time and strength and abilities, and even our life, to the advancement of God’s causes. We are so prone to forget the real purpose of our existence, to consider the making of a living and the accumulation of wealth and stuff instead or merely a means to the end of serving the Lord and our neighbors.
We have some important things to discuss today after church in our Voters’ Assembly Meeting. We are going to consider some direction and leadership at our school. We are going to discuss the stewardship of our church property and building and the use of its space for the glory of God and to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn from Him. For as Christians, our guidance, and direction and goal and motivation all lie in Jesus. We prayed today in the Collect of the Day for an epiphany of knowledge and power. We need the knowledge that we may perceive what we ought to do with regard to our spiritual interests, our responsibilities in everyday life, and the life of this congregation. But we also need power in order to do this, willingly, thoroughly, correctly, and faithfully. The source of this power is grace. For God is not only our teacher in regard to His will done among us, but also our helper as He works through us to accomplish His will.
Stay close to Jesus. Don’t go wandering off from Him, and seek Him where He wishes to be found: in His Father’s house going about His Father’s business, the business of your salvation and eternal life.