What a strange child! (Luke 2.41-52)
“What a Strange Child!” (Luke 2.41-52)
Eastminster United Presbyterian Church, Christmas 1C (December 30, 2018)
Tom James
The movie Home Alone is considered a Christmas movie, even though its themes have nothing to do with Christmas. The McCallister family is about to take a trip to Paris over the Christmas holidays, and they accidentally leave behind their young son, Kevin (played by McCauley Culkin), who had been banished to the attic the night before for acting up. The movie is a comedy because it tracks Kevin’s hilarious successes in fending off would-be burglars who come to learn that he is “home alone.” But if there is a tinge of pathos in the movie, it is in the mixture of panic and guilt that we see in Kevin’s mother, played by Catherine O’Hara, as she learns that she has left Kevin home by himself, and as she tries to orchestrate a quick return from Paris.
I’ve never been a mother, of course, but I have been and still am a mother’s son, and I have wondered many times about how sons cause mothers worry. Sons seem to be perfectly equipped, in many ways, to create worry in mothers.
Jesus was no exception. And we can well imagine the worry, the mixture of panic and guilt, felt by Mary as she cried out to stop the caravan and turn it around, and as she searched for Jesus in the big city, perhaps yelling out orders for family members and friends to look in the market, or the carpenter’s shop, or at so-and-so’s house.
In the ancient world, it was quite common to tell stories about the unusual infancy or childhood of legendary or heroic figures. It was as if to say, “look at how God—or the gods—have blessed this person from the very beginning with strength, or with wisdom, or even with magical ability.” In some ways, this story fits that mold, but on the other hand, there isn’t anything superhuman about the twelve-year-old Jesus we find in this story. A careful reading of these verses doesn’t indicate any kind of inexplicable intelligence or wisdom of Jesus as he sat in the temple with the learned men. We sometimes get the idea from the story that Jesus was actually instructing them, but the text doesn’t say that. Instead, it simply says that Jesus’ answers were remarkably good. It was a common teaching method in the ancient world to have students respond to questions, just as it is today. And Jesus performed well as a student. He didn’t teach the rabbis—but he did learn from them, gobbling up as much knowledge as he could, so motivated that he was a standout among the young students the rabbis were likely teaching. We can think of this as a bar mitzvah class or a confirmation class, where Jesus emerges as one of the best students because he is the most motivated, perhaps among the brightest, and, we can imagine, among the best listeners to what the rabbis have to say to him.
What was maybe a little unusual about Jesus, though not unheard of, is that he wanted to be “in school,” if you will, at all. After all, this was not his home. It may have been the best place to find a top-shelf rabbi, but it wasn’t where his friends were, or where his own bed and his own mother’s cooking would have been waiting for him at the end of the day. The unusual thing is that he was so irresistibly drawn to a unique opportunity to learn. It was time for vacationing, for kicking back and relaxing, maybe taking in a little sight-seeing, storing up images and anecdotes to impress your friends back home—not sitting with a bunch of stuffy rabbis and learning Torah!
They found him after three days looking. Mary once again had her child. The panic was over, though maybe not the guilt. The end of the story gives us a very interesting, and familiar, detail—we are told that Mary pondered these things in her heart. Sound familiar? It’s the same thing we find in the Christmas story itself, actually just earlier in this very same chapter. Mary pondered these things in her heart. It seems that this is her typical response in Luke. She pondered things in her heart. And, indeed, there was a lot to ponder! There were hardships, having to find sleep in a barn. There were wonders, a mysterious star, shepherds, and angels. There were frightful prophecies about the deliverance of Israel that to a young Jewish mother at that time must have meant a future of warfare and danger. And there was above mystery woven through all these contradictory thoughts and emotions. And here, some twelve years later, though only a few verses in Luke’s telling, we find her pondering once again. In the wake of a frightful loss of a child and a city-wide search, with all of the self-questioning and self-doubting, with all of the frantic searching of memories to try and imagine where Jesus had been left and then where he might have gone, with all of the relief of having found him again, mixed with anger at him now for so nonchalantly and coolly greeting them, and, we can imagine, the pride at having found him with the rabbis, and them being clearly impressed with her son. All of this she ponders.
During Advent, I said that what makes Mary remarkable is the simplicity of her “yes” to God in the face of a future to come that she could not fully know. Well, now, as if by drips at first, things the future is beginning to arrive. Wonders are unfolding, a mother’s love and patience and faith are beginning to be tested, anxieties and fears are being felt, and a destiny of promise is just beginning to creep into her horizon of vision. And she ponders these things.
In Home Alone, McCauley Culkin’s character, Kevin, uses all kinds of ingenuity to set traps for the burglars, who as the movie progresses, become less and less interested in taking things and more and more interested in simply hurting Kevin. He is a little genius, it seems, and also more than a little bit cruel. Little Jesus is pretty sharp, too, and is cruel enough at least to be cool to his mother after she has turned the city upside down looking for him. But that’s pretty much where any similarity between the two of them ends. Jesus isn’t trying to protect himself and his domain. As he would do time and time again during his ministry some twenty years later, he is risking himself in order to venture into new territory. Jesus lingers behind, forsaking the protection of his family, as he would later cross angry seas, strike out into regions where he was a foreigner and not welcome, risk interaction with various kinds of social outcasts and hated persons, challenge authorities (including the rabbis!), and fail to utter a word in self-defense in the face of the crushing brutality of Roman justice. Mary couldn’t ponder these things yet, because they hadn’t yet happened—but I wonder if she couldn’t see them coming as she looked into the determined face of her little boy.
This slightly strange child, a source of wonder and bemusement to his mother, is going to bring all of that wonder to bear on the world, on you and me. We will feel the effects of his courage and his passion. We will be among the sheep of another flock that he gathers. Whether we are home alone, with the rabbis in the temple, at work, on vacation, in jail, laid up in the hospital, or on the road, in the bright lights of Christmastime or in its dull afterglow, Jesus reaches out to us and invites us to join his caravan, not back to the comforts of home in Galilee, but on journey of service, love, worship, and compassion.
Ever since my wife and I became ministers, we’ve had services to lead on Christmas eve, and so if we travel over the holidays it is not usually until after Christmas day has come and gone. So we spend Christmas on our couch, with unwashed hair, wearing our jammies, and with any luck napping at least once. It is not very exciting, but it is just what we need. But Jesus allows us just this little time of homely comfort before the caravan begins to gather, and the world beckons each of us once again. Our kids eventually get us off our couches, if nothing else does, and I wonder if there is isn’t an important lesson in that about the meaning of Christ’s coming. Even if he was left behind, Jesus’ childlike enthusiasm for the adventure of faith runs way ahead of Mary’s and Joseph’s, and it never wears off. To follow him, to be called by his name, is in a way to be led by a child, to learn once more to be a child, forsaking safety and security for the sake the joy of being a part of what God is doing in the world.
May we ponder these things as Mary pondered them. May the wonder of new life capture our attention and our hearts. In the name of God, our creator and redeemer. Amen.
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