Home for Good

by David Sund, Lay Preacher
          All mighty and all loving God, we thank you for the gift of the scriptures.  Thank you for the image in today’s Psalm, of the sparrow that finds a home by you altar.  Thank you for the Gospel story of the boy Jesus, at home with you in your sanctuary; confident in his identity as your child.   In these next moments, by your Spirit, inspire in us a new, deeper longing to be at home in your presence.   May our hearts be ever restless until they rest in you.   Amen.

Today’s Gospel begins with a crisis.   There’s a missing child and there are panicking parents.   Stories like this can go in all sorts of directions.   On the one hand we have the ridiculous:  We’re just coming out of the Christmas season so it’s safe to say that if you didn’t watch it this year, you’ve seen or at least heard of the 1990 John Hugh’s film Home Alone! It was the first in a whole franchise of films that feature children who find themselves alone, facing challenges that are comedic rather than horrific.  At the other end of the spectrum are truly tragic stories that end up on the national news, with young faces on milk cartons and franticly shared posts on social media.    I can only imagine that a lost or missing child is a parent’s worst nightmare! 
 
I’m not a parent, but I do remember my days as an elementary school teacher.   At the end of my first year on the job, the headmistress had put me in charge of an all-school field trip to Plymouth Plantation.  There were some pretty rambunctious boys in the second grade, and I remember being stressed for days that there would be shenanigans (and there were).  I dreaded the possibility that someone would go missing (which didn’t happen).  I was stressed out about being the one responsible if anything went seriously wrong.    

 But I also remember being a lost child. I was a few days shy of turning five years old. The site of the mini-crisis is currently a brick-strewn empty lot in Turners Falls, down by the canal.   For a few years the old factory and warehouse complex was part of a chain of discount stores called Railroad Salvage.  But when I was a boy, that building was a retail space called Rockdale’s. My parents had taken us over there to buy tinsel garland and bring my brother and me to see the store Santa Claus.   I was plopped onto the ‘old’ gents lap first, and quickly hopped off after an interrogation regarding my good behavior or lack thereof.  My brother was next in line.  He was a toddler who showed signs of being an even more unwilling participant.   While the focus was on that drama, I was distracted by the adjacent toy department.    It didn’t take long for me to wander off and get turned around.   I think I only retain the memory because at the time, I quickly became anxious.   The space seemed cavernous and ominous. In my childish desperation it seemed like forever before my parents recovered me and bundled two cranky children and a big bag of tinsel garland out of Rockdale’s and into our old, white Ford Falcon station wagon.     

But back to today’s Gospel text:   There is nothing ridiculous about it.   There is nothing particularly hideous.   We discover, by the end of this morning’s story, that Jesus is neither lost, nor alone.   Even as a boy in an unfamiliar context, Jesus is more thoroughly in charge than Macaulay Culkin, even serenely confident and self-assured. 

The narrative’s context is a celebration of Passover.  Early in Luke’s gospel, there are repeated, subtle reminders that Mary and Joseph were devout, observant Jews.  Their piety sets up at least two previous narratives.   On is focused on Jesus’ circumcision, exactly as the law of Moses require.  Next, Mary’s and Joseph’s devotion is the motivation behind the story of Jesus’ presentation in the Temple. They were only there that day so that Mary could offer the sacrifices for her post-delivery purification rites. Their obedience blessed two seniors who had waited their whole lives for a glimpse of the Messiah.    

Of course there were those years of hiding in Egypt, to protect the child from Herod’s murderous intent.  But they finally returned to their faith-grounded lives in their home village of Nazareth.   Once again they could slide comfortably back into deeply ingrained traditions of religious observance. Luke’s matter-of-fact recounting of the Passover pilgrimage implies that it was appropriate for them to celebrate God’s great redemptive work.  For this particular Passover, they had gone with the flow, and rightly so, south to Jerusalem.  But when we pick up the narrative thread it’s just as everyone is packing up their holiday memories and heading home.  The benediction has been said and now it’s time to ‘get back to normal.’ Early spring in the Middle East is a lovely time of year and the weather would have made for pleasant traveling. The little family blended into the Nazareth Caravan. It felt comfortable to be making the trek alongside nephews and nieces, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, mothers and fathers, cousins, neighbors and friends.   Whole villages would travel together.  There was safety in numbers, and traveling companions allowed for helpful cooperation and encouraged a festive atmosphere.  Because the sexes traveled separately in these caravans it would be easy for each parent to assume that an out-of-sight child was with the other parent.  But once the caravan was a day’s walk from the capital, individual families separated to set up camp for the night and suddenly the perspective changes. One of the children is missing!  “Oh bother,” thinks one of the relatives, “how could Mary and Joseph lose track of their son!”  I imagine the red-faced couple staring at each other with that accusatory ‘parent face’ that telegraphs “Don’t look at me! I’m not the guilty one!  I assumed he was with you!”

Were Mary and Joseph just too used to having Jesus around?  He was the good kid, no nanny harness was required, he never broke the rules, was never careless with the emotions of others, never selfish or mean-spirited or untrustworthy. So it would have been easy for the couple to slip into that dangerous place I refer to as the ‘land of assumptions.’   The problem is that a whole world can come crashing down on you if you build that world on assuming too much.  On that first day out from Jerusalem I can imagine bout parents thinking, “Obviously, it’s only common sense that Jesus would stick with our home town crowd!  We’ve been making this pilgrimage for years and Jesus has never pulled a stunt like this!  How in the name of all that’s good and holy could Jesus throw a curve ball like this into our routine?”

But no matter what the couple thought, the story tells us, in verse 48, precisely how they felt: mistreated, and poorly used!   All their assumptions had resulted in a whole lot of trauma and inconvenience.   And maybe, there was even a bit of anger now that a perfectly good vacation had gone pear-shaped!     

When it comes to our daily lives with Jesus,   do we make assumptions and set agendas?  Do we settle into routines and cycles of cherished traditions and live in expectations of common sense?   Just like Mary and Joseph, do we willingly ease into spiritual assumptions that Jesus is right where we put him last, saw him last, met him last?  Surely Jesus can be found where we left him last Sunday, or in our last devotional reading or last prayer time?   The danger of assuming that God is predictable and passively cooperative will end up with us being as anxious and over-wrought as the young couple  who were forced to make an about face, walk against the tide of the departing worshipers, and start retracing their steps in search of their last shred of certainty!    

It’s almost an axiom that when we operate under the assumption that any day will go a certain way, God won’t sit, beg, or roll over on command.  I blush to admit that as an obsessive-compulsive control freak, I’m prone to set agendas for life, the universe and everything.  I plow ahead, assuming that Jesus is back there with the baggage, bringing up the rear, and maybe tidying up my messes like the clowns in parades that clean up after the elephants and Clydesdales. 

Today’s Gospel is a loving reminder, and gentle reprimand that Jesus is anything but bound by our routines and assumptions.   He can always be counted on to challenge my short-sight expectations and selfish demands.   Not because he’s a cosmic kill-joy, but because he always has our best interests at heart and loves us too much to allow us to plunge off the edge of the cliffs of cluelessness, assumptions and errant expectations.   

If only I could wrap my head around this truth, maybe I could avoid lots of frustrations and anxieties.  If I would only join Jesus in the temple, instead of tramping around in my mental market place, I could relax into the image taken from today’s Psalm.   I love that picture of God’s sacred space with infinite room available to every sparrow, yearning for a place to nest.   

In today’s text, Jesus’ choice to remain in Jerusalem and engage in Temple dialogue wasn’t intentionally hurtful to Mary and Joseph.   Luke assures us at the end of the narrative that Jesus’ choices were always praiseworthy, even as a yet-to-be-bar-mitzvahed boy.  At only twelve years old, Jesus was a year and a day away from the Jewish rite of manhood where he would choose into the label of “son of the covenant.” But he was self-aware enough to own this great, overarching compulsion to remain in God’s presence and embrace God’s purpose for his life even if it meant disappointing the humans in his life.  

When the missed son is discovered by his parents we’re given a glimpse of an astonishingly beautiful picture: The child Jesus isn’t painted as a shy, curious observer.   Instead, we see a voracious learner, totally engaged in spiritual exploration through interactive questioning.  The scene suggests an enthusiasm and passion for theological debate and clarification.  Jesus’ questions and answers are described as amazing the religious experts who dialogued with him.  His parents are astonished too, but they’ve brought their own anxious energy onto the stage.   The boy insists that their anguish isn’t reasonable. Jesus’ first recorded words are the questions, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”  Luke’s little story of a family vacation gone wrong gives us a great source of direction for a new year.  First, it reminds us to never assume we’re in the company of Jesus when in fact we may very well have left him out of our equations and assumptions altogether!  Looking at Mary, Joseph and Jesus, in this story, I think we’re presented with some clear contrasts that prompt this morning’s final questions. Where have we gone about our routines, made our assumptions, cherished our traditions and as a result, relegated Jesus to a place with the baggage, and assigned him a minor role in the drama while we assume starring roles?   Next, have we bothered to look for Jesus with the same passionate investment of parents seeking a missing child?   And lastly, do we make it our prayer that, like Jesus in the Temple, we become enthusiastic, voracious learners with the intent of sensing God’s presence, and embracing God’s good purpose for our lives?  ​

---