Sermon Sunday December 29, 2024
Rev. Norman A. Michaud
“Panic in a Parent’s Heart”
Both parents and children may have shared the tension presented in today’s reading from Luke. Luke’s account of the twelve-year-old Jesus is exclusive to Luke. It offers a glimpse of Jesus as a child and concludes by echoing Samuel 2:26, 2:26: “Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and with the people.”
Being devout and respectful Jews, Joseph, Mary, their relatives, and friends travel on their pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship and praise God at the Temple. Herod’s Temple would have been shining white marble with gold and reflected the light throughout Jerusalem. Those reading or hearing Luke’s Gospel would recall the Temple’s glory and know Rome had destroyed it. The destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem and the resulting Diaspora would have been familiar to Luke’s audience. In Christ, the power of God has been restored, not by war but through the Prince of Peace.
By the time Luke wrote his Gospel between 70 and 100 CE, the gleaming grand Temple and all of Jerusalem would still lie in rubble. Jerusalem itself would be a wasteland. This destruction by Roman Legions reminded every one of what insubordination and rebellion cost the Hebrew nation. Jews and Gentiles heard the Good News through the New Covenant Jesus had brought to all, Jews and Gentiles alike.
After visiting the Temple, Joseph and Mary head back to Nazareth. They realize their 12-year-old son, Jesus, is no longer among the entourage. At first, they consider that he is somewhere among the caravan heading home. However, their anxiety grows, and they begin to seek him out and quickly realize he is not with their fellow pilgrims.
How many of us have shared this experience? Whether attending a playground or a parade, a parent’s heart begins to pound. There is a feeling of anger with the child, but the anger turns into anxiety immediately, followed by self-incrimination. “How did this happen? Where is my child?”
The panic will quickly turn into hysteria. Sometimes, the terror is justified. We do our best to teach our children about “Stranger Danger.” School teachers reinforce this with students, and I recall head counts during school trips and fire drills. An unaccounted-for student would cause a stop to all activities until the missing student was found and accounted for. Teachers feel the same emotions as parents when they discover a missing student. Their professional credibility and their employment are on the line. Profound relief happens when a teacher locates the missing student.
Once, on a field trip to Waldon Pond, three of our students were missing as we began to board our buses to return to Kittery. My colleague and friend, Steve Crowley, and I went on a search for the three boys. Near Waldon Pond, there is a replica of Thoreau’s one-room cottage. We found the boys, who chose to share a cigarette, in the shelter of Thoreau’s cottage. The boys had no idea what anxiety they had caused. They apologized profusely. Steve and I were so glad to find them. We returned to Kittery that Friday evening, and after the weekend, we chose not to report them to the administration on Monday. The boys remained grateful and humble, and they never repeated their foolishness.
As a child, my mother took my sister, Margaret, and me to Boston before Christmas. We got to look at and wonder at Boston’s Christmas lights and decorations. We spent time with crowds watching the automatons at Jordan Marsh and Filene’s windows. Those Christmas-themed window displays moved and acted out the story of Christmas with nativity scenes, secular Santas, and carolers. It was magical. My mother also let us shop with her at these department stores at Christmas.
On one occasion, when I was eight, my mother, who was constantly challenged by time, left me in the Jordan Marsh toy department while she and my sister looked for gifts. I was occupied and happy, and I saw toys that I could never imagine existed. But she left Jordan Marsh and hit Filenes, which was next door.
When she came back with my sister, she was late. The department store had closed. The clerks in the toy department had called security. Two off-duty Boston police officers, who spoke with Irish brogues, escorted me to the basement and had me sit in a chicken-wired cage. At the same time, they tried to figure out what to do with me. While my mother and sister panicked outside the store, I was given a cup of black coffee in the cage by the police. I heard the officers speak of how children were often abandoned at Christmas time because parents could not afford to fulfill Christmas hopes and dreams. Sadly, this was not uncommon.
The officers spoke about me. One commiserated with the other about the shared experience that parents in that time, desperate at Christmas, often abandoned their children in these stores, and those children would be turned over to child welfare services. That is what they thought, and they had begun the procedure for child services to come for me.
They spoke about me as if I was not present. I began to feel terror and began to cry.
Somehow, my mother tracked down a cop on his beat, and my mother rescued me from the cage. She was furious, and her fury was about her embarrassment. There were many tears. However, she relaxed and asked what toy enthralled me the most on the long drive home. I talked about the hand-painted military figurines made in Germany. I told her about the Roman legionaries and the working catapult among the figures. And somehow, these appeared in a box I opened on Christmas Day. I received these for the successive three Christmases. I spent days of my pre-pubescent life playing with my military figurines and scenes. Such toys and models enthralled me. I constructed stories where the Indians fought for their rights.
In today’s story, Jesus’s relationship with his parents undergoes strain. He has simply chosen to stay in the Temple after they have headed home. Perhaps he got caught up doing something he found attractive. Maybe he wanted to assert his coming adulthood. As parents, we all know these pressures in preteens and teenagers. When our children test their autonomy, such challenges often lead to conflict.
Whatever the teenage Jesus’s motives, he asserts his coming adulthood in this passage. When Mary finds him in the Temple, he says, “Why were you searching for me?”
“Did you not know I must be in my Father’s house?”
Jesus’ parents do not grasp the levels of meaning that echo in their son’s coming life. He is their child, their son, and not yet the Son of Man, the Messiah.
The Temple is where others see something profound in Jesus that his parents do not understand. For Luke, the Temple truly is Jesus’ home; it is his “Father’s house.” Next Sunday, we will witness the Epiphany at the Baptism of Jesus.
When Joseph and Mary return to the Temple, they find Jesus among an expanded family beyond Nazareth. What happens when a child stops accepting what their parents tell them and finds teachers who speak to their talents and needs? We find extended families among friends, schools, churches, and even books.
In today’s reading, at the edge of Jesus’ adulthood, we see him exchanging ideas with teachers in the Temple. “This boy who was filled with wisdom as a child will increase in wisdom as he grows.” He is God’s child as well as Mary’s. His awareness of his true parentage comes to him in his Father’s house. He is truly the Son of God, Emmanuel.