FCPC Sermon Out With The Old, In With The New December 27, 2009 Jodi Lingan. Colossians 3: 12-17; Luke 2: 41-52

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1 FCPC Sermon Out With The Old, In With The New December 27, 2009 Jodi Lingan Colossians 3: 12-17; Luke 2: Our Gospel lesson this morning is from Luke 2: 41-52; it is the story of Jesus as a boy in the Temple. Right before this story we are told of how he was brought to the Temple when he is eight days old; immediately following Luke jumps right to John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness. In the entire Bible, from the time he is eight days old to the beginning of his public ministry in his thirties, we are told of only one day of Jesus' life: this one. Clearly there is something here that Luke wants to make sure we know. Devout Jews would make the trip to Jerusalem year after year for the Feast of the Passover (when God spared the Jews from the angel of death). The trip took them about 4-5 days of walking each way. It was also tradition for Jews to take their sons to the Temple the year before their Bar Mitzvahs, which is also part of the reason for Mary s and Joseph s journey this time. Listen now for the Word of God. Reading of the Gospel: Luke 2:41-52 There is this great word I learned my first class in seminary: pericope. I love this word it just rolls off the tongue. Although the spellcheck on my computer insists on continuing to change it to periscope so if I inadvertently refer to the periscope in the Gospel lesson today, you will know why. But anyhow.a pericope is a story within a story. That is what we have with today s Gospel you can easily see the obvious story: boy Jesus in Temple, parents lose him, come back and find him. But it is 1

2 often harder to find the story within the story. Sometimes the Bible can be like an ingenious mystery where the clues are all there, you know the answer is staring you in the face, but it just remains maddeningly obscure until the light bulb (aka the Holy Spirit) comes on. We clearly know this is a very important story based on the fact that it is the only one we have about Jesus as a boy in four Gospels that were written to make sure we knew about the life of Jesus. But we have to work a bit at the pericope, the story within this story. Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the Temple as a baby in accordance with Jewish Law, they are now taking their twelve year old son to the Temple, again in accordance with Jewish Law, and we are told they also go every year. They go because they are devout Jews. So why do you go to church? Because you feel guilty if you don t? Because your mom or dad makes you? Because you re looking for some sort of spiritual nourishment that will help make sense out of the confusion of your world? Because together as members of the body of Christ we belong to each other? Actually these are all good reasons to varying degrees. I can tell you why Jesus went to church: because the Bible says his family went as usual. It was according to the custom. Even though there is 2

3 nothing else written about young Jesus in the scripture, we know that he grew up with parents who made it a habit of going to church. I can also tell you why people stop going to church it s hard! Church is much more than bricks and mortar it is us, the people. So we can say that going to church is also being the church. And it s hard to be patient and kind and full of compassion.all of the time. It s hard to be meek and humble and ready to forgive..all of the time. It s really hard to love your neighbor as yourself. Just ask the Colossians. In our earlier reading today Paul and Timothy are writing to the church in Colossae. In the verses just prior to what we read, they are telling the congregation to throw out their old, bad ways of the world which keep them from being genuine Christians. Paul takes them through the New Testament version of making new year s resolutions of throwing out the harmful, addictive ways of the world and bringing in renewed practices of authentic Christianity. He tells them to go back to practicing the Christian basics: compassion, kindness, patience, humility, meekness, and forgiveness. Sounds pretty straight forward but have you tried this? I mean like 24/7? This is not easy. It requires commitment, discipline, and 3

4 willingness. The good news is that we don t have to do this on our own. As we learn to love others, we join together with those on this same earthly journey, making the same mistakes, learning the same lessons. We are there for each other. This, my friends, is the church at its best fully functioning as the Body of Christ in a world that has forgotten the basics. In Traveling Mercies, an autobiographical book of essays on faith, Anne Lamott writes about why she made her young son, Sam, go to church. Sam is the only kid he knows of who goes to church, who is made to go to church two or three times a month. He rarely wants to. This is not exactly true. The truth is he never wants to go. What 7-year-old would rather be in church than hanging out with a friend? It does not help him to be reminded that once he's there he enjoys himself, that he gets to spend the time drawing in the little room outside the sanctuary, that he only actually has to sit still and listen during the short children's sermon. It does not help that I always pack some snacks, some Legos, his art supplies and any friend of his whom we can lure into our churchy web. It does not help that he genuinely cares for the people there. All that matters to him is 4

5 that he alone of all of his colleagues is forced to spend Sunday morning in church. You would think, noting the bitterness, the resignation, that he was being made to sit through a six-hour Latin mass. You might wonder why I make this strapping, exuberant boy come with me most weeks, and if you were to ask, this is what I would say. I make him because I can. I outweigh him by nearly l00 pounds..but that is only part of it. The main reason is that most of the people I know who are doing well psychologically, who seem conscious, who do not drive me crazy with their endlessly unhappy dramas, the only people I know who feel safe, who have what I want -- connection, gratitude, joy -- are people in community. And this funky little church. It is where I was taken in when I had nothing to give, and it has become in the truest, deepest sense, my home. My home-base. 1 This is the place Lamott receives what she calls spiritual chemotherapy and when she goes back out into a world of challenges she absolutely needs that connection to what she calls home in order to be healed, to be nurtured.a lesson she understands is so important for her son, that it must be instilled through habit.like brushing your teeth or looking both ways before you cross the street. 1 Lamott, Traveling Mercies. 5

6 Jesus the church losing then finding being home.growing in wisdom.we re getting close to the pericope. I would offer that sometimes we lose Jesus, leave him in the Temple. We don t mean to but we get so busy in our daily lives that we never give him a thought. Then, one day we wake up and realize that he is gone out of our lives, that we re alone. When that happens, we must go back to the place we left him. That is where we will find him, right there waiting for us at church, when we are being the church. Mary and Joseph instilled in Jesus the habit of going to church. He understood that in questioning and challenging and studying, in practicing his faith, he was at home, in community. And now..may the new year bring you every hope for keeping the habit of church. May you recognize it as the place where you are connected with everything that is true and good and right in this world and the next. May you understand church as so much more than bricks and mortar. May you know that when you practice kindness, compassion, humility, meekness, and patience you become the church May you not leave in the Temple what is most precious and dear to you And may you always know that Emmanuel, which means God with us, is your companion on the journey. 6