1st Sunday after Epiphany + Luke 2:41-52 + January 7, 2018

Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Mary and Joseph have been frantically searching Jerusalem for three days. After celebrating the Passover in the holy city, as the Lord commanded through Moses, Joseph and Mary set off on their journey home. They’re travelling in a large caravan of worshipers who are heading north toward Nazareth. Jesus was such a good natured boy that they assume He is with his friends or distant relatives that are part of the caravan. It isn’t until the end of the first day’s journey that His parents realize He’s missing. They experience one of every parent’s worst nightmares. They have no idea where their son is. Therefore they have no idea if He’s even safe. No one probably wants to admit it, but this is something that happens to every parent at one point or another. Except Mary and Joseph’s anxiety have another angle to it. It’s not just their own son whom they’ve lost. Their child is the only begotten Son of God in human flesh. It’s God’s Son who they’ve lost! Mary had received this great honor of being the mother of God. Joseph was chosen by God to be the guardian of Jesus. These are great and wonderful responsibilities that have been given to them . . . and they lose Jesus. They head back to Jerusalem. They look down every street. They retrace their steps. Finally, on the third day they look in the place they should’ve looked first: the temple, the house of the Lord, the place of which David sang in Psalm 26:8, “LORD, I have loved the habitation of your house, And the place where Your glory dwells.” There they find their Son, “sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions” so that that “all who heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers.”

Mary forgets for a moment who her Son is and asks what any mother would ask when they find their child in a place where they’re not supposed to be: “Son, why have you done this do us? Look, your father and I have sought you anxiously.” “We’ve looked all over the place for you. You’ve worried us sick. Why have you done this to us?” At that moment, Mary has forgotten everything she heard some thirteen years before about the boy. When the angel Gabriel appeared to her He told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). The angel told the shepherd on the night of the child’s birth, “For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). Christ the Lord, or Messiah God. The angel told the shepherds the same thing Gabriel had told Mary at the Annunciation. The shepherds told Mary all they had seen and heard from the angel and “But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). But in this moment of anxiety and worry, in the day’s journey back to Jerusalem and the time it took them to realize they should look in the temple, all of those things Mary knew to be true were far from her mind. She let her fear and anxiety get the better of her, as any mother would in this situation. But in Jesus’ response to her He gently reminds her exactly who He is and what He’s come to do.

He says, “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” Mary and Joseph both knew that Joseph was not Jesus’ father. When Joseph had found out that Mary was pregnant he had devised a plan to divorce her quietly to save her reputation and her life. It was only because the angel of the Lord appeared to Him in a dream and told him that the pregnancy was not illicit, but was of God. But after twelve years of raising the child it’s understandable that both of them would come to think of Joseph as his father. In this mild rebuke, Jesus brings Mary back to all the words given to hear during the Christmas season. His words are a gentle reminder to her that He is the Son of God the Father and that as His only begotten Son, He has come to earth not to tend to His own business, or even the business of his earthly parents, but His heavenly Father’s business. That’s why He’s in the temple. He’s being about His Father’s business because that was the place where the Father went about His work of teaching the people and sacrificing for the people’s sins. It was in that place where God dwelled in mercy to forgive people their sins. It was in that place that the Levites taught the people the Word of God so that they believe God’s promises.

Jesus sits among the teachers of the Scripture, the doctors of the Law, and listens attentively. This shows Christ’s humility and His true humanity. He is the Son of God. He is the Word of God made flesh. He is the one who gave Moses the Law on Sinai’s heights. And He is older than any of the aged men at whose feet He sits, for He is “from everlasting” as the prophet Micah wrote (Micah 5:2). Yet He takes on the form of a servant and hears the doctors of the Law. Though He submits to their authority, the authority which He as God gave to them, He also gently teaches them the truth about the Messiah, who He would be and the work that the Christ would accomplish. Error had long crept into the Old Testament church, as it does in every age of the world. Men were teaching the Pharisaical notion that man can be justified and righteous before God by His own works. Others were holding to false ideas about the Messiah, that He would come as political force to drive out the Romans and restore Israel to her glory days under David and Solomon. Many thought He would throw off the yoke of Roman rule and bring about a worldly kingdom again. Others taught that the sacrifices forgave sins, rather than faith in God’s promised Messiah, so that if one sinned one could mechanically bring their sacrifice and, by working the work, have their sin forgiven without repentance and faith in one’s heart. The boy Christ begins His teaching ministry here as a twelve year old boy, because that is what He has come to do. He has come to teach the true doctrine of God: That men are only righteous before God by believing and trusting in His promises, like Abraham; that men the Messiah’s kingdom would be spiritual and not political; and that the sacrifices that were smoldering at that very moment in the temple courtyard was given to Israel to teach them look forward to the perfect sacrifice that God would make for all man’s sins. The prophet Malachi had the Messiah would “sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi, And purge them as gold and silver, That they may offer to the LORD An offering in righteousness” (Malachi 3:3). He begins that already at this tender age.

He must be about His Father’s business. He assumed human flesh and dwelt among us for no other reason than to fulfill the will of His Father in heaven. And will of the Father in heaven is that He should teach men the truth of His Law and the Gospel so that men repent of their sins and despise them, and believe the promise that God is merciful to all who flee to Him for refuge from their sins and God’s wrath. The will of His heavenly Father was that Christ should be the sacrifice for the sins of the entire world, that He would die upon the altar of the cross to satisfy God the Father’s wrath against each one of us for our many sins of thought, word, and deed. God the Father loved the world, for He is love, and that love caused Him to send His only begotten Son in the world to bear our sin upon the cross, so “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:16-17). This is His Father’s business, the salvation of sinners through repentance and faith in Him. St. Paul writes to the Galatians that “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). The Father’s business is adopting sinners to be His sons, so that all who believe the gospel may share in the eternal inheritance that Christ possesses by nature of His being the Only Begotten Son of God.

Because “you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26), this means that you ought to be about the Father’s business as well. That means being in your Father’s house, just as Christ was when He was twelve, and as He was throughout His earthly life. For in this holy house you hear Christ teaching through His Word purely preached. In this holy house Christ forgives your sins through absolution and through the Sacrament. In this house, which is only holy because of the Word that is taught here, and not because it has the title “church” on the door, Christ still teaches sinners the truth of God’s Word so that they can know their gracious God and Father.

Being about His Father’s business, for Christ, meant sacrificing Himself for the sins of the world You don’t need to make sacrifice to atone for your sins. That was the business of Christ. But you are to make a sacrifice. Paul says in today’s Epistle lesson: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1). You are to be a living sacrifice. You are to present your bodies to God your heavenly Father for His service. Sacrifice always involves death though, so part of being a living sacrifice is that you mortify your flesh. That means you “by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body” (Romans 8:13). You are “reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts” (Romans 6:11-12). As living sacrifices, daily putting off the old man with its sinful desires, you don’t conform your thinking to the pattern of this sinful world, but that you “be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2). The renewing of your mind happens by faith, when you meditate on the promises of the Gospel, that you have a merciful Father because of Jesus Christ; and when you contemplate the gift of divine sonship that Christ has given you. He renews your mind through His Word, taught by His servants, in His house. This is where our Father is doing His business, that is why we’re here, for the Father’s business is our salvation and the strengthening of our faith unto life everlasting.

May the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding guard your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.