1st Sunday after Epiphany + Luke 2:41-52
In
the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
The
evangelists give us a few stories of the first months of Jesus’ life, but tell
us almost nothing about the childhood or early adult life of Jesus. Today’s
gospel lesson is the only glimpse we have of Christ before His baptism and
public ministry. And while in the early church curious individuals wrote
infancy gospels imagining what His early life might have been like, the few
texts we have of Christ’s infancy and today’s gospel tell us everything we need
to know. On the eighth day of His life He was circumcised according to the Law
of the Lord. On the fortieth day after giving birth, Mary goes to the Temple to
offer the sacrifices for own purification and to present Jesus in the Temple
according to the Law of the Lord. Jesus’ life, from the beginning, is lived
under Mosaic Law so it should come to no surprise when Luke tells us that Mary and
Joseph went up to Jerusalem every year for the Feast of the Passover. The Lord
commanded every male of Israel to appear before Him three times a year; at the
feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. This was His purpose. He was
born under the Law. He did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it.
What
makes this year’s trip to Jerusalem for Passover so different from the others
is what happened on the way back to Nazareth. The caravan of Jews heading north
gets a day’s journey away from Jerusalem when Mary and Joseph begin to look for
Jesus. Assuming He had been among His relatives they weren’t too concerned that
they hadn’t seen Him all day. But when they go looking for him they realize
that He’s not there. At that moment Mary is pierced through with every mother’s
worst fear. Her child is missing. So they rush back to Jerusalem and search for
Him. On the third day they find Him. He’s not afraid of being separated from
His mother and Joseph. He’s quite at home, actually, in the Lord’s house. He’s
sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening and asking questions. “All who heard Him were astonished at His
understanding and answers.” The Jews had just celebrated Passover so they
would have been talking about the Passover Lamb which was slaughtered and
roasted for each family. They would have discussed the Exodus of God’s people
from Pharaoh’s tyranny and the ten plagues by which God had set Israel free.
All of that was a prototype of the promised Messiah. In the midst of the great
teachers of Israel, in the midst of the greatest of all the feasts, in the
midst of the house of the Lord, sat the twelve year old Jesus, teaching them
what it all meant, just as He would do as an adult.
Mary and Joseph are
amazed. “Son, why have you done this to
us? Look, your father and I have sought you anxiously,” which for a mother
is an understatement. Then Jesus utters the first words recorded in the
evangelists. “Why did you seek me? Did
you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” They don’t understand
it at that moment but Jesus was teaching them why He had come. Later in His
life He would tell the Jews, “I have
come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent Me”
(John 6:38). And what is the will of will of Him who sent Jesus? What is His
Father’s business? “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which
was lost” (Luke 19:10). “The Son of Man did not come to destroy
men's lives but to save them” (Luke 9:56). “This is the will of Him who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and
believes in Him may have everlasting life” (John 6:40). The Father’s business, which is Jesus’ business, is our
salvation. The Father’s business is teaching men the true meaning the Passover
Lamb as a foreshadowing of His own sacrifice to pay for the sins of the world,
so that all who believe in Him receive the forgiveness of sins and everlasting
life.
St.
Paul says, “You are all sons of God
through faith in Christ Jesus” (Galatians
3:26) and as sons of God you are to be about your heavenly Father’s business. Previously
you had been sons of the devil because you were born from Adam’s line. When
Adam sinned He listened to the devil rather than God and plunged the entire
race into slavery to sin, death, and the devil. Those who don’t believe in
Christ remain sons wrath and children of disobedience, doing the work of their
father: living according to the lusts of the heart, working to fulfill their
own desires, and living for their own pleasure and enjoyment. Since you are
sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus and heirs of the heavenly
inheritance, be about your Father’s business. St. Paul says in today’s Epistle,
“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). Christ presented Himself as a sacrifice to pay for the sins of the
entire world and His heavenly Father accepted that sacrifice. You are to
present your bodies as living sacrifices, not as Christ’s once-for-all
sacrifice for the sins of the world. Your sacrifice does not involve your
physical death as Christ’s did. It involves your death to sin. “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). Our sacrifice is not to
atone for our sins. We live as sacrifices because Christ has atoned for our
sins. Because He forgives us by faith we strive against sin in the hour of
temptation and crucify our fleshly, selfish passions and desires.
Paul goes on, “Do not be conformed to this world, but 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
world wants you to conform to its way of thinking, especially its way of
thinking about religion and Christ. The world wants you abandon the faith the
Holy Ghost has worked in you and live however you feel like living, embracing
and celebrating your sins. But your minds have been renewed by the gospel. You
know what is that “good and acceptable
and perfect will of God.” It is God’s will that you be saved from your
sins. It is God’s will that you not be eternally lost. It is God’s will that
you trust that His Son’s perfect merits are yours, so that though you still
sin, you are righteous by faith in the one who has paid for all your sins. You
know that the will of God is your sanctification, that you grow in holiness.
This involves putting away sin by turning from it. It also involves pursuing
good works. We prayed in the Collect of the Day that we “may both perceive and
know what things we ought to do and also may have grace and power faithful to
fulfill the same.” We know what things we ought to do because God lays out His
will for us in the Law. Not the ceremonial and civil laws of Moses which were
meant only for the Jews. The law as He give it to us in the Ten Commandments.
That’s where He shows us what is His will for us. He answers our prayer by
giving us the Holy Ghost so that by the strength He gives, if we rely upon Him,
we will bring forth those good works.
In
this Christ is our example. Though He was God in human flesh, He went down with
Mary and Joseph to Nazareth and was subject to them, for it was part of His
ministry to fulfill the Law and earn a perfect righteousness for sinners. As a
child Christ fulfilled the fourth commandment, honoring His mother and father.
By doing this Christ shows us what things we too ought to do. As Christ lived
according to the commandments, so ought we to strive to do the same as living
sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God not because of our works, but only
because we are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. To that end may God
give us grace. Amen.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.