Just as Easter Day launches a fifty days period of rejoicing, so Christmas Day begins a period of
rejoicing. In the case of Christmas it is 12 days long, bringing us up to the Feast of the Epiphany on
6 th January.
Why do we rejoice? To give ourselves a break in the bleak midwinter? Perhaps to eat, drink and be
merry in the spirit of Good King Wenceslas who calls out ‘Bring me flesh and bring me wine!’ All
these reasons are good but for the Church there is a fundamental reason. It is this: Jesus Christ is
born. As the carol goes: God in time, God in man,/ this is God’s timeless plan: / he will come, as a
man./ Born himself of woman, / God divinely human.
Today’s Gospel reading is the story of the parents of Jesus taking him up to Jerusalem for the Jewish
feast of the Passover. It is the only story in the New Testament we have of Jesus between his
infancy and his adulthood. ‘And through all his wondrous childhood / he would honour and obey.’
Well, here we have, at least, a glimpse of him at twelve years of age, if not the whole ‘wondrous
childhood’.
The setting is the temple in Jerusalem. This is of significance. Luke, of all the gospels stresses the
Old Testament antecedents of the coming of Jesus. The temple was for the Jewish people the
meeting place of heaven and earth. It was a privileged meeting point of the uncreated God, whose
name was so holy one dare not pronounce it, – the meeting point between the uncreated God and
God’s creation. In this place Jesus is found by his parents.They have lost track of him and find him
in the holiest of holy places.
In Christian thinking the Jerusalem temple is replaced by Jesus. Where do heaven and earth meet?
The answer is Jesus.
‘God of God / light of light / Lo, he abhors not the Virgin’s womb; / very God,
begotten, not created.’
Don’t be misled this carol is telling us. In Jesus, conceived and nourished in Mary’s womb is the truly divine, ‘God of God’.
St John’s Gospel spells this out more clearly in its own account of Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem, not as a child, as St Luke has, but as an adult. ‘Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body.’ When Jesus is born the one true God comes among us: the man Jesus. Heaven touches earth so that earth may touch heaven.
Luke tells us in this story that Jesus is twelve years old. He is described as a ‘boy’: ‘the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem,’ The Greek word for this is ‘pais’. Interestingly this word was used in the early Church as a title of Jesus. What this word does is stress the close connection between Jesus and his father, his heavenly father.
Luke teases out the question of Jesus’ parentage. Discovering Jesus in the temple, Mary asks him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ The story functions powerfully at the human level. It is every parent’s nightmare to lose their child. Then comes Jesus’ disconcerting reply: ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ This reveals his divine parentage: Jesus is the son of the Father.
It is John’s Gospel which spells this out. As that gospel proceeds Jesus says, time and time again, that he only says what his heavenly Father says. He only does what he sees his Father doing. To Philip’s demand, ‘Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied’, Jesus says, ‘The one who has seen me has seen the Father’. And at the end of the Christmas Day gospel reading, from John chapter 1, we hear these words: ‘No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son who is close to the Father heart, who has made him known’. That gives us the opening line of the great Christmas hymn, ‘Of the Father’s heart begotten’.
This is cause for great rejoicing for God has revealed God’s self in this one human life, the life of
Jesus. No longer do we need to flounder wondering what God is like. The one who has seen Jesus
has seen God, has seen into the love that is God.
‘Silent night! Holy night! / Son of God, love’s pure light: /radiant beams your holy face / with the dawn of saving grace.’
We look into the face and Jesus and we are drawn into the Father’s heart.
Our Gospel reading concludes with these words: ‘And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour.’ As a fully human being, Jesus grows up and develops. This verse is amplified and developed in the Letter to the Hebrews when it says, ‘In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.’ Jesus experiences the whole range of human joy and suffering. He shares our humanity from infancy to the grave. As we sing,
‘… the hopes and fears of all the years / are met in thee tonight.’
In Jesus and his incarnation God does not only show us something. God gives us something. He
gives us his life, real life, abundant life, eternal life. He gives us this that we may grow and develop.
This gift has been given to us, is being constantly offered to us, and we will have received it fully
when finally love has conquered our hearts. This is the silent working of grace in our hearts:
How silently, how silently,
the wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming;
but in this world of sin,
where meek souls will receive him, still
the dear Christ enters in.
Service: Canon Bill Croft. 29th December 2024. (St John The Baptist Church Peterborough UK)
Readings: 1 Samuel 2.18-20, 26, Colossians 3.12-17, Luke 2.41-end