SECOND SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS
(New Year’s Sunday)
Readings:
Key Verses (using the World English Bible):
Rom. 12:4-5: “For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members don’t have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”
Luke 2:46-47: [Joseph and his mother] “found [Jesus] in the temple, sitting in the middle of the teachers, both listening to them, and asking them questions. All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.”
Reflection
My seven-year-old nephew loves playing on my smartphone—what child today doesn’t? A few months ago, he wanted me to download yet another superhero or “temple run” game, but my phone warned us that there wasn’t enough space. You’d think that 32GB would be enough for so many things, but with all my music, and photos, etc., and the size of these games, I guess I was wrong. So I told them there wasn’t any more space on my phone. Not that I was saddened about that; there were already about seven or eight games there he could choose from. But that’s when he turned to me and calmly asked, “Well, why don’t we just delete this other game? I don’t really play it anymore, and it would free up some space.” I was amazed at both his impeccable logic, and at how he was able to arrive at this logic independently at such a young age. Maybe I’m getting old after all.
The gospel today presents us with another independent and calculating young child. The story is often known as “The Losing and Finding of the boy Jesus in the Temple”, but that’s a bit of a misnomer. Jesus didn’t really get lost; he “stayed behind in Jerusalem” (Luke 2:43), which suggests intent, not accident. That has to be every parent’s worst nightmare. I know from experience that it can also be an uncle’s nightmare, losing your nephew from your field of vision, even if only for a few seconds. But then, thankfully, they found Jesus amid the teachers, that is, the Jewish rabbis, learning and discussing presumably the Torah with them.
It’s a scene that to us is beautiful, familiar, and even unique, being our only canonical story about Jesus’ boyhood. But, as with all stories about Jesus, it’s also prone to a little bias and even inaccuracy. For example, the 1999 film Jesus, starring Jeremy Sisto, shows the boy Jesus sitting on a stool, and the rabbis on the floor, listening to his commentary on Scripture. Christian artists across the centuries have also depicted the scene in a similar way, with this young prodigy visibly assuming the center role of “teacher to the teachers”. And who can blame us? Our natural inclination as followers of Jesus is to focus on him, to make him the center of everything. But Luke is careful to tell us that Jesus was “sitting in the middle of the teachers, both listening to them, and asking them questions” (Luke 2:46, emphasis added).
So maybe we can imagine a different scene—one of honest inquiry, courteous discussion, a respectful exchange of ideas and mutual desire to learn, all done in love of, and devotion to, God. The rabbis learned a thing or two about the kingdom of heaven from this child (cf. Matt. 18:3), but Jesus also “increased in wisdom” that day. We, who follow Jesus, can learn something from that. Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, teaches us that we are one body in Christ, and therefore “members one of another”. Yet even he who is the whole body did not stop from engaging the other “members” of his body, his own people, family, and heritage. He sought to teach them, as much as to learn from them; to guide them, as much as to be made “subject to them”.
I don’t know if the story of Jesus in the Temple happened like this, or even at all. Luke fancies himself a meticulous historian, and yet he’s our only witness to this event. But I do know this: I know that this story happens now, in the present, any time a child surprises you with an idea you’d never thought of before. Moments like those remind us that we are always immersed in a dialogue with those who came before us, and those who will remain after us—and that we must always make room for a newer perspective. The boy Jesus teaches us that the journey towards God is a road paved with listening and asking, with obeying and challenging. Like him, we have to be open to new insight, coming from even the unlikeliest sources. For wisdom and understanding are always to be gained from this endless, and timeless, conversation.
Prayer of the Day
O God,
you wonderfully created,
and yet more wonderfully restored,
the dignity of human nature.
Grant that we may share the divine life
of him who humbled himself to share our humanity,
your Son Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
—Collect of the Second Sunday after Christmas Day in the Book of Common Prayer, 1979.
Or,
O Lord our God,
your only Son came into our world
born truly human,
flesh of our flesh, and blood of our blood.
Grant that he,
who outwardly was as we are,
may inwardly transform us to his likeness;
who lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
—Collect of New Year’s Day from “Den Danske Salmebog” (The Danish Hymnal),
translated and adapted by Joseph A. Soltero
(Words: “Quae stella sole pulchrior” by Charles Coffin in the Paris Breviary, 1736; translated to English by John Chandler, 1837; adapted by Joseph A. Soltero, 2015
Tune: ‘Puer Nobis’, 15th-cent. Trier, Germany; adapted by Michael Praetorius, 1609; harmony by George R. Woodward, 1910 )
What star is this, with beams so bright,
More lovely than the noonday light?
It heralds forth the newborn King,
Glad tidings of our God to bring.
Fulfilled is now what God decreed:
“From Jacob shall a star proceed”.
And lo! the Eastern sages stand
To read in heaven God’s command.
While outward signs the star displays,
An inward light the Lord conveys,
And urges them, with force benign,
To seek the Giver of the sign.
And still that star of heav’nly grace
Invites us, Lord, to seek your face.
O grant that we no more refuse
That grace and guiding light to use.
To God the Father, God the Son,
To God the Spirit, Three in One,
May every tongue and nation raise
An endless song of thankful praise!
No comments:
Post a Comment