Series

Christmas II : What We Remember and What We Forget

The parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem every year for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended, and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days, they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished; his mother said, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.  And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor. – Luke 2:41-52

In my life, I have had a few difficult conversations.  I can tell you exactly what I was wearing when I got fired from a job, which was the only job I got fired from ever.  It was embarrassing; I did not defend myself, and I left after turning in my keys and had a long walk out of the business with my cheeks burning and my head hung low. I never wore the pants and sweater I wore that day again. Every time I looked at them, I felt the same shame.  I eventually got rid of them because I just could not.  So, the last difficult conversation I had (in which I could not wear my clericals), I searched through my clothes and found a pair of pants that were work pants that had a hole in them, and I had not worn for months, a t-shirt that I meant to donate and I left my coat in the car.  Because I know that if it went sideways, I would not bear to look at them or wear them again. 

Memory is funny that way; what we remember and what we forget, what sticks and what slips away.   I went to a “Moving Mindfully into the New Year” retreat held each year at Washington National Cathedral.  As we reflected on what we remember of 2024, our leader, Terri Lynn Simpson, said, “1 or 2 seconds to create a memory of bad and 30 seconds for a joyful memory to form.”   So, sitting there and making a quick list, like a rush write, I wrote down my memories of 2024.  Some were good, some bad, and I wondered what I wanted to keep.  There was a ton of stuff that I did not love: mistakes, wrong turns, stunningly poor choices, and as I reflected on that list, three things came to the top.  I laughed with my beloved until we cried, and I gathered with my family to bless my parents’ graves. I also enjoyed the joy of seeing friends and mentees get ordained.  Yet, to get to those, I had to push the other stuff aside because the negative memories are always on the top.  Perhaps that is why we humans desperately want to make resolutions in January; we want only to make good and happy things happen in our lives. 

I am not alone in leaning into negative memories. Why are humans attuned to the negative? According to Hoa Loranger, “ Bad news or negative traits signal danger. From an evolutionary perspective, learning to identify potentially hazardous situations was vital for survival in a harsh environment rich in predators. While today’s world has arguably fewer threats, humans are still wired for self-preservation.”  

Yet in this piece of Luke’s gospel, where we have leaped ahead twelve years, we have Jesus in the temple, decidedly not in the business of self-preservation.  Mary and Joesph do not forget Jesus; he stays behind, waiting and arguing and being in his father’s house. It is a really specific time and place. 

Gilburt Ruiz puts it, “That this episode takes place during the celebration of Passover resonates with Luke’s aims of presenting Jesus as Savior. Passover commemorates God’s great salvific act on behalf of Israel, the liberation from slavery in Egypt. At the age of 12, on the cusp of maturation into adulthood, Jesus goes with his family to the temple to celebrate the feast that remembers the salvation of God’s people once before. The salvation of the adult Jesus’ own life and ministry by the length of time it takes Mary and Joseph to find him after realizing he had not joined the caravan heading back home. They find him after three days, a foreshadowing of Jesus’ final Passover in Jerusalem when his followers will “lose” him to crucifixion before discovering him alive three days later.”

As we walk through this year of Luke, the end of ‘Jesus’s life looms large. Our human hearts, minds, and souls will want to hang on to the end; it is the way our brains work.

If we leave it up to our brains only and not our community and our sense of something more, we seek to hold on to the past and shield ourselves from seeing our faith in a new light.  What actual real people, human people, want is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, and the world as it is creates precisely the opposite.  

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.


Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.


+ Joy Harjo

I invite you to come to church this year, hear all the preachers as we unpick the story, and attempt to weave all of our lives into the story.  To help us remember. As the five of us look at the coming year, looking for the good that we can create and the work that we can do, we can and must move past the obvious pain and brokenness and create joy.  Our evangelical siblings would tell you that Jesus is the door to all the good things, and I believe that they are somewhat right. We are called to find that door, whether that is Jesus or the divine spark, a good, orderly direction, whatever it might be. We listen to these gospels, and it fires up a desire for us to solve the brokenness of the world. This year, we hear the gospel of Luke so that we remember

Amen