Sermons

Let Jesus Out of the Manger!

Here at the top, I want to just take a moment to address the unfolding situation in Venezuela because the body of my sermon doesn’t talk about it.

The bishop-elect of Los Angeles is Rev. Antonio Gallardo. He is himself Venezuelan, and he wrote this statement about holding conflicting emotions in light of yesterday’s news. It’s several hundred words, and I commend the whole thing to you, but I want to excerpt just two parts.

He wrote, “I want to join the Venezuelan people who are overjoyed with the departure of Maduro, especially those who are still living there, my mother, my siblings, my relatives, my life-long friends, and my fellow Venezuelans.” But he goes on to say that “When the US government says, within a few hours of the operations, words like ‘we are going to run the country,’ and ‘we will rebuild the oil infrastructure before a transition,’ it makes me fear that the Venezuelan people may have shifted from one form of oppression to another. I don’t think this military operation was about the people in Venezuela, when here in the US we treat Venezuelans, and other immigrants of color, with cruelty.”

As we await Epiphany, let us make no peace with oppression or with empire. I’m sure we’ll have much more to say about this in the coming days. And now I return to my prepared remarks.

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I have what may seem like a late greeting, but I want to go ahead and say “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!” Many of you I haven’t seen since Christmas Eve, when hundreds of us gathered in this space to welcome the infant king, and for many of you who have been away, it’s been even longer. It’s good to see you and be back after a bit of a break. I got to spend some quality time with friends and loved ones, but most importantly, I had a visit from my one and only niece, Payton. She’s three years old, with huge blue eyes and little blonde pigtails. And while she was visiting, my family and I took Payton to the National Aquarium to see the fish. It was dark and crowded, and there was a lot going on.

At one point, I caught sight of Payton on my right, looking down at the coral pool. But then she was also on my left on one of the steps, looking at the white grouper. (Side note to say that I called it a grow-per and I’m pretty sure I’ll never hear the end of that.) But it turned out that the first Payton was another little girl with blonde pigtails and a dark blue dress, a Payton lookalike. In the crowd, it’s easy to lose track of an energetic kid. And I wondered if that’s what happened to Mary and Joseph, if another boy whom they caught sight of out of the corner of their eye looked like Jesus, or if his laugh sounded the same, if that’s how they somehow left their son behind in Jerusalem. It’s a nearly universal experience to lose track of a child in your care, and the panic that ensues when you realize they’re not with you.

I’ve always found this story of the 12-year-old Jesus odd. It’s the only story we have about Jesus between the birth narrative and his public ministry, and it appears only in the gospel of Luke. And even today, it is only an optional text, one of three stories to choose from. But within the gospel of Luke, it’s fascinating where this story sits. Just before this in the text is the story of Jesus being presented in the temple when he was 40 days old. Mary and Joseph take their new baby, and an appropriate sacrifice and present him to God. And two prophets, Simeon and Anna, meet the baby Jesus and are overwhelmed to be in the presence of the Messiah, the anointed one, even when he is a baby. And Luke says that “the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him.”

But in today’s story, the power dynamic is shifting. Jesus is no longer a small child. He’s been independent of his parents for a few days and is doing just fine on his own. The text doesn’t tell us where he slept or who fed him for those days, but he doesn’t appear to be in any distress. And not only that, when his parents discover him in the temple, it’s his own words, not the words that are said about him by someone else, that astonish the crowd and them.

Like all children, Jesus is growing up. He’s becoming more independent, more confident, more himself, as all children do. Now, if you heard either of my Christmas sermons last year or took a class with me, you may know that I am just crazy for the doctrine of the incarnation. At this time of year, we celebrate God with us, fully human and fully divine. But in a story like this, we see the complexity of that playing out. Because we think of God as fully actualized. But for us as human beings, there is just nothing more human than growing into who you are. And so for God to be fully human, it means that growth must be happening here, the growth of a pre-teen, on the edge of puberty.

There are some real growing pains in this story. When Mary invokes Joseph as the father of Jesus, saying, “Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” Jesus responds that this is actually his Father’s house. He has been doing his Father’s bidding. It’s a bit of a rebuke of his parents. You can imagine that teenage Jesus is gonna be quite angsty. But the passage ends by saying that he went and was an obedient son, one his mother treasured. It’s the push and pull of becoming an independent, differentiated person that we all go through in our lives.

The last thing I want to point out about this text is that the cross is never far out of sight in the gospels. The three days that Mary and Joseph search for Jesus at the time of the Passover foreshadow the last Passover, when Jesus will be crucified and once again be missing for three days. So even as a kid, this event is never far from the story.

Okay, so what does all this mean for us? In this Christmas season, Jesus comes to us as a baby. We spend the 4 weeks of Advent waiting for a Christ child, and then the 12 days of Christmas celebrating his arrival. And in the songs and the nativities, he’s so sweet, and he’s cooing and laughing, doing all the good baby things. But here’s the deal: Jesus didn’t stay a baby! Like all children, Jesus grew up! He was also a pre-teen ready to throw down with the scribes at the temple. In this Jesus, we see the emerging prophet, healer, and teacher, testing the limits of his authority. Much like we must let our own children grow up, we have to let Jesus out of the manger the other 11 months of the year, allowing him to teach us the way of love and mold us into peacemakers.

Three years ago, on Christmas Day, I met my niece for the first time, and she was just a little baby! But now, even at 3, she has preferences and attitude. She wants to know why we put “leaf” on pizza. (It was basil.) Just as we watch the children in our own lives grow, and we ease up on the controls, we must let Jesus surprise and change us. If we do not let Jesus out of the manger, we risk making him small enough to be non-threatening, to be small enough to carry in our pocket or on a bumper sticker. We risk a Jesus whom we can project our own ideas onto. Instead, we must take the place of Mary and Joseph, to allow ourselves to be astonished at who this child becomes.