|
Century Christian
Church 1301 Tamarack Road, Owensboro, KY 42301, (270) 684-0286, Pastor: Rev. Jim Westmoreland |
|
An Unsettling Edge On a plaque marking Abraham Lincoln's birthplace near Hodgenville, Kentucky, is recorded this scrap of conversation: "Any news down 't the village, Ezry?" "Well, Squire McLain's gone t' Washington t' see Madison swore in, and ol' Spellman tells me this Bonaparte fella has captured most o' Spain. What's new out here, neighbor?" "Nuthin' nuthin' a'tall, 'cept fer a new baby born t' Tom Lincoln's. Nothin' ever happens out here." When we look at some events, like birthdays in Hodgenville or Bethlehem or even the spiritual rebirth in a person's life, it is hard to know what the future will reveal about its significance. We experience so much of life "on the run." Everything comes as a blur of frenzied shopping, wrapping and preparing to have guests or preparing to travel and be a guest during the Christmas season. Thankfully, we can take pictures to preserve some of the moments of our times together. Looking back, we remember the antics of our children, and we see in those early pictures foreshadowing glimpses of the personalities they have become. We find it awkward to saddle a baby with our big dreams and vision of what all they will do in their lives, and I'm reasonably sure that no one in Hodgenville was thinking "President" when young Abraham was born. Likewise, the people in Nazareth saw Jesus as just one of the everyday, run-of-the-mill kids that populated their town. They even later said that no one special ever came out of Nazareth. We owe both of our readings today to the memory of two mothers. Samuel's mother, Hannah, had dedicated him to the Lord to serve with Eli at the house of the Lord at Shiloh. This passage reminds us something that we already know: that maturity and spiritual vitality don't just magically appear in our lives. No they come as we grow, develop and give ourselves to God. 1 Samuel 2:26 says, "Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and with the people. The very personal account of Jesus accompanying Mary and Joseph to the festival of Passover in Jerusalem when he was twelve years old is given to us by Jesus' mother, Mary, as recorded by Luke in his gospel. This incident in Jesus' life is the only reference to his life between his birth and the beginning of his ministry. What happened during the years since his birth in the manger until he appeared as a teacher and healer? Luke lets us know that Jesus was one of us. He was born as a baby in a manger. Mary and Joseph took him back to Nazareth to raise him. Jesus was not a rigid, finished personality at birth, or as a child. No, he was a human being with a human personality that was undergoing growth and development. A person was emerging, and we get a glimpse of that in the events of this trip to Jerusalem. This story is bracketed by two verses that reflect the same affirmation and recognition of life as a developing process as we heard from our reading from 1 Samuel about Samuel's growth as a boy. In Luke 2, after the baby Jesus is taken to Jerusalem to be circumcised and taken to the Temple, Mary and Joseph returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth, and verse 40 reads, "The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of the God was upon him." That immediately precedes the account of Jesus' trip to Jerusalem at age 12. At the end of this story in verse 52, as a concluding bracket, this idea of growth and development is given again, "And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor." What happened between Jesus' birth and the beginning of his ministry? He grew! He developed his mind, his consciousness, his sense of self, his sense of purpose and vision of who he was. I believe this episode in Jerusalem was about all of this, and it was also about that uneasy process of differentiation from his parents. Jesus was becoming his own person, and he wasn't all that concerned with blending in with everyone else. This passage speaks to us about our own growth and development. We may be in school, or finishing it, or getting started in careers, or dealing with relationships, with friends and families. We may be dealing with issues about fulfillment, about health and retirement and purpose. Now that I am where I am in life, "Is this all there is?" Too many people seem to go through life "waiting" for the next stage, and that is when they will be happy and fulfilled or when they are going to get things straightened out. This happens not only in personal goals and quality of life issues, but in spiritual goals and eternal life issues as well. Richard Evans wrote in Bits and Pieces, "The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it." --Richard L. Evans, Bits & Pieces, March 4, 1993, p. 2. What are we waiting for? Life is to be discovered! It is to be affirmed and lived! If we are trying to please everyone else and fit into their bland, amorphous vision of what to get out of life, then we will miss out on the life that Jesus came to give us. When we experience the stirring Living Water that Christ offers, and when we live with the kind of purpose and faith that the disciples discovered, then we will have an "unsettling edge" in how we are perceived by others. Our text this morning gives us the earliest indication of this unsettling edge in the life of Jesus. He goes to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover with his parents and, apparently, with many of their friends and relatives from Nazareth that made up their traveling group. When the festival of Passover ended, the group headed north out of Jerusalem toward Nazareth, which was in Galilee. It is hard for us to imagine, since we are not used to traveling with extended families and large groups, how Mary and Joseph did not realize that Jesus wasn't there. We are used to traveling in cars carrying up to four to six people, and we know when someone isn't in their seat! They had traveled a day's journey on foot, about 20 miles, when they discovered Jesus was not with the group. Then, they had to go back to Jerusalem, another day's journey, and then the scripture says they had to look for him for three days before they found him in the temple. Now, that adds up to five days to me. I can understand how they might be pretty anxious and worried. I want to know where Jesus had been spending the night and eating his meals those five days! The scripture is silent on those questions, but it does tell us where they found him. He was "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." Luke tells us, "When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, 'Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.' How do you hear Mary talking? What tones do you hear in her voice as she talks to Jesus? Some may think she got Jesus off to the side and in hushed, subdued sounds said, "Child why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been searching for you and were really worried about you." I don't imagine it like that at all! No, I hear a frantically worried Jewish mother bursting out in a mixture of worry, anger, hurt, disappointment and relief, "Child, how could you do this us? We've been looking all over this town for three days, and we've been worried sick! How could you do this?!" Are you ready for Jesus' response? Tell me how clinically calm you'd be if you were Mary or Joseph, when, in the face of your frantic worry, hurt and disappointment and your love, he says, "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" The scripture tells us that they did not understand what he had said to them. I don't think I would have either. Here in this account is a snapshot of Jesus growing in his self-understanding and emerging as a person who found his identity in God. Later, when he would eat grain from the fields on the Sabbath or heal on the Sabbath, he broke rigid molds that the religionists of his day tried to force on people. He clearly had an unsettling edge that made everyone understand that he was not looking to them for approval, but to God. I believe that this unsettling edge is a characteristic of any who would be a follower of The Way, a term given to the early Christians. When we follow Jesus, we continue to grow in spiritual awareness and maturity. We cannot isolate ourselves in our own nearsighted world. Rather, our awareness of others and our sense of larger duties to serve others begins to grow. Jesus said, "I must be in my Father's house," or "about my Father's business," as other translations put it. As Jesus experiences this growing, inner sense of what he "must" do, it created an unsettling edge. Most people have a lot of wants and wishes, but no real vision and commitment. When we are around people with a vision with a "must," who pursue it without waiting for approval or applause, we describe it as noteworthy, but also as threatening, unsettling. To give ourselves to living for Christ with the kind of vision with a "must" that produces an unsettling edge will put us at odds, on the one hand with the defenders of the status quo. "We've been getting along without your ideas for all these years, and we don't plan to change now!" It will also put us at odds with the great melting pot of religious ideas, where everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator, where nobody really believes anything strongly, or is willing to stand for anything. Everything has been surrendered at the altar of "not offending anyone." Elton Trueblood, writing about the implications of not exercising judgement, said, "To live uncritically without analysis, consideration, or judgment is to opt to live for a 'mindless tolerance.'" --Elton Trueblood, The New Man for our Times, p. 27 William G. Carter tells this story in his book, Praying for a Whole New World: "A family lived off the alley behind my first church. There were three floors to their row house, each floor inhabited by a different generation. The grandparents, who were members of the church, lived on the ground floor. Next floor up was their son and daughter-in-law, and the grandchildren's bedrooms were at the top. One day, the grandfather beckoned me to the back fence. "I'm worried about my grandson," he said. "What's the problem?" I asked. He said, "When he gets up in the morning, he reads the Bible before he does anything else. Every time he sits at the kitchen table, he insists on saying grace. Now he's talking about joining a prayer group with his girlfriend." "Walter," I said, "what's the problem?" "Don't get me wrong, Reverend," he said. "Religion is a good thing, as long as it's in small doses. I'm worried my grandson is becoming an extremist." Carter comments, "I admit it was hard to sympathize with my neighbor. So far, no member of my family has been lost to such radical behavior. Neither has a child of mine wandered off to the Temple for three days. But it's important to remember that religious commitments can divide a family." -Praying for a Whole New World, William G. Carter, CSS Publishing Company, 2000. Jesus said, "I must be in my Father's House," "I must be about my Father's business." In our discipleship, in our spiritual lives, what are the "musts"? Is everything negotiable, or are there some things that God leads us to do in ministry and witness to which we say, "I must do." When we say "Yes" to God's vision for us, then, we too will know the unsettling edge. |
|
|