Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
What is the point of today’s Gospel Reading about the boy Jesus in the Temple? I asked my mother that question as we discussed the Reading Friday driving back from Austin, and she jokingly said the point of the Reading is that parents should not worry where their twelve‑year‑old children are. What my mother said jokingly Jesus seems to say seriously of Mary and Joseph: they should not have been looking for Him but should have known that He had to be in His Father’s house. Yet, is that apparent rebuke of Mary and Joseph (or any other rebuke) the primary reason the Holy Spirit inspired St. Luke to record the very words of the Reading? At the very beginning of his Gospel account, St. Luke does state his general purpose of writing an orderly account in order for Theophilus to have certainty concerning the things he had been taught (Luke 1:1-4), but, to be sure, St. Luke does not state a specific reason for recording this specific event. However, that lack of a specific reason for recording this specific event does not keep us from learning and growing by the Holy Spirit’s working through the Reading, from our also having certainty concerning the things we have been taught. This Second Sunday after Christmas we consider today’s Gospel Reading, and we do so under the theme “Wisdom and Understanding”.
In St. Luke’s Gospel account, some twelve years have passed since the forty‑day‑old Jesus was brought up to the temple in Jerusalem and presented to the Lord for His service, which presentation was the focus of the Gospel Reading last week (Luke 2:22-40). That Gospel Reading ends with the same verse that began our Gospel Reading today, which tells how the child Jesus grew and became strong, how He was filled with wisdom, and how the favor (or grace) of God was upon Him. Today’s Reading similarly ends telling how Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor (or grace) with God and people. In between those Old‑Testament‑style growth‑summary bookends, as it were (1 Samuel 2:21, 26; Judges 13:24-25), is this event of the boy Jesus in the Temple, its house of instruction or the pillared halls of its outer courts, and, whether He was learning or teaching, He nevertheless amazed all who heard Him with His understanding and His answers. Jesus’s “Wisdom and Understanding” are in sharp contrast to His parents—their not knowing Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, their wrongly supposing Him to be in their group, and their not understanding the saying that He spoke to them.
In spiritual matters we by nature are not wise but foolish, and we completely lack understanding. With the Small Catechism’s explanation to the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed, we confess that we cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, or come to Him. Like Mary and Joseph, even we whom the Holy Spirit has enabled to believe, at times still do not know things we should, make wrong suppositions, and fail properly to understand God’s Word. In short, we think, say, and do all kinds of things that we should not, and we fail to think, say, and do all kinds of things that we should. And, as a result, we deserve temporal and eternal punishment. Yet, where at times Jesus’s meaning is concealed or hidden from His followers (for example, Luke 9:45; 18:34), such does not appear to be the case in today’s Gospel Reading in particular, nor is it the case with the Gospel in general. Openly and repeatedly God calls us both to repent of our sinful natures and of all our sin and to believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sin.
Perhaps the things that we have been taught that today’s Gospel Reading record of this specific event helps us have certainty concerning are such things as Who Jesus is and what He has done for us. For, Jesus’s identity and His purpose are central both to today’s Reading as a whole and to Jesus’s first recorded words in particular. As we hear, Jesus is the divine Son of God the Father, not of the man Joseph, yet Jesus also is the human Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary. According to Jesus’s divine nature, He knew all things, but, according to Jesus’s human nature, He had limited knowledge, had to be taught, and grew in knowledge, or, as the Reading put it, was filled with and increased in wisdom. During His state of humiliation, Jesus did not always or fully use those things that were His by virtue of the personal union of the two natures, such as His divine wisdom and omniscience (Formula of Concord Solid Declaration VIII:25), but in today’s Gospel Reading Jesus gives us a glimpse of His wisdom that exceeds that of Solomon, whose “Wisdom and Understanding” we heard of in today’s Old Testament Reading (1 Kings 3:4-15; confer Luke 11:31). Even the twelve‑year‑old Jesus knew Who He is and why He came. From His earliest days, Jesus not only kept the Law, such as those laws regarding the Passover and being submissive to His parents, but He also ultimately made up for our failing to keep the Law, by His being our spotless Lamb sacrificed for our sins, so the angel of death, as it were, passes over us. Jesus must be in His Heavenly Father’s house, among His Heavenly Father’s things, doing His Heavenly Father’s work, ultimately being the sacrifice on the cross for all our sin and, after three days, rising from the grave to show God the Father accepted His sacrifice on our behalf. In Jesus Christ, through His blood, as today’s Epistle Reading put it, we have redemption, the forgiveness of our trespasses (Ephesians 1:3-14). With the riches of God’s grace so upon us by faith, we stand in His favor, whether or not we always stand in the grace or favor of other people. We might wish for more details about Jesus’s childhood in the Gospel accounts, but they appropriately concentrate on His later life and His redeeming work for us.
Yet, even in what the Gospel accounts tell of Jesus’s childhood, they anticipate Jesus’s passion and resurrection, and they point us to where we find Him today: namely, in His Word and Sacraments. The very saying (or words) that Mary did not understand she treasured up in her heart, to a definite result, perhaps her being a source that the Holy Spirit used in inspiring St. Luke’s production of the very words of today’s Gospel Reading. Mary clung to the Word, and so do we; we search for Jesus in His Word (Luther, Sermon on Lk 2:41-52, AE 76:199, 207). As Mary and Joseph went up to Jerusalem according to custom, we who have been made God’s children in Holy Baptism make ourselves the custom of regularly confessing privately to a pastor the sins that we know and feel in our hearts for the sake of receiving individual Holy Absolution. And, so absolved, we are in the custom of regularly receiving Holy Communion, our Passover Feast, as it were. On this altar and at this rail, the same Jesus who was really, physically present in the Temple is really, physically present here, both in bread that is His body given for you and me and in wine that is His blood shed for you and me, for the forgiveness of our sins and so for life and salvation. We wisely receive all of God’s gifts, even if we do not always or ever understand how they can be what they are. For, in such ordinary ways of words, water, bread and wine, we have the amazing experience of encountering God’s divine glory and living in His forgiveness of sins.
More than rebuke us for our failure to have “Wisdom and Understanding” as we should, let today’s Gospel Reading, with its presentation of Jesus’s “Wisdom and Understanding” for us, give us certainty concerning the things we have been taught. And so, let today’s Gospel Reading also strengthen and comfort us with the forgiveness of sins each and every day, until, like Jesus, we, too, dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Psalm 23:6).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +