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+ + + 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.
As classes resume this week for the Kilgore Independent School District and the like, many people no doubt will be reminded that some children simply do better in school than other children, and, to some extent, such differences are okay, as God blesses each child differently, in some cases with greater skills and abilities and in other cases with lesser skills and abilities. Such differences can be evident also in Catechism and Sunday School classes, where a particularly precocious twelve‑year‑old child might even presume to teach a class of his peers in the absence of a teacher. However, in today’s Gospel Reading for the Second Sunday after Christmas, the twelve‑year-old Jesus’s sitting among the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions, is far more than Jesus’s simply being particularly precocious. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading by focusing on “Holy Families and the Father’s House”.
Today’s Gospel Reading begins with the last verse of last Sunday’s Gospel Reading, and so today’s Gospel Reading begins and ends with what are often called “growth summaries” for Jesus, both of which “growth summaries” specifically mention His wisdom. The Divinely‑inspired St. Luke may have been imitating Old Testament “growth summaries”, such as those for Samuel (1 Samuel 2:21, 26), but those “growth summaries” did not mention Samuel’s wisdom, and, even if they did, no one other than Jesus is essentially Divine Wisdom in human flesh! In today’s Gospel Reading, as an example of His wisdom, Jesus’s understanding certainly can be contrasted with His parents’ lack of understanding.
Using the same Gospel Reading, Roman Catholics, as they have for a century or so (Pfatteicher, Commentary, 215), today observe “the Feast of the Holy Family of Christ”, which Feast is said to concentrate “on the three persons whose life together should be an influential model for all families today” (Nocent, 1:243). To be sure, Jesus’s mother and adoptive father modeled some things well, such as their going up to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. But, when Jesus was twelve years old. His parents did not know that He had stayed in Jerusalem, they wrongly supposed that He was in their group of travelers, they searched for Him, and, three days later, they found Him in the temple courts. Mary asked Him why He had done such to them and said that His father (meaning Joseph) and she had searched for them in great distress, but Jesus asked why they were searching for Him and rhetorically suggested that they should have known that His being in His Father’s (meaning God’s) house was Divinely necessary. For, both Mary and Joseph had had Divine revelations about Jesus’s being the Son of God (Luke 1:26-38; Matthew 1:18‑25).
Jesus certainly was in the right and did not sin (confer Pieper, II:309; Hebrews 4:15), but rather the Virgin Mary and Joseph were in the wrong and sinned (confer Luther, AE 76:202). Things are not always so in our holy families, where either parents or children or both can be in the wrong. Our families can be far less holy and far more un-holy, with our not coming to our Father’s house as we should, not holding His Word as sacred and gladly hearing and learning it but instead despising preaching and His Word, especially in the Word’s sacramental forms, not to mention our speaking far-less respectfully to one another and assuming the worst about one another. Of course, apart from God’s first leading us to repent and believe, we are completely ignorant of spiritual matters, make all sorts of wrong suppositions, and look for God in the wrong places. And, even with the Word of God, we may not properly understand. For our sinful nature and for all of our sin, we deserve the “great distress” of eternal torment in hell (confer Luke 16:24-25), but, when we repent and believe, then God forgives us our sinful nature and all of our sin for Jesus’s sake.
As wise as we heard in the Old Testament Reading that God made Solomon to be (1 Kings 3:4-15), as God in human flesh, Jesus was wiser (Luke 11:31). As Jesus was poised to enter adulthood, His first-recorded words and His subsequent actions show that He was aware both of His Divine nature as the Son of God and of His human nature as the Son of Mary (Pieper, II:90). According to His Divine nature, Jesus knew all things, and yet, according to His human nature, He could be said to have limited knowledge and to be filled with and increase in wisdom (Pieper, II:163-164; Scaer, CLD VI:61). Later, the Jewish leaders marveled at Jesus because He had never studied (John 7:15), and the people in His hometown of Nazareth wondered where Jesus got His wisdom and took offense at Him (Matthew 13:54-57). On the basis of His Personal union of the two natures, Jesus showed His Divine majesty, both when He was twelve years old sitting among the teachers and also later on the cross, when He died not just like any other person but in such a way that by and in His death He conquered sin, death, the devil, hell, and eternal damnation (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, VIII:25)—all for us and for our salvation, He perfectly obeyed His mother and Joseph on earth, and He perfectly obeyed His Father in heaven: He was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:8; confer Roehrs-Franzmann, ad loc Luke 2:41-52, p.62). After parts of three days, He rose from the dead, showing that the Father had accepted His sacrifice on our behalf, and so the righteousness of all that He did and suffered is available to all people.
With repentance and faith, we receive that righteousness through God’s Word and Sacraments here in the Father’s house. The Word and Sacraments also help us know that, as the Divinely-inspired St. Paul described in today’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 1:3‑14), God the Father from eternity chose us and in love predestined us for adoption to Himself, redeeming us through His Son’s blood and sealing us with His Holy Spirit. Especially here in the Father’s house, God remains with us, and we remain with Him, and He blesses us in Christ with every spiritual blessing.
The twelve-year-old Jesus’s showing His Divine majesty through His human nature sitting among the teachers left all who heard Him amazed at His understanding and answers. As God forgives us our sinful nature and all our sin through His Word and Sacraments, He leads us at least to want to be more holy as individuals and families: coming to our Heavenly Father’s house as we should, not despising preaching and His Word, especially in the Word’s sacramental forms, but holding His Word as sacred and gladly hearing and learning it, speaking respectfully to one another and explaining everything in the kindest-possible way. We read and study His Word and through that Word He leads us to greater understanding, even as the Virgin Mary, who at least at first did not understand the saying that Jesus spoke to both her and Joseph, nevertheless treasured up all these things in her heart (confer Luther, AE 76:207), and presumably she later did understood the saying, and perhaps she even served as a source for the saying when the Holy Spirit inspired St. Luke to record the words of today’s Gospel Reading.
Ultimately, neither our individual skills and abilities nor our individual relative success or failure in weekday or Sunday School matters. Our forgiveness of sins and so our eternal life and salvation, which we receive through God’s Word and Sacraments, we receive by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This morning we have considered today’s Gospel Reading by focusing on “Holy Families and the Father’s House”. God can and does work through or in spite of our human families, no matter how holy or un-holy they are; God works through or in spite of human families in order to lead us to our Father’s house, to the praise and glory of His holy Name.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +