Photo credit: Aaron Wilson, used with permission via Unsplash
On this first Sunday after Christmas, we sit on the cusp of the new year. We release the difficult experiences of 2024 and we give thanks for the good that 2024 has brought. We look to 2025 with trepidation for the difficulties the new year may bring, and we look to the blessings that 2025 will hold. We hear the beautiful words of the letter to Titus that describes the gift of God Incarnate, God with Us, as one of us; and we hear the story of Jesus on the cusp of life between boyhood and adulthood. This Sunday brings us into a moment of timelessness as we recognize God’s eternal Love breaking into a very particular location in history in the person of Jesus. We have the opportunity to consider how the church year accompanies and interrelates with the calendar year in its own twisting and turnings. In just a few days, we’ll turn from 2024 to 2025. Just a few days ago we celebrated the birth of the infant Jesus, next week brings the Visit of the Magi to baby Jesus. Today, our scripture lesson from the Gospel of Luke gives us the story of that same child as a tween- nearly a teenager, no longer a baby. Chronological time and liturgical time dance together through ordinary and extraordinary events of our lives. Through the church year, time compresses as we hear the stories of Jesus’ life and ministry from Christmas to Easter in a few short months. The life of our nation and our world intertwines with our lives in family and community and church. This is a season of memories from the past intertwined with hopes of what the future may bring, lived in the fullness of this moment and human experience. Today we’ll take one Sunday morning to step out of chronological time and step into the timelessness of God-With-Us.
Let’s turn to the first scripture reading for today. The scripture passage from Titus comes to us from a writer early in the life of the Christian church, after the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry, during the time when the stories of Jesus and new communities of his followers were becoming established and spreading through the Roman Empire. The writer may have been Paul, or perhaps someone writing in Paul’s honor. Biblical scholars have not yet settled the debate. Titus is one of the few letters in the New Testament to an individual, with instruction and encouragement for the mission of telling the Good News of Jesus Christ throughout the Roman Empire. Most of the letter describes personal relationships- hopes and disappointments about particular persons and communities, but near the end of the letter, we are given this lovely reminder of what the heartache and joy of the writer’s shared ministry with Titus is all about. “4...when the goodness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 God saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to God’s love and kindness, through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. 6 This Spirit God poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by God’s grace, we might become heirs in accordance with the hope of everlasting life.”
These are rich, timeless words that speak as deeply to us now, millenia later, as they did when they were fresh off the quill. I just want to take a moment to appreciate the rich language- goodness, love, savior, righteousness, loving kindness, washing, rebirth, renewal, poured out on us richly, justified by grace, heirs, hope of everlasting life. I invite you to consider these words, and we’ll take a few moments out of time to treasure together the gift they bring. How often do we stop and simply appreciate the gift of goodness? Let’s do that together now. I invite you to sit comfortably, to let your body and mind settle- What one word or image, from Titus or elsewhere, holds a particular brilliance or shimmer for you this morning?
Let that word or image fill your heart with whatever it is that God offers you this moment, perhaps through the enduring words of Titus … [20 secs at least, quiet and settledness] In the quiet blessing of this moment, I invite you to remember that you can take this experience of goodness and refreshment with you, to revisit, in the midst of anything life brings you.
With this momentary touch of rebirth and renewal in God’s Spirit, let’s carry that blessing of refreshment into our further encounter with scripture this morning. As we become aware again of our surroundings with one another here, in the sanctuary and online, let’s travel together to the Jerusalem of two millennia ago and look in on Jesus and his family, not sitting in quiet, but traveling in the hustle and bustle of the journey from Nazareth to the Passover Feast in Jerusalem.
Our second scripture lesson this morning, from the Gospel of Luke, is the second story of Jesus in the Temple. The first story comes just before this one, when Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the Temple to be dedicated to God’s service and purpose. After dedicating Jesus in the Temple, Mary and Joseph returned home to Nazareth and faithfully raised Jesus up in their faith, the faith of Abraham and Sarah and their descendants. They traveled every year to Jerusalem to observe the festival of Passover.
It must have been a familiar journey for Jesus that 12th year they went with him up to Jerusalem to observe the Passover- perhaps two to four days of walking, camping out along the road with friends and relatives, singing the psalms of ascent as they passed through the Mount of Olives and Jerusalem came into sight. Perhaps Jesus knew his way around the Temple and festival spaces well- the places where the teachers gathered for questions and conversations, the places where meals were cooked and served and shared, the places he and his family and friends stayed that offered pilgrims a place to rest their head.
How well he must have listened and watched over those years so that this year, he had thoughts to share, questions and conversation that amazed all who heard him. And, as he grew in wisdom and favor with people and God, he grew into an ever-maturing sense of his ministry, of the service and purpose of God that was his very being and intimate relationship with God; so that he could say to Mary and Joseph, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”.
And they (and we) did not understand him. Aside from Luke’s infancy narrative, which seems to be forgotten here, how could it be that Jesus called God his Father? What is the nature of Jesus’ self-understanding that allows him to recognize himself as God’s son? What is the nature of our own self-understanding that allows us to understand ourselves as children of God, washed in renewal and reborn in grace, with the hope of everlasting life, life abundant?
Jesus stood on the cusp of adulthood in that 12th year, just as we stand on the cusp of a new year, on the cusp of the rest of our lives. He did not grow overnight into the sense of self as teacher, preacher, healer, savior, peace-bringer, the human one, Son of God that he held as an adult. We will experience Jesus’ emergence into public ministry in a few short calendar months in our liturgical year, but Jesus matured over time (30 years) into the One Who Comes in God’s Name, the Messiah who is Christ the Lord.
What is our call to growth and maturity? What does the unfolding of time hold for us in our relationship with God? Mary and Joseph raised Jesus up in faith. What do we need to raise one another up in faith? What brings greater intimacy to our relationship with God, our sense of ministry and purpose- in our individual lives and our shared life in community? The turning of the year offers us an opportunity to reflect on the year past, our present gifts and challenges, and the time that lies before us. What helps us grow in wisdom, in divine and human favor? What helps us listen well and ask good questions? What nurtures our capacity for conversation that brings us to wonder and amazement, learning from one another’s wisdom?
Perhaps there will be times of confusion, times when we don’t understand the Word that God offers. Perhaps there will be times when we need to listen and treasure what we hear deep in our hearts. Perhaps there will be times when we have to look long and diligently, searching all the familiar and unfamiliar places of our lives, traditions, rituals, and travels, all to come home to God’s house and our place in it.
In the midst of our searching and wondering, our amazement and learning, the ups and downs of growing and maturing, Jesus accompanies us. God-with-us knows our life, our being, our fears, our questions, our answers, our faith traditions, our growth, our quiet times, our quiescent times, our troubled times, our humanness. Infant Jesus grew into Jesus the 12 year old who grew into the preacher and teacher we follow- from the worship of the shepherds at his birth and the homage of the wise ones on through Jesus’ earthly days to his baptism and his public ministry, all the way to Jerusalem yet again for the Passover festival. God’s time breaks into our own time as we cherish again the wonder of God’s life lived out in human life, in Jesus’ and our own- offering hope, peace, joy and love.
God’s love breaks into our lives as we grow up and older, as we wander in and out of God’s way for us. God-with-us dwells in our hearts and joins us with the grace and rebirth of the Holy Spirit; so that we are always becoming who God calls us to be, so that we may live in goodness and love, in kindness and hope. In this moment at year’s end and beginning, balanced on the cusp of the rest of our life, let us look again to discover how God is seeking us, let us listen for how God is calling us, let us seek to learn anew how we may live God’s love and purpose for us in the world, to feel again and again how God is with us in all that we do and all that we are. The Spirit of God in Jesus Christ enters into all our time, all our days and nights, all the ways that we are in our full humanness: God of Eternal Love enters all the ups and downs, joys and sorrows, challenges and blessings- the ins and outs of our human being to bring goodness, kindness, wonder, and grace. Thanks be to God! Alleluia, Amen.
© 2024 Dvera Hadden
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