• No Longer a Baby, Luke 2:41-52    (see below)
  Rev. Randy Quinn
   

• The New Humanity Colossians 3:12-17     
  by Rev. Thomas Hall
   

• Growing Up  1 Sam. 2:18-20, 26; Col. 3:12-17; and Lk. 2:41-52
  By Rev. Rick Thompson 
   

• Last Words to Live By, Colossians 3:12-17
  by Rev. Frank Schaefer 
   

• A New Year's Challenge From God, Luke 2:41-52 and Col 3:12-17 by Rev. Frank Schaefer

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No Longer a Baby
based on Luke 2:41-52
Rev. Randy Quinn

It was the week after Christmas when he came to visit me in my office.  I don’t remember his name, but I remember who he was.  His mother was active in the church I was serving, and he had come home for Christmas to visit.

What brought him to my office was an almost vicious attack on my preaching.  He was adamant that I was leading the church astray.  (More important to him was his mother, I realize in hindsight, but he never said that.)

In particular, he was concerned because I said – or had implied – that Jesus came as a baby to save us.  He knew Jesus saved us on the cross, not in the manger; he was afraid that what I had said the Sunday before Christmas and on Christmas Eve was misleading and flat out wrong.

His visit and his voice still echo in my mind 20 some years later[1].  It echoes in my mind because in many ways he is right.  Jesus was born in a manger and was given a name that means “God saves us” (Mt. 1:21); but it was his death and resurrection that brought us salvation.  And yet some people would prefer to spend the rest of their lives celebrating Christmas, singing the carols that we all love so well, and avoiding the tragic tale of the passion because of its violent nature.

He was right to be concerned because some people only want to hear about the precious baby Jesus.

In other ways, though, his concern misses the point of the Christmas story.  God came to us in human form; God came as a vulnerable baby; God took a great risk by coming to us in the manger.  There is an important part of the gospel that Christmas helps us know.

Like so many half-truths, the real problem is with the other half.  Part of the reason we have a church year is to celebrate various portions of the story at different times of the year – thus avoiding the possibility of only hearing one part of it, making it harder to preach half truths as the full gospel story is told over time.

The concerns of that young man prevented him from hearing the good news that the story of Christmas tells, and nothing I could say that day was going to open his ears to that part of the story.

Our text today brings that all to mind again, because it feels like we are moving way too fast on the church calendar from Jesus’ birth on Friday to his Bar Mitzvah on Sunday and his crucifixion in a few months!  Most of us would prefer to spend time with the baby.  We want to hold the baby.  We want to watch him learn to recognize faces and smile and laugh.  We want to watch him learn to crawl and play games.

Some of us are frustrated because no one is singing Christmas carols anymore!  We want to reclaim the tradition of the “twelve days of Christmas” that begin on December 25^th and end on Epiphany, January 6^th.

We want to keep Jesus in the manger – and while we may have good excuses for it, I wonder if it’s because we don’t want to hear the story of his violent death.  We don’t want him to grow up because we know what’s in store for him.  We want to let him be a baby for a little while longer – even if we face the ire of people like that young man who met me in my office the week after Christmas. 

Our text for today may seem to be racing us along from one end of the story to the other, taking us away from the manger before we are ready to leave, but I don’t think that’s what Luke is suggesting.  In my understanding of Luke’s telling of the story, anyway, this story is placed here as a reminder that our faith needs to grow up as we mature.  Not only does Jesus “increase in wisdom,” we are invited to increase in ours as well (Lk. 2:52).

Too many of us are like Mary and Joseph who have heard the angels singing and met the wise men; but twelve years later they seem to have forgotten that God has a plan in mind.  The angel spoke to Mary and then to Joseph.  But here in the temple, it’s as if they have forgotten who Jesus is.  God spoke to the shepherds and the magi and Mary “hid these things” in her heart – where they still seem to be hiding.  God spoke to Anna and then to Simeon when they brought Jesus to be dedicated, but that was too long ago to remember.  Each person in the story seemed to understand who Jesus was at the time; each made their own profession of faith in way or another.

But none seem to have been changed by that news – [continue]