Sermon - Epiphany I 2020 - Luke 2:41-52

Today’s Gospel is the singular account of Jesus’ life between His nativity and when He’s 30 years old, beginning His public ministry. Nevertheless, although we may have just one short passage describing these 30 years, it does reveal significant insight into His life and ours. First, it foreshadows Christ’s eventual crucifixion in Jerusalem. Second, it shows us where Christ is found today and where we children of the Heavenly Father also ought to be found. Third, with what we are to fill our lives.

Our text says “His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when He was twelve years old, they went up according to custom.” Every year the Israelites celebrated the feast of the Passover by returning to the temple in Jerusalem. This feast commemorated the event which precipitated their exodus out of Egypt and eventually into the promised land of Israel. A male, first-born, unblemished lamb was sacrificed and eaten. The blood of this lamb covered them in God’s grace, so that God’s wrath passed them over.

The Passover prefigures exactly what it is that Jesus Christ came to accomplish for His people. He is the male, first-born, unblemished, Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the World. One day Christ would return to Jerusalem and offer up Himself as the sacrificial Lamb to be slaughtered on the cross. His blood covers us so that by God’s grace the wrath of God would pass us over. Jesus even feeds His apostles, and us, on the night when He was betrayed in Jerusalem, the body and blood of this Passover Lamb.

“When the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it... but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. After three days they found him in the temple.” Just so, after the crucifixion, Jesus spent three days in the grave while His disciples hid in fear that they had lost their Lord. At the end of the three days, Jesus was raised and found by a different Mary, Mary Magdalene. 

In this way, Jesus’ entire life, including His childhood, prefigured His eventual crucifixion at Jerusalem. Every time Jesus journeyed to Jerusalem with His family for the passover, He was subtly revealing to them that He was the ultimate fulfillment of the Passover. So He subtly reminds us today that He is our Passover Lamb who was sacrificed for us and the forgiveness of our sins.

Moreover today, Jesus makes it clear where we are to find Him and where we are to find ourselves. “When his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”” 

If you want to be with Jesus, if you want God in your life, if you want spiritual blessings and hope, then you’ve come to the right place. Jesus is in the Father’s house! Jesus is here! It’s not a mystery, you don’t have to search for Jesus all over the world; He’s right here, in His Father’s house. If you want to know what Jesus teaches, what His will is for your life, you don’t have to search your heart or anywhere else; just enter the Father’s house and listen to Him here. It’s incredibly simple.

Likewise, since we are all children of God, our heavenly Father, through the adoptive waters of Baptism, we too may repeat Jesus’ words as our own: “I must be in my Father’s house.” We should take hold of this saying as a shield against every tribulation of the devil, the world, and tyrants. Whenever some authorities try to require us to act against God’s direction, we should say with Christ: “Did you not know that I must be in that which is my Father’s?”

Devil’s and plagues be accursed, we are here in the Father’s house today because this is where we children belong. There is no threat so great that can hinder us from being found where we belong: with God our Father. When we disobey some worldly authority to be in church, we are not sinning. Jesus wasn’t sinning when He remained in His Father’s house, in the temple, while His parents returned to Nazareth. He simply remained where He belonged, and then as God even rebuked His earthly parents who thought He shouldn’t have been in the temple.

But just because Jesus rebuked His parents, that doesn’t mean He didn’t keep the 4th commandment and honor His parents. Rather, He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them.” Jesus spent His days probably in a very ordinary fashion and honored His parents. His Father Joseph was a construction worker, so Jesus worked submissively with His dad. He worked hard with His hands, doing ordinary plain honest labor.

Thus, Jesus also reveals for us here how our lives are to be shaped. It’s not complicated, Jesus just lived according to the commandments! It was so ordinary it wasn’t worth recording. Hence our ordinary lives, in which we live according to God’s commands, are sanctified and holy in God’s sight!

St. Paul writes: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Just as we are to be found in the Father’s House, in the temple, so are we to live as priests, offering up our bodies as living sacrifices. This is our spiritual worship, by which we worship God not only in this temple on Sunday mornings, but throughout all our lives in the temple of our body! 

How do we go about this spiritual worship? “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Rather than living according to the ways of this sinful and corrupt world, rather than being fashioned after the likeness of so much sin, we are to be transformed by the renewal and renovation of our minds. The transformation of our bodily life begins with the transformation of our thoughts. This is why we spend so much time in church with words! The words Jesus teaches us change our minds, our thoughts, and thus our bodily actions. 

I appeal to you, in the manner of Paul, according to God’s mercies: be different! Be weird! Hate evil and ugliness; love good and beauty. Stop being slothful, instead be fervent in spirit. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, always pray. Turn off the screen and spend time face to face with others. Forget vengeance and become merciful. Stop being drunk on entertainment and become sober to the realities around you. Fill yourself with not so much food and drink, but with God’s love which is yours in Christ Jesus.