December 27, 2009 Sermon

A Little Off
Luke 2:41-52

Everywhere we find “best-of-the-decade” lists.  Best football teams, best cable TV series, best celebrity meltdowns.  You name it, and somebody has put together a list for the decade.  Trouble is, as all right-thinking Americans agree, we still have a year to go in the decade.  As with centuries, decades end, not start, with zero years.  Think about it for a moment.  What number did the first year have?  One.  The first decade did not end until the end of the year Ten.  This decade will not end until the end of 2010.  But try telling that to the list makers.  They know what they think.  Why would anybody care that they have got the decade wrong?

The Jews of two thousand years ago thought they knew who God's Messiah would be.  When he appeared he would have the charisma to lead his people to freedom from their Roman oppressors.  He would overthrow their corrupt leaders.  He would seize the reins of power and shake the foundations of the mighty.  They were wrong, but nobody—not even the Messiah himself, when he came—could change their minds.  Jesus confused people.  He did not fit their template for Messiah.  He seemed a little “off”.  Today we read the only episode from his life on record between the age of three and adulthood.  Even at twelve years of age Jesus confused his own mother.  Of course, many twelve year-olds confuse their mothers.  Why should we care that his own people got Jesus wrong?

Jesus was “off” in a unique way.  Jesus was the Messiah.  His divine nature, his “God Self”, was present within him from birth.  Luke 2:41-52 gives us evidence of this audacious claim.  Here we find this odd story of his parents walking away from town for an entire day before figuring out their eldest son has not come with them.  As a child I could not imagine parents losing track of their children.  My family traveled a great deal, mostly by station wagon.  At every rest stop my parents always made completely certain that all six of us had climbed back in before departure. 

But now, as a parent, I admit I can believe Joseph and Mary might have left Jesus behind.  For one thing, he was twelve years old.  Parents tend to relax as their children grow older.  Plus, in those ancient days twelve represented not the start of adolescence (as today) but near-adulthood.  Girls often got married at about that age.  And they traveled in a company.  Joseph and Mary reasonably supposed Jesus was with their group but out of sight, either behind or (more likely with boys) way up ahead.  On a mission trip some years ago we stopped for gas and a stretch.  That year we drove in vans and SUVs.  After climbing back into our vehicles and driving for about half an hour, Jeff Burton called me.  “Hey, do you have Haley Robinson in your vehicle?” he asked.  Haley was supposed to be in his truck, a fact both he and I knew.  I felt torn, as I often do with Jeff.  On the one hand, youth leaders dread leaving somebody else's child behind.  I once took Haley's sister Kirstin (along with two other youth) on a subway ride through a bad section of Brooklyn, New York.  You can bet your bottom dollar I kept them in sight the whole time. 

On the other hand, I had Jeff Burton, The Joker himself, asking whether I had one of “his” youth in my vehicle.  Eventually he confessed he was kidding.  Then he pulled the same thing on the other drivers.  To this day, on our mission trips an adult leader will occasionally yell, “Hey, do you have Haley?”  Jesus might well have escaped his traveling company's notice as he stayed behind in Jerusalem.  But do not miss the edge to this story.  Once his parents discover his absence they hit the panic button.  They race back to Jerusalem and search for him for three days, an eternity when searching for a missing child.  In the modern world after three days the Amber Alert would activate, the parents would have appeared on television, and volunteers would be forming lines to walk through areas where the child might have passed.

Jesus' parents find him in the Temple.  Apparently this was the last place they think to look.  When they reconnect, what does his mother say?  Not too loosely translated, she barks, “How could you do this to me?”  Jesus gives it right back to her.  He asks two sharp questions: “Why were you looking for me?” and “Do you not get it that I must hang out in my Father's house?”  In other words, Jesus tells Joseph, “You are not my father.”  He adds pain to fear.  He tells his panic-stricken earthly parents to let him go, and now.

This is not a warm and fuzzy story.  Even we, with the advantage of hindsight and scripture to study must struggle a bit with it.  Luke flatly tells us “(Mary and Joseph) did not understand what he said to them.”  And Mary “treasured” all these things in her heart.  In this context that word treasure does not have its usual meaning.  Mary does not gladly add this memory to her storehouse of wondrous moments.  No, she buries it deep in her gut, where it joins another episode Luke has already told us she has treasured: the prophecy that her baby would suffer and die for the people.  They return home to Nazareth and all we know of Jesus' next years is that he “increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” 

Everything about Jesus was “off”.  Nothing about him fit the established patterns.  He did not fit the Messiah template.  He did not fit the adolescent boy template.  He did not fit the obedient Jewish son template.  What can we take away from this episode in his life?  Joseph and Mary finally find Jesus sitting in the temple, in the midst of the teachers.  These men were Pharisees and scribes, incredibly well-versed in the Old Testament.  They spent their lives teaching the scriptures.  And he amazes them with his questions and answers.  This is the point of it all.  Jesus was not who he seemed to be.  He was the Messiah.  He was God born a human.  He was and is the Savior who understands scripture perfectly because he authored it.  His very “offness” sets him apart.  It gets our attention.  And it requires a decision.  Do we see Jesus as the Messiah?  Do we honestly try to follow him?

We need to avoid making the same mistake the ancient Jews made.  Instead of starting with our own templates of who the Messiah must be, we need to start with who Jesus is.  If he seems a little off to us, we need to change our preconceptions, to switch ourselves to His on position.  Start by reading the Bible.  But reading the Bible alone does not always work.  I recommend that all of us participate in group Bible study.  If you are a beginning Bible student, attend our Bible 101 class, which will start during Sunday school on January tenth.  We also offer a Tuesday morning study of the following Sunday's sermon passage, a women's Bible study on Wednesday evenings, the First Place program on Saturday mornings, and two additional adult Sunday school classes.  I believe that anybody can attend one of these if he or she truly makes it the priority it deserves to be.

Prayer gives us another effective way to know Jesus as He truly is.  But how should we pray?  One primary block to prayer is the pace at which we live.  In order to pray we need to take the time to quiet our minds and hearts.  This is why the Children in Worship program always starts with a quieting time for the children.  Find a time and place where you can focus for even five minutes.  I also recommend mumbling our prayers.  Our minds wander.  In this age of attention points, not spans, when our brains have grown accustomed to MORE STIMULATION NOW, prayer can be boring—until we enter into the presence of God's Spirit.  Mumble to keep on track in prayer. Tell God what you fear, what makes you thankful, that you want to know Jesus.

Finally, we come to know Jesus in the community of the church.  Somebody hugged me after worship on Christmas Eve and then held onto me at arm's length.  The look of love on this person's face as the moment lingered would have healed the deepest loneliness.  It communicated love in Christ.  The church at its best does this all the time.  Just hanging out together as brothers and sisters in Christ brings Him to life among us.  Serving him by ministering together in His name fans the flames of His presence, making him real to both server and serve.

Read the Bible.  Pray.  Come together.  Use these habits to come to know Jesus as He is, as the “Off Messiah”, as God's Chosen One who brings healing and hope.  I know a man who laughed about how when he married he knew he was marrying not just his wife, but her family.  What he did not know was that he was marrying her church, too.  His family did not attend church.  If church came up in conversation (as it rarely did) his parents would bitterly complain about the hypocrites at church and how they only wanted money.  But as this man came to know the people in his new bride's church he found they did not fit his parents' template.  He found that they resembled his idea of Jesus much more closely than they ever would have believed. 

He and his wife lived together more than five decades.  Then she died of a long and wasting disease.  And the church stood beside him from the moment they got the diagnosis until the day he died, some fifteen years after his wife.  “I thought I knew Jesus after about ten years of marriage and going to that church,” he said, “but I only really knew him after the ladies of the church feeding me and the men keeping me involved even after I really couldn't do much.”  But he was a little off in his self-evaluation.  For many, many years younger men consciously patterned themselves after this older man.  Even after his death men would measure their own conduct by his standard.  Jesus lived on through him for a very long time. 

That is the Messiah we worship.  He is a little different, and praise God for it!