“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]
Introduction
A new year is upon us. 2025 is now in the books; 2026 remains unknown as it stretches out before us. We are caught between letting go and taking in, wrapping up and rolling out, caught between what was and what will be. The beginning of a new year always invites resolutions and promises, some of which will be broken and others fulfilled. Somethings we can leave behind in 2025, others we will carry with us into 2026. For some of us there’s excitement as we think about all the unknown terrain to be discovered over the next 361 days; others of us may be feeling the heaviness the new year brings, fearing and worrying as we contemplate the potential for (more) loss and (more) pain to come our way.
The reality is that most of us probably have some form of all these feelings as we celebrate the new year. We are both excited and nervous, confident and skeptical, in control and not in control. So, it can be hard to feel anchored at this time between two years—one being completed and one barely started. And because we are caught between all these emotions and feelings, we can’t find our anchor in ourselves because that’s where all the instability is currently residing. So, where do we look?
Outside of ourselves. And this is the power of the Christmas season. Something new (even if the story is quite old) is born among us and to us and in us. Jesus, the Christ, is given to us anew, again. And while on Christmas Eve we were part of the rabble invited to the manger among shepherds and animals to look upon the newborn child who is the savior of the world, today we are invited to witness Jesus as tween participating in religious (and family!) life in a new way. The anchor we need at the beginning of this new year is found in Jesus the young and curious teacher and learner.
Luke 2:41-52
Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph were traveling to Jerusalem every year for the festival of the Passover. And when [Jesus] was twelve, they went [to Jerusalem] according to the custom of the festival and when the days of the festival came to an end, they returned and the boy Jesus remained in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know (vv.41-43). Every year for eleven years they traveled, as a family, to Jerusalem for the celebration of the festival of the Passover; every year for eleven years Jesus returned with them. And then, at year twelve, Jesus remains while the family leaves. Luke doesn’t give us a reason (upfront) about why Jesus decided to stay back or if it was an accident as if he was caught up in the events and the dialogues indwelling and swirling about the synagogue and in Jerusalem and couldn’t pull himself away. What is clear is that something new is happening; Luke wants his audience to see a shift in the narrative, to take note of Jesus’s self-differentiation from his family, his parents and siblings, even any extended family that may have been in the traveling company.
Luke continues the story, But considering him to be in the company, they went a day’s journey and then they were seeking carefully for him among the relatives and acquaintances. When they did not find [him], they turned back toward Jerusalem and were seeking carefully for him. After three days, they found him in the temple sitting down in the middle of the teachers and listening to and enquiring of them (vv44-46). Following Luke’s story, Jesus is missing for at least five days if not six. While it took his parents a harrowing three days to find him in the temple, he (most likely) spent more than just that moment (preceding his being found) in the temple. He spent about a week; a week is plenty of time to form observant opinions and rational conclusions.[i] Now, there is a correlation here between Jesus being found by his parents on the third day in the temple and Jesus being found on the third day after his death in resurrected glory; [ii] I’m not sure that’s Luke’s main point. Luke’s point is to make known the very beginning of Jesus’s ministry at a young age. While we know his active ministry starts at the Epiphany, what Luke is showing his audience is that the very beginning—the inception/conception—is here; for it’s here where Jesus is listening and asking, answering and debating with the very same religious leaders he will come into conflict with later when he’s an adult. It’s here, for Luke, where Jesus begins to make himself known and where Jesus begins to become aware of the toxicity of the religious situation for the people of God.[iii] Here, for Luke, God is moving Jesus’s spirit and planting the seeds of God’s divine gospel proclamation that will come.
So, after a week his parents find him and he’s teaching and questioning the elders of the synagogue. Then Luke tells us, Now, all the ones who were listening to him were amazed about his understanding and answers. And after seeing him, they were struck with astonishment and his mother said to him, “Child, why did you do this to us in this way? behold, your father and I were seeking you with suffering pain.” And he said to them, “Why were you seeking me? Did you not consider that it was necessary for me to be in this place of my father?” (v47). Not only has Jesus separated himself from his family, but he is also separating himself from the authorities of the synagogue. Their amazement at his insight and answers indicates that his comments and questions were not textbook but came from a different source, a divine inspiration, a divine, prophetic stirring. And this is what Luke wants his audience to see, to focus on, wherein to find anchor. Jesus the Christ, Jesus the child of Mary; Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Son of humanity. It is through this one that God will challenge and overhaul the kingdom of humanity through the reign of God; it is through this one that the oppressed (spiritually and politically oppressed) will find liberation not only spiritual liberation with God but political liberation with the neighbor from the systemic oppression of the kingdom of humanity. It is through this divine child of Mary that the challenge and collision of the reign of God with the kingdom of humanity is already starting.[iv],[v] It is in and through this one that the very center of the temple[vi] will be relocated away from cold stones and in fleshy human hearts, away from cold law obedience and to warm faith wherein the law is satisfied and done.[vii]
Conclusion
As we enter this new year—with all its unknown and uncertainty, with all its mileage laying out before us and unchartered territory—we enter with a story of God for humanity guiding our way. We are given someone to walk with: Jesus the Christ, God’s son. So, we enter this new year knowing something significant and timeless: for God so love the world that God gave God’s only son to bring love, life, and liberation to the unloved, the dead, and the captive. Luke gives us a place to look, a focal point, something to allow our anxious minds and nervous hearts to focus on and find anchor. Luke gives us someone outside of ourselves to look to: Jesus of Nazareth, this man who is God. Christmas will always remind us that God comes to dwell with human beings on earth. This is God’s desire: to dwell with humanity whom God loves with all God’s heart. So, with resolutions or not, with promises or not, with intentions or not for this new year, we enter this new year with an ancient story made new to us at this moment. And in this ancient story we find the fulfillment of all we were waiting for through Advent: hope for the hopeless, peace for the peaceless, joy for the joyless, and love for the loveless.
[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.
[i] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 46. “Olivia: ‘he went to the temple to teach the teachers of the law, because these teachers knew the law by heart but they didn’t put it into practice.’”
[ii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 46. “Olivia: ‘He also did it to help prepare them. He was going to be away from them later. And once Mary and his other relatives came looking for him, and he told them that his family was the community. And then Mary lost him in death, but on the third day, like here in the temple, he was found.’”
[iii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 46-47. “…Jesus was taken to the temple by his parents, in accordance with the religious traditions that they faithfully observed, ‘as was the custom,’ as the Gospel says. There he saw the Jewish religion, legalistic pharisaical, external. He also saw the money-changers that he was going to drive out later. And then, when his parents were leaving, he went back to the temple to see if he could do something to change the situation.”
[iv] Cardenal, Solentiname, 46. “Felipe…: ‘In this Gospel Jesus appears as a rebellious kid. He’s still a child and he’s already in the temple challenging their religion, criticizing and arguing with those guys, giving them arguments they can’t answer.’”
[v] Cardenal, Solentiname, 47. “Felipe: ‘Conclusion, then: Jesus was a revolutionary from childhood.’”
[vi] Gonzalez, Luke, 44. “The temple is the sign of God’s presence in the midst of the people.”
[vii] Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 43. Potential echo of 1 Samuel 2:26 in Luke 2:52. And, “Furthermore, Samuel’s connection both with the temple and with Jesus hint at the typology that sees Jesus as the new and final temple of God. For this reason, a common theme in early Christian theology was that the destruction of the temple showed that it was no longer necessary, for the temple prefigured the one who had already come.”
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