30 December 2012

“Hope grows up”
1st Sunday of Christmas C
Luke 2:41-52 / Colossians 3:12-17
30 December 2012


One of the “big money clips” videos on America’s Funniest Home Videos ... which means it gets played over and over again ... shows a kindergarten graduation ceremony, complete with podium, caps, gowns and diplomas ... and the teacher, inviting each child forward, asking them, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The answers they give are routine ... “fireman” ... “teacher” ... until one little boy, thinking about his answer longer than the rest, finally says, “I don’t want to grow up.”
A truthful answer, but an unavoidable outcome. Because we all grow up ... mature ... age ... it is the way of things. Time passes, and things change ... sometimes, too fast, and yes, sometimes too slow ... but this is life, and to live means to change and grow.
Change and growth is what we get in our Gospel reading today. It’s the first Sunday of Christmas, we’re just twenty short verses away from our Nativity scene-story, but how things have changed from what we heard here last Monday night. It’s now the pre-teen, middle-school-aged Jesus we have before us ... with mom and dad, twelve years older too, on the journey they’d taken every year as part of their religious ... and parental duty as well ... going up to Jerusalem for the central festival of their faith.
We need to take care how we hear, how we read, how we interpret this story. Like so much of these early chapters of Luke’s Gospel ... with its stories that set the stage for all that’s to come afterwards ... we must not get distracted by the shiny little threads which we can find along the way. Just as some would prefer to make a lot out of Mary’s young age when she gets the news that she is to bear Jesus ... even though there’s nothing in the text itself which says how old or young she was ... others will choose to focus on what’s not in this text which we have before us today.
Some choose to speculate as to why there’s such a gap in the narrative, between Jesus’ birth, his first time at the Temple in Jerusalem ... his presentation as a baby, which is told of in the verses between the Christmas Eve story and today’s reading ... and the reading we have before us today, when Jesus is twelve ... so some spend much time and effort speculating about those ‘missing years’ ... what happened to Jesus between age one and age twelve, what he did, where he lived, the rest of his family.
Those are shiny threads, to be sure. But the problem with shiny threads is that they can distract us from the substance of the fabric itself. And there’s more than enough fabric, a rich full narrative of Luke’s Gospel of Jesus’ life and ministry, which we DO have before us, to keep our attention. And the fabric of Luke’s narrative about Jesus is that God has intervened at a time, in a place, right HERE in history, in order to change the course of history forever ... everything which has happened before and will happen hereafter needs to, must be viewed through this “Jesus lens,” if you will, because this is how God chooses to come to his people to make a new way for them, for us, for all of creation ... as the angel tells Mary, “of his kingdom there will be no end.”
In other words, hope must grow up ... the baby Jesus , the infant presented in the Temple ... he must become the adolescent staying behind in his Father’s house, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions ... worrying his parents when they realize that he’s not with them.
And Jesus’ earthly parents get another reminder of that in these Gospel words today ... as if Mary needed that reminder, given how she received the first news of Jesus’ coming, in the greeting and call from the angel ... and the visit of the shepherds to the manger after his birth ... but the link between these surprising events and the ones we read, hear of today ... the link is drawn for us; just as at the end of the Christmas story, so too today, we hear that Jesus’ mother “treasured all these things in her heart.”
For the heart is where hope grows up, hope matures and takes hold in our lives, the heart is where this all gets worked out for us ... so that we can be changed from the inside out ... and hope will continue to grow and change within us, so that we can, will be messengers of hope ... in our families, our workplaces, our schools and faith communities ... into the world God loves and sends his Son to save ... US ... to bring us into God’s eternal heart of love and life, forgiveness and peace, forever.
And hope growing up ... this also serves to remind us that the thing with growing up is that it may not turn out the way you and I, that we planned ... but it’s still hope.
There is a LOT of Jesus’ story in Luke’s Gospel ahead of us ... we have only scratched the surface in these four short weeks of Advent ... on Christmas Eve ... on this First Sunday of Christmas. Yes, it’s the same Gospel we heard three years ago, as we make our way through this circular cycle that is the lectionary and church year, this three year rotation of texts and themes, days and festivals ... but we are not the same people we were three years ago ... we are not the same faith community we were three years ago ... or three times three years ago.
When you and I started our journey together now, going on nine years ago, it was the Gospel of Luke which was our text and guide through those initial days of the late summer and fall of 2004.
For those of you who were here then, it was, we were certainly a different Nativity back then.
Hope grows up.
I was reminded of this on Christmas Eve. There were a lot of new faces ... reflective of the fact that our congregation has grown and changed much in those nine years ... there are more of us now who don’t at all remember what Nativity was like before 2004, than do.
But for those who were here in those days and who do remember, well, I watched your faces Monday night. And what I saw, was Wonder. Amazement. And Joy. This was what you had hoped for, what so many of you have prayed and worked so hard for, over the past decade. Numbers tell only part of the story ... but they do make a point: Almost two hundred fifty in worship on Christmas Eve ... Sunday worship attendance, over a hundred, for the first time since the early 1990s ... an active children’s and youth education and ministry program ... and service, God’s love actively lived out into our community and stretching all around the world.
Hope had, indeed, grown up.
And so I think it’s time ... time to officially mark the day ... as with our children when they reach milestone events in their lives ... Nativity, people of new birth, people of new life, let it be said, let it be heard, that the name which was placed on you as you began this millennium, you who were then a small but dedicated group of the faithful,... Nativity, you who were named a “redevelopment parish” of the Northwest Washington Synod ... I, who was called as your servant-leader following one who had begun this good work among you ... we who have been plowing this ground well here in Fairwood ... today, we have reached a milestone, together.
We’re no longer a ‘redevelopment.’ We are vital, and alive, and active, and growing, in faith, and love, and service.
Hope has, indeed, grown up.
So now what?
That’s the question, into which we’ll be living together NOW. Like Mary, keep those past events close, and treasure them in your hearts. As we continue to go and grow together, those memories will remind us of what hope was like then, and give us a clue of what hope will be like, now, and into God’s future.
As for how we begin ... we will start this new hope together as we have always started together ... steeped in God’s Word. This year, we will worship our way through Luke’s Gospel ... a particular Word about the incarnate Word, Jesus speaking and living out how “his kingdom will have no end,” particularly to those who always are on its out-side ... the poor, the powerless, the weak, the suffering, the depressed and oppressed. And we’ll be asking, What might, how might we be guided as Christ’s agents, his bodies and voices, hearts and hands of hope, into the world, to bring God’s kingdom of justice, mercy, peace and hope to these brothers and sisters who Jesus particularly loves?
We’ll learn as we grow, together ... those words of Colossians today, wonderful instruction and guidance as we begin ... that we would be compassionate, kind, humble, meek and patient ... bearing with one another, always being full of forgiveness, Christ’s peace, and thankfulness.
We’ll grow into those words, that life together ... in this community, hearing God’s word of forgiveness, grace, welcome, love and peace ...
... at this table, as we dine together at Jesus’ invitation ... and leave it, fed and nourished, blessed, empowered, sent to serve at his urging.
And we will not sit still ... for hope must continue to grow through us, both outwardly and inwardly, as we seek to deepen our exploration of what it means to be living, loving, saved by God’s grace, children of God; called, gathered, and sent into places which so need to hear, to feel, to receive HOPE ... HOPE, through us, God’s chosen agents of HOPE.
Some are as close as our own families ... others, in our schools and workplaces and community gathering spots ... to places, to people we are called to be, to live, to continue to grow into the people God is calling us to be, Nativity, people of new birth, people of God’s new, rich, full, abundant life.
Hope grows up. And keeps growing, and going, in and among us.
This is God’s word of promise, hope and joy for us as we enter another calendar year together, another year of God’s grace.
Of Jesus’ kingdom there will be no end.
A blessed ... faith- ... service- ... hope-filled New Year to you ... as God brings us, as Jesus leads us, together into the future he has already prepared for us.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.