During the holiday season, perhaps you had a family gathering and saw some members of your extended family tree you haven’t seen in a spell.  You look at that teenager moping around text messaging incessantly on her cell phone, and you catch yourself remembering a Christmas not that so long ago when she was barely able to walk.  Then you look over at the girl’s mother and think, “Oh dear, I remember her when she was barely able to walk….”

      Kids grow up.  We joke a bit about it.  “Oughta put a brick on his head,” we say of a child as he starts going through clothes and shoes at seemingly overnight pace.  In some households, you find curious scratches on the doorpost of a kitchen door, marking the growth of each child.  Or somewhere in the attic or a storage closet, a “baby book” and every single school yearbook is kept safe.  Or with today’s kids, parents hope the computer hard drive crash didn’t wipe out the pictures of Junior’s third birthday party. 

      We love keeping track of the kids and marveling at their achievements, great and small.  I’m sure you have started thinking a bit about your own ways of keeping the kids.  I’m curious to hear a quick memory or two from the crowd.  What have you done to keep track of your kids’ growth over the years?                 [Comments from the congregation.]

      The gospel story today might seem a bit of a surprise.  We just finished Advent and Christmas Eve, and here we are just two days later, and Jesus himself has grown up while we weren’t looking!  We put him in the manger the other night, and we sang songs to him.  And now he has grown up on us!  Heavens!

      The lectionary reading from Luke today moves us away from Bethlehem, and we hear of the only gospel account of Jesus as a child.  And what pray tell is the young Jesus up to?    As far as his family is concerned: mischief!

      Raised an observant Jew, Jesus is on the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  The family has caravanned their way to the holy city, made their religious observances, enjoyed their time, and then they started for home.  In the hubbub of an entire clan of people going out, it is highly likely that Mary and Joseph just kept thinking, “Oh, he’s back there playing with friends”.  When enough time passed and still no child to be seen, that is when Joseph and Mary realized he was not with them.

      Have you noticed how children can disappear?  Nowadays, parents have a variety of ways to keep track of their kids, including those leashes that you strap to the kid’s back.  I saw a child so tethered to a parent in New York City a few weeks back.  I kept marveling the family was able to walk through the busy streets and the kid didn’t “clothesline” another pedestrian.

      Of course, parents struggle with keeping track of the kids.  I remember the time I discovered elevators.  Being a farm family, we rarely traveled that far, so being in a store with an elevator was quite the experience. As a five year old, I was fascinated by these doors that would open and close, and what child does not automatically reach up and hit every single button?

      My fascination grew to the point that as soon as my mother and grandmother were distracted, I wandered off to the elevator door.  I got on, and the elevator doors closed. 

      I enjoyed riding it for a few minutes, as the doors opened and closed.  Then I realized I forgot which floor my family was on.  I started asking adults to help me find my family.  One adult asked me, “Did you get on at housewares?”
            “I don’t know,” I said.  “What’s a houseware?”

      Mary and Joseph found Jesus in the Temple, where he is engaging the wise religious leaders. The momentary parental anxiety is met with an interesting response.  “Why were you searching for me?  Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”  (I tried that line on my parents.  It didn’t work….).

      Here, we get a glimpse of Christian theology.  Christianity confesses Jesus as “fully human/fully divine”.  Jesus is in the Temple, even at an early age, engaging the Temple elders in conversation, speaking with an authority far beyond his years.  Can we also read this text with a bit of wonder at Jesus, the one who grew up just like us?   The authority, the power, and the divinity is in tandem with birth, growing up, and becoming an adult.  Jesus did not exempt himself from life, showing up as the babe in Bethlehem and enduring the passage of years.  The one confessed as “very God of Very God” is made known in the gawkiness of humanity.

      Jesus offers himself in the fullness of human experience, as one who struggled to walk those first steps, who fussed a bit when told to go to bed.  He cried and laughed.  Jesus lived the mundane realities of human existence.  Luke alone records a story of Jesus’ younger years, and arguably, he tells the story to fit into the themes of his gospel.  Hearing this story on the Sunday just after Christmas, the text serves as a friendly word to enjoy the season upon us and avoid the mistake of thinking of Jesus only in the contexts of manger and cross.  There is a long journey Jesus takes, the one called “being human”.  This text illumines the fullness of Jesus as Son of God as well as the firstborn of Mary.

      I wonder if we could think a bit about the influence of Mary and Joseph on this young child.  Jesus was raised up in the midst of a household, woven into the fabric of a family’s life.  The gospels do not dwell extensively on Jesus’ upbringing (Mary appears in the gospels later in Jesus’ life and Joseph’s story begins and ends with the nativity narratives), yet Jesus surely must have benefitted from the raising up he received in that little off-the-beaten path town of Nazareth, son of a carpenter. In short, Christ was indeed “Immanuel”, “God with us”. 

            In celebrating Christmas, can we also marvel at the part “family” plays in our faith?  We are blessed with upwards of a dozen children active in our congregation.  I take delight in them.  Ivy will run into my office and jump up into my arms. I believe Tea finds me a bit magical.  Calvin once told his grandmother (“ammu”), “Hey, it’s the church man!” when I came to their home.  Each child we have in our midst is a blessing and part of what makes us “First Baptist”.

            I believe each member of the congregation should have a vested interest in each and every child in our midst. We may not have the dozens of children common in church decades ago, but we have “our dozen”, a group of delightful kids who could benefit from the larger family of faith.  May I challenge us to make this coming year a time for growing our ministry with children?  It would be delightful to welcome more children, and we will work on that.  I would likewise challenge us to be working just as diligently on the nurturing of the children as well. 

            Would you consider this task as holy work?  Jesus grew up in the midst of a web of family around him.  Could we see ourselves as that holy caravan on pilgrimage?  Could we see ourselves as the wise old elders welcoming the child into our midst and marveling at their contributions to the ongoing dialogue?

            I may not have children of my own, but when I come to this place, I have a dozen kids that need my love, care, mentoring, and presence.  I would suggest this way of thinking is limited only to clergy or religious education instructors.  Each one of us needs to be “family” to these kids.  It is indeed holy work.  Will you join in this effort?