Sunday, December 27, 2015 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Growing Up

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Colossians 3:12–17
Luke 2:41–52

It’s not over, this birthing. There are always newer skies into which God can throw stars. When we begin to think that we can predict the Advent of God, that we can box the Christ in a stable in Bethlehem, that’s just the time that God will be born in a place we can’t imagine and won’t believe. Those who wait for God watch with their hearts and not their eyes, listening, always listening for angel words.

Ann Weems, Kneeling in Bethlehem

During my time here as a pastor, I’ve led three groups from this church to Cuba, where we have maintained a longtime partnership with the First Presbyterian Reformed Church of Havana. On one of those trips, we lost a person. That’s right: we lost a person! Our church bus had been visiting various sites in and around Havana, and our last stop was the Malecon. The Malecon is an eight-kilometer stretch along the Harbor of Havana. It’s both beautiful and idyllic, and especially so when you realize that, for more than fifty years, most Americans haven’t been able to experience this particular spot. We got out of the bus and spent some minutes there, admiring the view, chatting among ourselves, taking pictures. And then it was time to board the bus again and make our way back to the church where we were staying. It was when we got back to the church that we realized we were missing one of our travelers. We searched high and low all over that church. We called out her name over and over again. Our anxiety increased. Cell phones were of no use, because ours don’t operate in Cuba. Finally all we could think of doing was to get on the bus again and go back to where we last were. And there she was, standing where we had inadvertently left her, admiring the view, taking in the scenery, enjoying the moment. She didn’t seem to be upset or anxious. She just figured we would be back.

I thought of that incident when I read today’s story about Mary and Joseph losing Jesus. And I also thought of the panic my husband and I experienced years ago when our two girls went missing for a time at Wrigley Field. When we found them, they were as nonchalant as our Cuba traveler was. They’d been totally caught up in the moment and the adventure and the wonder of whatever they had been experiencing. They had no idea the anxiety and distress we were feeling.

That’s exactly Jesus’ reaction when Mary and Joseph finally find him. The whole family had made the required pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the great annual Passover celebration. When it was all over, Mary and Joseph and their fellow travelers had started back to their homes, gotten fifteen miles away by foot, and only then realized Jesus wasn’t with them. Can you imagine the exchanges between them? “I thought you had him.” “No, I thought you had him.” When they finally locate Jesus in the temple, Jesus says to his panicked parents, “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I’d have to be here, in my Father’s house, about my Father’s business?” Jesus obviously hadn’t been ready to pack up and leave the festival.

Here we sit, all of us gathered together two days after Christmas, most likely still feeling the effects of overeating, thinking about how we can put away the mess under the Christmas tree, wondering when we can take the tree down—if we haven’t already. Or maybe we’re thinking about how glad we are it’s all over, because for those who are alone, Christmas can be a painful time, hearing the constant refrain of family, family, family when no family exists. Or when family dysfunction outweighs any comfort derived from being together. We’re ready to start thinking about the new year, to start jotting down those goals or resolutions. Our great annual festival is over, and most of us are ready to move on. We’re accustomed to today’s pace, which seems to be getting on to the next thing as fast as possible.

There’s always a point leading up to Christmas when I start wondering about the story and doubts creep in, especially this year, when the world seems more topsy-turvy than ever. At some point in my journey toward Christmas, I always find myself wondering about the promise and what it means, wondering about the story and its truth, mulling over the inconsistencies I witness in churches and church people and in my own actions. The questions and doubts come, dance in and out of my mind during all of it. Those questions and doubts are another reason I think about packing up and moving on.

I wonder if that’s what Mary and Joseph felt as they packed up their things and started on their way back home from Jerusalem. Maybe they had had their own questions that had surfaced about life and whether this pilgrimage to Jerusalem made any difference. Maybe it was their haste to be done with it and get home again that made them take less notice of where their son was.

What both my forgotten Cuba traveler and the adolescent Jesus have reminded me to do this week is to slow down, to not pack up so quickly, to stay with the story, to stay with Jesus, and even to stay with my doubts—and to develop a discipline of reverence, because it seems that that’s what had caught hold of the boy Jesus. He had no desire to move on from that festival. He was swallowed up in reverence for the teachings, reverence for the questions, reverence for his Creator. Jesus was so caught up in the experience, he didn’t even realize his parents and their friends were leaving.

Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal priest and prolific author, writes a chapter titled “Paying Attention” in her book An Altar in the World. She quotes philosopher Paul Woodruff, who states that reverence is the virtue that keeps people from trying to act like gods. Taylor writes of a multitude of ways we can practice reverence—in nature, as we engage with others, and certainly as we ask questions about God and who God is. Developing reverence is the habit of paying attention.

The adolescent Jesus is bidding us to stay awhile with this high holiday we call Christmas. To pay attention. To pay attention to our questions. And to pay attention to our discomfort. To notice what brings us joy. To wrestle with the doubts that surface, to read the story again, to wonder what it all means. To think a little longer and more intentionally about the Christmas Eve sermon and how we might actually follow the angels’ directives and decide not to be afraid this next year, no matter what transpires, no matter what evil exists. To figure out how our claim that God has come into the world, to bring peace, to show us what Love is, can help us truly not be afraid.

The New York Times ran an editorial on Christmas Day titled “Moments of Grace in a Grim Year.” I’ve been thankful for that editorial, because it highlighted progress made this year toward good, despite so much disruption and violence all around us. The last paragraph said, “Evil is everywhere, and anger and hatred are loud. The shouting drowns out the quiet; tragedy and disaster block the view of the good. Yet there are always signs of progress toward a better future. Look, or you may miss them.”

Look, or you may miss them. That ability to look and see comes from the practice of reverence and paying attention.

The adolescent twelve-year-old Jesus was beginning to explore his own identity. In his staying behind in the temple and surrounding himself with the teachers and the scriptures, Jesus was discovering his unique relationship with God.

This is what we are invited to do. To stay with the story and the questions and continue to establish our own personal and individual relationship with God. To grow up into our own unique expression of faith, our own unique relationship with God. What does the story of God being born into this world, in this tiny baby, mean to you in times of great joy? And what does the story mean to you in times of great tragedy? What does it all mean to you? Can you say? Do you know?

Barbara Brown Taylor says that “reverence requires a certain pace. It requires a willingness to take detours, even side trips” (An Altar in the World, p. 24). This isn’t always a pleasant or easy process, because in the process we often find that Jesus calls us to ways of behavior that aren’t natural or that we never expected. Or that suddenly troubles enter in and those troubles play with what we have always believed. Detours mess with our own plans. And that’s OK. Not knowing all of the answers and letting some of it be unanswered mystery is okay.

Even Mary is perplexed by how Jesus responds to her when she and Joseph finally find Jesus in the temple. She doesn’t get everything he says and can’t make sense of it anymore than she completely understood the angel’s announcement almost thirteen years before. Jesus tells her—when she asks why he stayed in the temple and caused Joseph and her such angst and distress—that this is what he had to do. Neither of his parents understand. Despite what she didn’t understand, the story says that Mary treasured these things in her heart. It’s a poor choice of translation for us really, because the word treasured implies that Mary liked Jesus’ answer. The statement is better understood to mean that Mary held these things in her heart. She held the mystery in her heart, and she held all of the inability to understand everything that would play out. She held all of the joy and all of the sorrow in her heart, all of the questions and the doubt, along with the things she knew for sure.

She has this in common with all of us. Because she, like the rest of us, must wait and see what will unfold, who Jesus will become for each one of us, where he will be led, where he will lead her and where he will lead us (“First Sunday after Christmas,” Texts for Preaching, Year C, p. 74).

You might ask why. What’s in it for you or for me to stay awhile with this story and this celebration and to figure out what it means to us this year? Is it just a self-serving exercise, or is there something more to it? To keep at this practice of paying attention, the discipline of reverence, this growing up into our own unique relationship with God, leads to our transformation—little by little, inch by inch—into a person who knows that God loves us beyond all imagining and beyond all ability to explain why. The transformation leads slowly but surely to the ability to put on the clothes that Paul mentions in his letter to the Colossians: the clothing of compassion and kindness, humility and meekness and patience, too. And when we can put on those pieces of clothing, we affect the world around us, little by little, inch by inch. Could it be that our goals for the new year could include this desire to practice reverence for this story of all stories, even if we have to hold all of the unknowns in our hearts? Could it be that our goals for the new year could be more about who we will become—more compassionate, more kind, increasingly humble, more patient—rather than about how much we will accomplish and the things we will do?

The story of God coming into the world as a baby—and all that unfolds after that—is worthy of our reverence, is worthy of our paying attention, because, after all, it’s way more than just a story. Thanks be to God. Amen.