Resolving Your Resolutions

Sermon for January 4, 2009 The Second Sunday of Christmastide Luke 2:41-52 A.   How is your New Year going?  Have you made any resolutions yet?  And how is it going in keeping them?  You know, New Year's resolutions are easy to keep on January 1.  Go jogging on the morning of the 1st and you've exercised every day of the New Year.  Get through lunch without eating potato chips or a candy bar on January 1, and the year reflects a whole new healthy and perfectly kept diet regime.  On the 1st of January it's easy to say that you've never cussed at someone so far this year, never yelled at the kids so far this year, never forgotten to floss, never thrown your dirty clothes on the bathroom floor!   But January 1 is followed inevitably by January 2 and January 3.  How are those resolutions you made going today on the 4th?  The problem with most of the resolutions we make at this time of year is that for most of us, they tend to be fleeting.  All too often we opt for staying in a cozy bed a few more minutes rather than plunging out into the cold on that jog.  Pretty soon candy wrappers start appearing in your desk drawer again. Sooner of later we will surely be aggravated enough at a bad driver or a dropped glass or a stubbed toe to have let loose some bad words or unsanctified thoughts. Sometimes sooner rather than later, the socks are back on the bathroom floor and your dental floss is gathering dust.   The problem with most of our resolutions is that they are too safe, too sensible and too self-centered. We resolve to make tiny cosmetic changes in our lifestyles -- but refuse to consider restructuring our lives by changing the guiding principles by which we live.   Luke's story about the boy Jesus offers us an example of what it would mean if we were to transform our lives by making the ultimate resolution, the mother of all New Year's resolutions, the resolution that ends all resolutions -- to declare that from this day forward we will seek out the Father's Will.  But now I'm getting ahead of myself.   B.   The passage opens with Joseph, His wife Mary, their friends, neighbors and relatives, all making the required pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover feast.  The Law required that the faithful Jew travel to Jerusalem for all three major feasts:  Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.  But for those who lived at a distance from the city, only a pilgrimage at the time of Passover was required.  Obviously, Jesus was being raised in a faithful Jewish home.  At age 13, the boy would become an adult, at His Bar Mitzvah.  After that, Jesus would have been required to make the annual pilgrimage from Nazareth to Jerusalem. But here in this story He is still 12, still technically a child.  Jewish tradition commonly recognized 12 as the beginning of the end of childhood.  At 12, a boy could be held responsible for keeping binding vows.   Parental punishments increased in severity, and at 12, fasting for an entire day became an expectation.   All those special allowances granted very young children were gradually being revoked and replaced by greater expectations and responsibilities.  The fact that His parents were taking Him anyway shows that they were giving Him a good religious grounding, treating Him as more adult than child.   The trip would take 4 or 5 days to get from Nazareth to Jerusalem, and the festival lasted a week.  But as soon as the allotted time for the holiday was over, they hit the road -- anxious to get back to all the chores and responsibilities that filled their lives. Joseph, a craftsman working with stone and wood, undoubtedly had projects awaiting his attention. Mary would have had the hundreds of time-consuming tasks it took to keep her family fed and clothed.  Like most of us at the end of an extended vacation, they were probably looking forward to getting back to the comfortable familiarity of their own home.   It's not an unusual thing to loose track of a child in a setting such as this. The scene Luke draws suggests that Joseph and Mary had made their pilgrimage with quite a substantial crowd of friends, neighbors and relatives.  As the caravan turned towards Nazareth, it undoubtedly took on its traditional form -- men traveling together at the head, animals and possessions in the center, women bringing up the rear. The children would normally be assigned a beast or a bundle to superintend, but their movement within the group was much more fluid. It was easy to assume that Jesus was with Aunt Jane, cousin Billy, or uncle Fred somewhere at the end of the caravan.  Little wonder that Mary and Joseph assumed Jesus to be somewhere in the midst of the caravan's chaos and did not miss his presence until everyone stopped and settled in for the night.   But soon it became apparent that He was missing, and panic began to set in.  What parent hasn't experienced that sinking feeling that Mary and Joseph felt -- the horror of realizing that your child is one place when in your mind he or she is somewhere altogether different?   What if something bad had happened to Him?  Immediately Joseph and Mary retraced their steps and trekked back to Jerusalem.  After three days of frantic searching, they found their Son, safe and sound in the Great Temple of Jerusalem, discussing intricacies of Law with the Rabbis.   I'm sure there isn't a parent in this room who can't sympathize with Mary and Joseph the moment they found the child Jesus safe and sound.  Relief that their son was OK, and then anger at what He had done.  They were understandably miffed:  "Son, why have you treated us like this?  Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you."  You want to hold them close and smack them all at the same time!  The word "anxiously" in the English doesn't come close to conveying the gut-wrenching accusation of this almost hysterical mother.  But the young Jesus refuses to let his relationship with God be regulated according to some prearranged, culturally imposed schedule. The sharp accusatory tone Mary assumes toward Jesus evokes a strong response from him as well.  His answer reflects a genuine amazement at her display of desperate relief and bottled-up anger.   "Why were you searching for me?  Didn't ou know I had to be in my Father's house?"   There is an alternative translation in some manuscripts that also fits:  "Didn't you know I had to be about my Father's business?" Jesus' response reveals that he has now taken on for himself the responsibility of living up to the proclamations of angels, shepherds, and Wise Men.   "I must be in my Father's house (doing my Father's business)" demonstrates that at the age of twelve, Jesus clearly felt the call of his heavenly Father.  He knew He had to fulfill God's purposes for His life, even if He may not be fully aware of them at age 12.  He would not be propelled along in life by His own wants or ambitions.  Jesus would be bound to God's Will for His life.  And what better place to learn God's Will than in the Temple, talking to the learned doctors of the Law, picking their brains on Scriptural nuance.  Jesus is not claiming that he is only to be in the temple from now on. Rather, He is to be God-centered in all He does.  In these verses, Luke once again proves that Jesus' true Father is God; Joseph, as good a dad as He was, was Jesus' stepfather.   Despite his newly claimed identity as one who must be about God's business, Jesus accepts his role as a good, obedient Jewish son.  Jesus obediently follows Mary and Joseph back to Nazareth.  He continues to be the dutiful Jewish son of Joseph and Mary, beyond reproach in either his actions or his attitudes.  Jesus answered the most important call of all -- to be about his Father's business.  And the rest of His life would illustrate again and again Jesus' unique relationship with His Heavenly Father.   C.   So, besides giving us the only peek into Jesus' childhood that the Gospels provide, what meaning for we modern day disciples can we glean from this passage?   Let's go back to New Year's resolutions for a moment.  I've already mentioned that our resolutions tend to be much too superficial, much too easy to give up.  Since they don't usually make huge changes in our lives, they're easy to forget about.  But what do you think would happen if we resolved to dedicate our lives to being about our Heavenly Father's business, above all else?  What would it mean to live, not according to human expectations or cultural patterns, not according to other people's business, not even according to what other people think God's business is, but according to God's business for us?  Jesus discovered at this early age of 12 that answering God's expectations could get you in trouble -- even with your own family.   In fact, "Business-as-usual" may not be the way God does business.  And both the world and the church find that unnerving. The ultimate New Year's resolution does not challenge us to cut fat grams, or quit smoking or get to aerobics class twice a week. The ultimate resolution a Christian can make is to live in the light of divine intentions, not human inventions, to make it my business to be a part of God's business.   But this just begs a bigger question:  What is God's business?   Well, even a casual glance at the Scriptures show us that God is in the business of transformation.  God transforms groups of people, such as Israel, but God is especially good at transforming individuals.  God transformed a childless man Abraham into the father of a blessed people.  God transformed Jacob from the cheat to the faithful servant.  God transformed Joseph from being a snotty nosed kid to the Vice President of Egypt.  God transformed Moses from a stuttering old man to a great leader.   God transformed Peter from the coward who denied the Lord into the leader of the Church.  God transformed Paul from the persecutor to the greatest evangelist the Church has ever known.  And God created the Body of Christ from sinful people, all because at Bethlehem, God came to us and gave us Jesus the Christ, who transforms in his life the love and power of God into the impulses of grace and salvation that the world desperately needs.  And God can transform us from what we are now into the image of Christ, if we just stop and let our business be God's business.   So what does the Christian who resolves to be a part of God's transforming work on January 4 do on Monday, January 5?  Or in any of the twelve months to follow?  There are two essential requirements:  First, we must go deeply into the Word.   Second, we must go widely into the world.   1.      To be about our Father's business, we have to go deeply into the Word.  We have to learn what God's business has been for others before we can discern what God's business is for us.  And we have to practice listening to God's voice to us through the prayerful study of Scripture, the anointed Word of God.  When the young Jesus felt called to live beyond business-as-usual and answered the call of God's business, he first went to the Temple.   In other words, he steeped himself in the meanings and messages of God's Word. Knowing what God intends for men and women, learning what God has already said and done and promised for this world, is a necessary first step in the transformation process. When their son left for his freshman year at Duke University, his parents gave him a Bible, assuring him it would be a great help. Later, as he began sending them letters asking for money, they would write back telling him to read his Bible, citing chapter and verse. He would reply that he was reading the Bible--but he still needed money. When he came home for a semester break, his parents told him they knew he had not been reading his Bible. How? They had tucked $10 and $20 bills by the verses they had cited in their letters.  We need to develop a habit of daily prayerful study if we have not already done so, so we can attune ourselves to God's Will for our lives.  I enjoy using the Encounter With God devotional guides we put out on the seats here at church.  You might like to use the daily offices in the Prayer Book, or some other guided Scripture study guide.  Pray for God to speak to you through the readings.  Pray for individuals and needs each day.  Thank God for all His blessings daily.  Soak the Scripture in prayer, and soak the prayer in Scripture, and listen to the Lord's Will for life.  And carve out the same time each day for this, so it becomes a looked-forward-to habit. 2. To be about our Father's business, we also have to go widely into the world. Being about God's business doesn't mean we do nothing but sit in the Temple -- in the church -- all day long and discuss theology.  Remember that while Jesus started out in the temple, he then obediently followed Joseph and Mary back out into the world.  We cannot be a part of God's transforming the world unless we stand in its midst.   As James said in his little letter bearing the same name:  "Be doers of the Word, and not hearers only."   When I was a student in seminary, a group of twenty of us went to NYC with our Church History professor, to spend four days researching factors that contributed to the Arab/Israeli conflict in the Middle East.  We went to both the Israeli and Jordanian consulates, and met with officials there.  We went to the huge Exxon world headquarters, and sat in the boardroom quizzing executives on the role of oil in Middle-East conflicts.  Each day was full.  But the evenings were free, and being poor students, we spent the time trying to find as much free stuff to see and do as possible.  One evening we went to the Empire State Building, and zoomed up to the Observation Deck on high-speed elevators.  Looking over the edge of the building at what was to me a dizzying height, the city below was a swirl of lights and colors.  Our professor directed our attention downward:  "See all the beautiful lights, colors and activities.  Not a person can be seen from this height.  That's because all the people are in the dark places below.  Remember that as you go into your future ministry.  If you want to reach people, you have to go into the dark spaces of life."   Going out into the world not only makes us a servant people of those who are in need, but it gets us out of ourselves and into the dark places of life.  We need to be a transformed people who use special daily vision to see how we can make a difference in someone else's life.   The simple things are oftentimes the most effective.  Take those resolutions, for instance.  What if instead of resolving to get more exercise this year, we resolved to exercise some spiritual muscles and organized a prayer-chain across the community?  What if instead of resolving to spend less time in front of the TV and more time reading some good books, we resolved to teach those struggling with illiteracy to read those books to us?  What if instead of resolving to spend more "quality time" at home with our family, we resolve to take our whole family on a mission project for that quality time?  Instead of seeing the world using "me-focused" glasses, we see the world out of "he-focused" and "she-focused" glasses.  We see what needs to be done, and we pray to the Lord about doing it.  Then we too become agents of transformation, hearing the Will of God for our own lives, and following through with it in the dark places of our own world.  As the old commercial went, we don't have to save the world.  That's God's job anyway.  We are just called to save a little piece of it.  As agents of change, we can bring change to those around us.   Our life, our commitment to the ultimate resolution, can help the love of God through Christ to transform the world.   Today is January 4.  A fresh New Year lies unblemished before us. What can each of us resolve to be on January 5 and for the rest of the year?     Keith Almond P.O. Box 4388 Leesburg, VA  20177 703-344-3569 almond_keith@yahoo.com