Sunday, January 2, 2022
/The Second Sunday after Christmas Day
The Rev. Clint Brown
Theme: Natural theology and revelation
There comes a point in every faith journey when you suddenly realize that Jesus – the guy up in heaven, the guy you worship, the guy who came and suffered and died to complete an awesome cosmic purpose in the mind of God – well, that august figure had to have, at some point, been a boy: a boy who scraped his shins, played hide-and-seek with his friends, licked the brownie bowl when his mother wasn’t looking, and, sometimes, got a runny nose and had to stay in bed. The gospel accounts do us no favors, of course. Their job is to make Jesus the Christ. Once he’s born the next thing we get is Jesus the man, wading into the Jordan River to be baptized by John. He is already in his early thirties. Baby. Man, albeit a God-Man. That’s pretty much how we conceptualize Jesus for ourselves. Until that day when you say to yourself, “I believe in a person,” and now you emerge into that open space where theologians roam, because now you are invited to speculate about that most wondrous and fascinating question: how can Christ be both divine and human at the same time? Don’t worry. At this point we can leave things to the theologians – the how and the what – because the important thing is that we have asked the question at all, and so this little story from Luke’s Gospel of the boy Jesus becomes tantalizing as a glimpse into what the childhood of a God-Man looks like. What does it tell us?
The first thing to notice is that Jesus’s family is very pious. They are obedient to what the law requires as a matter of course and have just visited the Temple in Jerusalem to make the proper observances for the Passover. Jesus, we are told, is twelve years old. That is an important detail. According to the Mishnah, the age of twelve years old is one year before a boy becomes responsible for his own religious commitments, so all that we’re about to see is meant to be seen in that context, that Jesus is ahead of the curve: precocious and eager and intensely interested, well beyond his years, in the things of God, so much so that when the caravan departs for the return journey to Nazareth, Jesus stays behind in the temple. It is so relatable. We all know the experience of being so absorbed in an activity that we lose all track of time. But here there is something more. It is not just a few hours. It is several days. At some point, Jesus would have had to impose on somebody to give him a place to sleep and a meal, would he not? Jesus had time enough to realize that he was left behind, and yet he chooses to remain. When his anxious parents burst in, their question is why did he think that was okay? But notice Jesus’s question. Why did they not know to come to the Temple first? I must be “in the [things] of my Father” (Luke 3:49), he says, and it is crystal clear that the father referred to is not Joseph panting breathlessly next to Mary.
There are many things we can make out of this story, but what I would like to comment on briefly this morning is this image of Jesus in love with learning. “I must be about my Father’s business” is Jesus’s way of saying that the things of God are the primary and essential thing. We may have many choices about what to do with our lives, we have many ways to occupy ourselves, but God is to be our chief preoccupation, and, my friends, God is in everything. Every interaction we have with another, every time we stop to daydream about a drop of water, every insight of science and the arts, these are all the “things of God” and worthy of our attention if we will but stop to pay attention.
Now it was not too long ago that there was presumed to be an unbridgeable divide between science and religion, between reason and faith. It was even called a “conflict” because it was assumed you had to choose a side in a fight to the death. But, in fact, that is not the case. There is no conflict, because if the universe is God’s handiwork then it must bear signs of its Creator. Whatever science and reason have to teach us about the universe can only reveal the nature of God. And what has our quest for understanding revealed? It has proved that the universe is an orderly system governed by laws, laws that can be discerned and depended on. Our greatest doubts and incomprehension have only served to strengthen the case. Whenever human understanding reaches a limit and finds itself staring at a wall, whenever it seems we have no other recourse but mystery, further investigation always reveals an explanation. Countless times on the far side of a conundrum we have found ourselves landing again on something solid. It is just us who have to catch up with the way things really are. And look at what we’ve accomplished. By splicing together the laws of nature we have found ourselves capable of medical breakthroughs and moonshots, yet the principles of flight and the mechanisms of disease were just as true a thousand years ago as today, it was just the people didn’t know it. The miracles of a thousand years from now are quite possible today except that we don’t know yet how to get at them.[1] There is a lot we know, even more we don’t know, yet what we do know, what we can say, is this: there is purpose in this universe because everything in it is directed to some goal.
Thus far has science and reason gotten us, very far indeed, but, alas, it does not take us all the way. Despite our immense capacity and great successes, there are yet limits to both our science and our reason, for what is the nature of this God who has written his name in the stars? For this, God reached out a helping hand.
Man [writes Saint Thomas Aquinas] is directed to God as an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason…but the end must first be known by men who are to direct their thoughts and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. Even as regards those truths about God which human reason can investigate, it was necessary that man be taught by a divine revelation. For the truth about God, such as reason can know it, could only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors; whereas man’s whole salvation, which is in God, depends on the knowledge of this truth. Therefore, in order that the salvation of men might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they be taught divine truths by divine revelation.[2] [end quote]
So it is that God became flesh and dwelt among us. God reached out to us because it was too important to leave everything up to us. Life’s great purpose is to know God, and so God came to show us God’s very face.
[1] Frank E. Wilson, Faith and Practice, rev. ed. (New York: Morehouse, 2009), 25.
[2] Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a.1.1, quoted from Introduction to Saint Thomas Aquinas, edited by Anton Pegis (New York: Random House, Inc., 1948), 4.