Christ Lutheran Church: Welcome

OUR Father - January 4, 2009

OUR Father

luke 2:40-52

January 4, 2009

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

The sermon this morning is based on the gospel lesson about the twelve your old Jesus in the Temple. To make a long story short, Jesus had accompanied His parents to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast like He did every year. But when His parents were about a day along on their way back to Nazareth, they discovered that the boy was not with them. So they rush another day back to Jerusalem and spend a third day in panic searching for Him. Lo and behold, where do they find Him, but in the Temple itself sitting and listening to the elders and asking them questions!

According to the account, everyone there was astounded at the level of comprehension evident in this twelve year old's questions. But I'm not so sure that this is all that strange. This sort of thing happens around here all the time. One of my favorite things as pastor here is what we call "Pastor, Pop and Pizza" which we hold every other Monday evening. This is for kids in grades three through seven. They show up here at 6pm and we have a game of volleyball or something in the narthex lobby (trying hard not to break all the windows). And then we go into the Fellowship Hall and chow down on pizza and pop. Then we go into the sanctuary to study the Bibles that they had been given in third grade.

When we come into the sanctuary it is totally dark. Except for a spotlight on the steps that are right in front of the altar. We sit down right there in the light in this totally darkened sanctuary and it so is holy, so special. And that is when these kids start to come up with all their questions and ideas about what we are reading in the Bible that night. Some of the questions are really profound. Like, "How come the Bible doesn't say anything about dinosaurs?" Or, "My friend's family doesn't go to church. If he dies, would he go to heaven?" So, I get really deep questions from kids all the time.

Still, I cannot help but wonder what specific questions Jesus was asking there that day. I mean, here He is, the Son of God, straight from heaven, and He's sitting there listening to these elders talk about Him - about God, about Messiah who was promised to come one day. And there He is - sitting right there, right in front of them! I would just be fascinated to hear what He actually had to say.

Why does the Bible go to all the trouble of saying that the boy Jesus was there asking questions, but then fail to even allude to what these questions were? Apparently, as interesting as I think this might have been, Jesus' specific questions were not the main point. Otherwise, the Bible would have recorded this.

The main point is what Jesus said when His parents found Him there and confronted Him. They were a little "wigged out" to say the least. His mother scolded Him: "Your father and I have been looking for You. Why did you betray us like this?!"

What Jesus now said is the very first thing He is ever recorded to have said in the Bible. What He now said is what I believe is the main point. He answered, "Did you not know that I must be in My Father's house?" When Mary said that she and His father had been searching for Him, she was referring to Joseph. When Jesus answered that He had to be in His Father's house, he obviously was not referring to Joseph, but to the Father in heaven. And Joseph is never heard of again in the Bible.

At this point, for the first time in the Bible, we see Jesus declaring whose son He really is. He is the Son of God in Heaven.

And then there was something else in what He said. He said that He "Must" be in His Father's house. It's that little word "must". In Greek in which the New Testament was first written, that word must is even shorter. The word is "dei". And here's the clue. Whenever Jesus said that He "must" do something, it was always and only about giving His life to save the human race: "The Son of Man MUST be betrayed into the hands of sinful men;" "the Son of Man MUST be lifted up:" The Son of Man MUST be killed and be raised to life on the third day;" "I MUST be in My Father's house."

So in this Temple, at twelve years of age, the very first thing Jesus is recorded to have said is that He IS the Son of God and that He is here to begin His mission of sacrificing His life for the sake of the human race. Remember, Mary" When you first brought this same child into this very same Temple when He was only eight days old, remember what that old man Simeon told you when He held the baby? "This Child is set for the falling and rising of many in Israel. And a sword shall pierce your own heart also." Remember, Mary, how you treasured these things in your heart? You see, this was only the first time that Mary would lose her Son for three days before finding Him again.

So this is where Jesus identified His true Father as the Father in heaven. But when He taught us the Lord's Prayer, He did not teach us to pray to MY Father who art in heaven, but rather OUR Father who art in heaven. And after He rose from the dead and Mary discovered Him outside the empty tomb, remember how she tried to hug Him? Remember what He said, "Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father to YOUR Father."

Here's my point, when that twelve year old in the Temple declared that HE was the Son of the Father in heaven, He also became the way for each of US to become children of the Father of the Universe. Oh yes, ALL children are children of God in the sense that God made them and loves each one of them. But the only way one can become a child of God as an heir of God is by being joined to the Son of God, to be brother and sister to Jesus, and thereby to become the heirs of OUR Father who art in heaven. Just think of it - the King of the Universe, OUR actual Father!

The late astronomer Carl Sagan liked to say that each of us is made of "star stuff" - the precious metals in our bodies having come from the explosions of distant stars. Well, better than that, we are "GOD stuff"...because of what happened that Temple that day.