Jesus, Lost But Found

Luke 2:41-52

Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey.

Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.

When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them.

Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

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I love that – after all of that drama, excitement, fear, and anxiety – after the embarrassment and worry of having lost Jesus – after having traveled and searched and knocked on who knows how many doors – after calling his name in anger, frustration, fear and desperation, God knows how many times, before finally finding him calmly chilling, safe, sound, and smug, in the Temple – Mary “treasured all these things in her heart.” Isn’t that just so sweet and motherly of her?

And I kind of like that we don’t hear a word about Joseph, because I get to use my imagination about his response. I bet Joseph was so pissed and so frustrated – about having to turn around, having to waste all of that time, losing all of those good travel days. He probably missed some work and lost some money because of this nonsense. I imagine him mumbling and groaning and kicking the dirt 20 paces ahead of Mary and Jesus, for three days, all the way back to Nazareth; like a First Century Clark Griswold, while Mary “treasured all of these things in her heart.”

You can imagine it right?

So stressed … so anxious … so afraid … so guilt-ridden over having lost the boy; or having not double-checked on the boy; or having trusted that the boy – the Son of God, for crying out loud – Emmanuel – which means “GOD WITH US” – would actually BE WITH THEM, like he was supposed to be. I imagine Joseph, muttering and mumbling, angrily under his breath, “Name him Jesus, because he’s going to save his people from their sins.” He just LOST ME four days and a week’s wages! How’s HE gonna “save his people from anything?!?!” Gimme a break! I’ll believe it when I see it.

Maybe I’m projecting. Surely I digress.

But seriously, I made a comment during our Blue Christmas worship service – that annual worship service for the weary, for the sadness and struggle that is also so much a part of the holidays for so many – I said something about how glad I was to see those who showed up, show up, that night. And about how I wish that that service had been as full as I knew it would be on Christmas Eve, which was filled to over-flowing as many of you know, three times over.

I said that because I knew on Christmas Eve, we’d have a bumper crop of those folks who come every year “for the festival” – for the pomp and circumstance, for the familiar carols, for the nostalgia of “Silent Night” by candlelight, and for whatever grace and good feels we find in all of that. And it’s not nothing. I’m always so glad that they and their families join us, and that we’re able to welcome them like we do.

But I always want them to know that we’re about that kind of goodness and grace year-round in the Church. And I always wonder how long all of that goodness and grace – all of those good feels – last in the hearts and minds and lives of those who join us once a year, or even just every once in a while.

Do they make it out of the parking lot – those good feels? Do they last through the night, past Christmas morning, and beyond the opening of all those gifts? Has Jesus gotten lost in the shuffle, left behind in the Temple, as it were; gone missing in the mix that is life in this busy, scary, anxious world we share? And of course, I wonder the same about myself and about all of us, too, who practice our faith more regularly and with such good intentions.

Because the truth is, that we all have – or will have – those moments when Jesus seems to go missing … when he doesn’t seem as near as he did on Christmas Eve … when we have taken his presence for granted, like even his parents were able to do … and when we have looked for his love, his peace, his hope, his gracious presence in all the wrong places, or not at all … when the circumstances of our lives so easily crowd him out or make him hard to find.

And today makes me hope we’ll remember that we can always find him here … in the temple, in the Church, in God’s house of worship.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m certain that you can meet Jesus during a walk in the woods, or on the golf course, or sitting in your recliner, by the fire, with a candle and your favorite Bible.

But Jesus reminds me today that this is holy ground; that God’s house is where he’ll always be – in Word, in the sacraments, and in the fellowship of believers who look for him here. And I take that as a great comfort and as a holy charge and calling, too. And I hope you do as well.

I hope that we’re doing our best – on Christmas Eve and every day – to be sure the love of God, in Jesus, is being made known in this place, always in thought, word, and deed. That through our ministry and mission it’s clear Jesus is waiting for whoever comes searching for him; that we’re proclaiming his grace with no strings attached; that we’re listening for his guidance; that we’re receiving and offering his kind of mercy and forgiveness; that we’re working for his sort of justice, peace and equity in the world; that we’re welcoming others the way we’ve been welcomed, ourselves.

I heard a bit on NPR’s “Morning Edition” yesterday, about the hymn “Amazing Grace.” Apparently, New Year’s Day, 1773, was the first time that most familiar hymn was ever performed – 251 years ago.

And I never wondered about the lyric “I once was lost, but now am found” before, in the context of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and this journey from Jerusalem, as we hear it, so soon after Christmas. “I once was lost, but now am found.”

It could mean a million different things for any one of us – at any given time or season of our lives. I wonder what it might have meant for Jesus way back when. Did he feel as lost as his parents thought he was or as any pre-teen kid can feel at that time in their life? Is that why he made his way back to the Temple in the first place? To find some comfort … some company … some holy ground … some kind of peace and love and support he wasn’t finding elsewhere in those days? And why wasn’t God’s house – the Temple – the first place Mary and Joseph thought to find him in?

I hope this is always a safe place where you and I – and others – feel welcome to come for worship when it’s filled to the brim, when it’s just the regulars, or when we just need to be alone with our God.

I hope this is sacred space where we can ask hard questions and long for answers, even if they don’t come easily, as fast as we’d like, or at all.

I hope this is a place where we can find our footing on a bit of holy ground when we need it, where we can search for good news and find the kind of grace that’s hard to come by anywhere else in the world.

I hope this is a place where we can always find the Jesus who shows up at Christmas, but whose presence lives and moves and breathes among us, always.

And I hope this is a place where we let ourselves be found, too, by the abundant, amazing love and grace of God – in such a way that we are clothed with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience and that same love – so much so that others will find us here; that they’ll come and see the difference it makes for us – and what a difference it can make in the world when we let it.

Amen. Merry Christmas.

Meaning in the Mundane

Luke 2:1-20

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah,* the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host,* praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’*

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

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Christmas has a way of feeling extraordinary. All the gathering, feasting, and laughing — it’s a day when memories are made and traditions are cherished. For many of us, it’s the kind of day that feels just right, filled with a sense of joy and meaning that lingers long after the wrapping paper is cleared away. And nearly every year, as the lights glow and the laughter fades, I find myself asking the same question the late great theologian Elvis Presley asked:  “Why can’t every day be like Christmas?”

And if not every day, what about most days, or even more days than not? Because in reality most of our days are not like Christmas. Most of them are quite ordinary, mundane even. Of course, there are valley and mountain-top moments, but the sum of those days pales in comparison to the days we would consider routine. Or at least that’s how my life has felt lately; not in a bad way, but if my days were put into a novel, you wouldn’t pick it up, or at least not twice. They aren’t quite boring, because I’m not sure life with a “near two-year-old” can ever be called such. 

But when I reflect on the best moments of my life—the memories I cherish most or the life I aspire to live—it doesn’t look like the majority of my days. Most days feel unimportant in comparison. Get up, help get everyone off to where they need to go, go to work, come home, make dinner, say I’ll clean or read but do neither, go to bed, and do it all over again. Does this sound familiar?

Yet, what if those ordinary days aren’t unimportant at all? What if those moments, mundane as they seem, are exactly where God chooses to meet us?

One of those nights while I was neither cleaning nor reading and the babe was asleep, this video stopped my scrolling. It made me question what I was seeing. Take a look:

Thomas Deininger is an artist who lives on a farm in Rhode Island. In his early twenties, he went on a surfing trip to some remote islands in the Pacific. While there, he was shocked to see all the trash and plastic washed up on the beaches. At the time, he was a painter, but when he returned home, he couldn’t get the image of all that garbage out of his head and wanted to do something about it. So he began scouring beaches, parks, and dumpsters, collecting trash, particularly pieces of nostalgia: toys, cassette tapes, old phones. And from this waste, he started creating beautiful, mind-altering sculptures of the creatures endangered from that same trash.

These works start with an illusion. At first, you see a brilliant, yet familiar sight: a parrot in all its colorful splendor. Then as you step to the side, the illusion shatters and you see something you never expected; what you once thought was the head of a beautiful bird becomes bottle caps, action figures, plastic netting, and a floppy disk. Step closer and the scene turns bizarre. The whole thing is made up of material you never expected, put together in ways that make no sense. 

“I am fascinated with perspective and illusion,” Thomas said in an interview. “I value finding potential in the mundane and the overlooked.”

Deininger’s work shows us that beauty can come from what’s overlooked, what’s forgotten, what seems like trash. This is the lens of Christmas: God’s ability to take what seems ordinary—even broken—and create something extraordinary.

Consider the nativity. At first glance, it’s serene and familiar: Mary cradles her sleeping, or at least content, baby, Joseph gazes with admiration. The shepherds gather to see what had been told them, and the animals crowd around too. It is a beautiful, picturesque scene.But step to the side, come closer, and see it differently. 

Mary, a young, unwed, lowly woman with no great characteristics or influence, travels with her not-yet-husband Joseph, a poor carpenter, to Bethlehem, a tiny, impoverished town in the hills of Judea, to give birth in a room where the animals stayed, and places her fragile, newborn baby in a feed trough, surrounded by animals and shady shepherds from the nearby fields. 

You see, when we step to the side just a bit, this pristine, beautiful image of the nativity transforms and we see Jesus' birth from a new perspective: God chose to come among us through ordinary, overlooked people in a forgotten, unimportant place.

And then if we look closer still, the whole thing becomes bizarre, because that baby lying in the manger, swaddled and helpless, is none other than God. The almighty, ever-powerful, Creator of the heavens and the earth, chose to give it all up to live with us as a poor peasant from Palestine. God in the manger doesn’t just show us humility; it shows us that no part of life is too small, no person too ordinary, for God to transform it into something sacred.

God takes unimportant people, an overlooked place, and weaves them together in ways we never expect to create something remarkable—Jesus Christ the Savior of the World.

The good news of Christmas is that God does the same with us. Like those sculptures made of discarded toys and plastic, God takes the scattered, seemingly insignificant pieces of our lives—our routines, our mistakes, even our struggles—and transforms them into something beautiful and life-giving. In the people we overlook, in the places we least expect, in the seemingly unimportant days after all the gatherings and festivities, the Christmas story tells us this is exactly where God chooses to come among us. 

In our rising and our resting, our labor and our leisure, there is more than what meets the eye. God is in the faces we love and the strangers we meet. There is hope in the children we care for, grace in the routines we endure, light even in the darkest places.

The Christmas message comes to tell us that how we see this life of ours is all wrong. What we take to be unimportant or worthless is really beautiful and purposeful because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger. Beauty in routine, strength in weakness, meaning in the mundane.

The gift I pray you receive this Christmas is a new perspective — to step to the side, to come closer and to find God’s grace in the routines and messiness of your life. Because the good news is this: God is already there, waiting to transform it all into something beautiful. Amen