Lean Into Purpose

Sermon Preached on 12-26-2021 at First Presbyterian Church, Plano, TX

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.

His mother treasured all these things in her heart.

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How quickly we have gone from Jesus as a baby in the manger to Jesus being 12 years old.   

Since we don’t have any stories of Jesus’s childhood other than this one, we assume it was pretty ordinary.   

Maybe that is why  it took three days for Mary and Joseph to go to the temple to look for him because the past 12 years were so ordinary that they forgot about the angels, the shepherds, and the maji.

Or maybe Mary and Joseph had hoped all they were told wasn’t true…that their son wouldn’t be responsible for the falling and rising of many and that a sword wouldn’t pierce Mary’s own heart as no mother wants their heart pierced. 

So maybe they wanted to find Jesus anyplace but in the temple.  They wanted his ordinary life to continue where he would learn to be a carpenter like Joseph….

but there he was……. in the temple.

The Greek here is a bit ambiguous and the passage has been interpreted different ways…the NRSV - which is what we read says “in my father’s house” 

While the new King James says “to be about the things of my father.”

Either way, here we have 12 year old Jesus - an age that the ancient world would of considered the threshold to adulthood - being found in the temple - learning about the business of God.  

I am struck by how different 12 year old Jesus is from the ways of the culture for 12 year old boys where I was raised. 

 I grew up in the Texas panhandle where hunting is a common activity and the place of much male bonding.   12 years of age was when most young males and some girls were given their first gun.  

Receiving a gun was viewed as the rite of passage that signified one’s transition into manhood and because it was just part of the culture - it seemed as if this was how things always were….but it wasn’t.    

Pamela Haag in her book The Gunning of America studies the records of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New Haven, Connecticut and reveals how the need of gun manufacturers to keep their factories open created the gun market.   

Because of the volume of product that could be mass produced in a factory - for guns - supply creates the need for demand.  

This was especially true in times of peace.  

Early gun factories developed by supplying guns to fight wars but when the wars would end, these factories would find themselves saddled by debt due to the massive expansions they would make during times of war.   

To keep the factory doors open, gun manufacturers need customers so following WWI they launched one of the world's most ambitious and successful marketing plans referred to by an internal sales memo of Winchester from 1922 as the “boy plan”.  The memo said: “When the boys in your town arrive at the age of 12 - they become your prospects.”  Winchester set out to make gun ownership synonymous with becoming a man and gun manufacturers are responsible for creating the unique gun culture we have today in the United States.  

Culture and the ways of God don’t always line up.  

They didn’t in Jesus day and they don’t now. 

 Yet the culture so often wins out.  The messages we receive from culture through media and advertising bombard us 24 hours a day through our TVs, movies, and phones.  

The church is lucky if we get an hour a week.  

The church has always found itself in a tension with culture which is why we have a Book of Confessions.  The confessions are statements the church makes to declare its faith in particular times and places.  

Take for example our newest confession - The Confession of Belhar. 

The Confession was written by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in South Africa during Apartheid which formed a racially stratified society.  The church wondered how it should respond when sin creates division among the children of God and constructs unjust systems that steal life from God’s creation.  

They did not speak out against people as much as a false doctrine which they believed threatened the gospel itself.  

We find ourselves in such a time - a time when the church has become so enmeshed in the culture that the gospel itself is threatened.

This is evident in the Christmas card trend that was happening on social media this year where elected officials across the country posed with their children - dressed up in Christmas clothes and often posing in front of a christmas tree - all holding guns including assault rifles.  While one state senator from Missouri, who’s youngest daughter looks to be no more than 6 holding a rifle, said he was only showing his support for the second amendment - it seems totally lost on him that Christmas is about the birth of the Prince of Peace.  

That God came into this world in the person Jesus Christ not to conquer the world through violence but through love.  

 In fact King Herod was so afraid that this baby he heard about would fulfil the prophet Isaiah’s vision of a Prince of Peace toppling kingdoms that persist in violence that King Herod ordered the killing of all newborn males.  

16th century poet Mirabai said in her poem “Redeem that Gender” - that God came into the world as a man to show the world what a redeemed man looked like.  

I was sharing this with a friend of mine who is not as we say “churched” and she asked so - what does that mean - what does redeemed even mean?''  

Webster defines redeemed as “to be free from what distresses or harms”  

Researcher and writer Brene Brown says that shame is what causes us the most distress and harm and that vulnerability is the way to greater love. Yet in her research with men she found that men live under the pressure of one unrelenting message from the culture - do not be perceived as weak.  

Brown says men are not allowed to be afraid.  

They are not allowed to show fear. 

And they are certainly not allowed to be vulnerable.  

 She was not prepared to hear over and over again from the men she interviewed about how the women in their lives - the mothers, sisters, wifes, girlfriends - are constantly criticizing them for not being open and vulnerable and intimate while at the same time not being willing to allow the men to be vulnerable.  

It is true that most violence is committed by men but it is not just a man problem. 

All of us  need to examine how it is that we are willing - and even desire - for violence to be committed by another on our behalf if we are to truly live into our baptismal promise of turning away from the ways of violence and towards love.    

After the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, I was offered the opportunity to examine my own reliance on systems of violence as two of the people I worked with at the peace fellowship happened to live in Minneapolis.  As we were talking about the events they were experiencing, one of them named how she wished this big Presbyterian church in a prominent location would make a statement against police violence.  She is one of the many young adults I know that have rejected church because she doesn’t see Jesus in the church…. yet she wanted a statement from the church.  She believed that a statement in support of black life in front of the Church’s majestic building in a prominent location would make a positive impact in the community. 

This led the Peace Fellowship to begin a deep dive into studying the history of policing in the United States and I learned about how much violence has been done in this country by white men against black men in the name of protecting white women.  I became acutely aware of my own reliance on men to use violence to protect me and my children when three strangers with backpacks got dropped off from a car in front of my neighbors house and they started walking down the street very slowly and looking in the windows of houses.  My 25 yr old daughter wanted to call the police and I wondered what other options did we have…and I honestly wasn’t sure.  I realized how all I had been told was to either call the police or have a gun - neither of which I was ok with.  Yet here lies the dilemma we face as Christians who want to live a nonviolent life in the midst of a violent world.  

Jesus was so committed to nonviolence that he died….is that what it means to follow Jesus? 

I think asking the question is just as important as the answer. 

Transformation from systems of violence and power over to systems of care don’t happen in an instance….at least not if we want sustainable change.  

Transformation takes time but the key is that we are moving in the direction - or have our boat pointed in the direction -  we want to go and like Jesus - this may mean that we are to sit in the temple and listen and ask questions.  

Questions like how is it that we are preparing our men to be adults?

How is it that we are making space for men to be vulnerable?

How much effort are we putting in to learning to be peacemakers - to learn the ways of nonviolence?

What difference does it make that God came into this world as a vulnerable baby?  

I know that as followers of Jesus - we are to be about the business of making the kingdom of heaven here on earth…According to the book of order that is our purpose - one of the great ends of the church - the reason the church exists….and it is going to require turning from the ways of violence and towards love and vulnerability.  May we all learn to make space for vulnerability…both within ourselves and for others. 

Amen.