Take a Deep Breath
Take a Deep Breath Rev. David P. Baak Luke 2:41-52
The First Sunday After Christmas In Preparation for Worship
December 27, 2015
We remember the awareness of the spirit of God that sought us out in our aloneness and gave to us a sense of assurance that undercut our despair and confirmed our lives with new courage and abiding hope. – Howard Thurman Opening Sentences of Scripture The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; 2to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, …[and] to comfort all who mourn…. (Isaiah 61.1-3) Scripture: Luke 2.41-52 41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44Assuming 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. 45When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48When 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.” 49He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50But they did not understand what he said to them. 51Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor. Introduction This story is the final episode in Luke’s Christmas story. It is the only glimpse we have in all of Scripture of Jesus’ childhood. The next couple of chapters here in Luke are the introduction to Jesus’ ministry – first the temptation in the wilderness and then the synagogue scene in chapter 4 where Jesus reads words from Isaiah 61 and then says to the congregation: “Today, these words are fulfilled in your hearing.” And some in the crowd were as amazed as the teachers were when he was in the temple at age twelve. And some of the people were so upset that they tried to throw him off a cliff, and Jesus, just as he did when he was a child, met them with calm confidence and moved on to heal, and teach, and inspire. *** I remember a time, almost twenty years ago, when I was on an education trip to Central America, in the oldest part of Guatemala City. On the day we arrived, two of our group (people from out of state, who had never been out of the United States, and who had missed the orientation) decided to go find the post office. The old city is simple, it’s a perfectly square grid; we all had maps—but, you know what happened. We spent Because sermons are prepared with an emphasis on verbal presentation, the written accounts may occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.
Take a Deep Breath hours looking for each other (and, remember, that was before cell phones; there was no texting; and we had only a couple of Spanish speakers in our group). I can still feel the panic. Anyone of you who is a parent has probably had a moment something like this was for Mary and Joseph. You are in a strange place with friends; you think your twelve-year-old is with the others but at the end of the day when you all get back together, he’s not there. Even if you are not a parent, you’ve likely had something similar happen—someone for whom you had some responsibility—a niece or cousin; a child you’re watching; or a friend—suddenly he or she are not where you expected. You are close to panic. What do you do? For Mary and Joseph, the situation meant that they had to double back a day’s travel to see if they could find Jesus. In Jerusalem, they encountered a maze of unfamiliar streets, dark alleys, strangers, and fear, while trying to keep their emotions under control. Add to that the anxiety Mary must have felt over the things that she had been “pondering in her heart” since before the child—this special child, the one who was going to be a leader—was born. For three days they looked. What had happened to him; where was he? He was in the temple. Sitting with the teachers and asking them questions—and, obviously, also answering their questions, because everyone was amazed at his understanding. He had good questions, good common sense, great interest, and good answers. He was a bit of a problem child, to be sure, telling his parents that his agenda—that is, his other Father’s agenda—was more important than their own. He says, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (The King James version tells us what that means: “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?”) He was calm, very comfortable, self-assured, and confident—and he was not lost, not at all. I can just feel Mary and Joseph . . . take a deep breath. That was a breath of relief. It ended well. Often, that is the case—it’s a matter of finding the other; of working through the issues; of resolving the difficulty. But not always. Sometimes it does not end well. Not even close. The pain and fear continue. Each of us can tell a story from personal experience when it did not end well—a depression, a separation, a death, a diagnosis—maybe even for you during this past year. In our world today there are many stories that are not ending well—for parents, and individuals, and whole populations—and we are all affected, directly or indirectly—all of us. Of the top ten news stories of the year, according to a CNN article online the other day, seven were about tragedy or violence or fear—Paris (twice), Beirut, Bali, Charleston, Colorado Springs, San Bernardino…and those were just the terror or hate attacks. Then there were police shootings, airplane crashes, and refugee disasters. Only three of the ten items are those that we could put in the “positive” column – the agreement on the environment and global warming, the nuclear agreement with Iran, and the Supreme Court’s affirmation of marriage equality—and each of those three (as most of the rest) continue to be fraught with the political controversy that seems to overwhelm everything.1 This is not “good news of great joy.” This all contradicts the message of Christmas— just as losing her child threatened that message for Mary. E.J. Dionne Jr., writing in the Washington Post on Christmas Eve, suggested that “if we preach religious peace and tolerance, then we should practice them.” As his favorite carol puts it, he says, we should “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” He quotes Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who says: “When religion turns men into murderers, God 1. http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/world/top-‐‑stories-‐‑year-‐‑talking-‐‑2015-‐‑feat/
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI
Page 2 of 5
December 27, 2015
Take a Deep Breath weeps.”2 God weeps because God does not intend pain and violence and chaos. The story of Christmas—the story of Incarnation—shows God’s intention. That message is “good news of great joy” and part of that good news is that there really is something for us to do and we can “go tell it on the mountain.” That’s the importance of this last episode of the Christmas story. It brings us into the day after Christmas; it gives us confidence for the next year; it shows us some behavior that is helpful when we face the panic, and the anxiety, and the pain. Take a deep breath. There sits Jesus, the picture of tranquility and unconcern but also of curiosity and confidence. In this little picture of family distress, Jesus is the calm one. He is the “non-anxious presence.” He helps bring the deep breathing of his parents’ attempt to manage their panic to a deep sigh of relief and courage in order to go forward. Luke tells this story, not so much to prove that Jesus was divine and all-knowing when he was young, as to help us understand that in his birth and childhood—that is, in the incarnation—Jesus models for us a new approach. It is, in fact, a new life. It is one that does not give in to the violence around us. It does not allow the chaos to overcome us. Rather, Luke shows us the principle that it is possible to have a non-anxious presence in the middle of the anxiety of the world around us. According to theologian William Danaher, the story teaches that God’s wisdom is available to the young as well as to the old, which means that we must make room for God to surprise us with unexpected revelations given by unusual messengers. It teaches us that although God’s wisdom and holiness remind us of our limitations, it is precisely within these limitations that we often find wisdom. [And,] the incarnation represents the moment in which this wisdom enters the human sphere in all its contradictions, so that nothing is left without transformation.3 Everything is changed. The editorial board of the New York Times on Christmas morning called it a “Christmas Revolution.” They said: …Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount…his touching of lepers, and his association with outcasts and sinners were fundamentally at odds with the way the Greek and Roman worlds viewed life, where social status was everything. 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-‐‑bright-‐‑and-‐‑blessed-‐‑calm/2015/12/23/a7611dbe-‐‑a8d1-‐‑11e5-‐‑bff5-‐‑ 905b92f5f94b_story.html?postshare=5401451069168543&tid=ss_mail, quoting Sacks, Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence (New York: Schocken Books, 2015), p. 3. 3. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds., Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009,) p. 168.
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI
Page 3 of 5
December 27, 2015
Take a Deep Breath “Christianity placed charity at the center of its spiritual life as no pagan cult ever had,” according to the theologian David Bentley Hart, “and raised the care of the widows, orphans, the sick, the imprisoned, and the poor to the level of the highest of religious obligations.”4 It’s no great surprise that the rulers and the powerful found this message such a threat—then and now. At a very practical level, this story forms the basis and the confidence for us to understand Jesus’ declaration in the synagogue in chapter 4 of Luke, when he is thirty and beginning his ministry. And the story can shape our confidence in the streets of our lives. Jesus’ presence, and style, and behavior fulfill the prophet’s vision: God has anointed him—and God has anointed us, we who are sisters and brothers of the Christ—“to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives…recovery of sight to the blind…to let the oppressed go free…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4.18-19). There is plenty of justice work to do, and we are called to do that, and we are given a style, a way of behavior, a demeanor with which to go about doing justice and mercy—not just for that day in the synagogue, but for this day. This day, at the beginning of a year that promises to be at least as complicated and difficult, and quite possibly as violent, as the past year has been. There are signs of hope. There are signs of incarnation all around us, even in the chaos, to encourage us. Pope Francis brought a message of humility and peace to our country—and to the world. He challenged the wealthy and powerful in the name of the poor and the weak—and welcomed a little girl who jumped a fence to meet him, and he set a vivid example of welcome for children, immigrants, and the forgotten. Germany and France and Canada opened their arms to thousands of refugees. California passed a law that, beginning in January, will forbid discrimination based on immigration status, language, or citizenship. These are incarnational, non-anxious ways to welcome strangers so that we are able to begin to work through the difficulties that are still there with immigration status, and language, and citizenship. Aung San Suu Kyi is the newly elected democratic leader in Myanmar. She and her party were elected in a landslide last month, ending more than fifty years of military dictatorship. She is a Nelson Mandela kind of person: a Nobel peace prizewinner, she had been under arrest, herself, for over twenty years. Now she leads the nation. Everyone has been holding their breath to see how she will change things; what kind of consequences will there be for the military and the bureaucrats who have repressed the people for so long; what it will look like to “shake up the whole system” as she had promised. She has been quiet, meeting behind closed doors with advisors, minority ethnic groups, and crucial military members with whom she will have to share power. She quietly has conveyed a message that she will not rock the boat too much, too soon. She has said that she wants national reconciliation, not revenge. A news article reports that: …recently [Aung San Suu Kyi] went public in her [home district] and was surrounded by reporters and photographers eager for some hint about how her party will govern after the new Parliament is seated next month. 4. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/25/opinion/the-‐‑christmas-‐‑revolution.html?emc=eta1
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI
Page 4 of 5
December 27, 2015
Take a Deep Breath It was not to be. She had come to pick up trash, an exercise described by her party as bringing change through acts of individual responsibility. “Don’t just take photos,” she scolded the photographers as she crouched to the shrubs covering the sandy soil of the Irrawaddy Delta and began picking up bits of trash. “Help pick up the garbage.”5 Our role model is not just a twelve-year-old in a temple – it is the whole Christmas story of God understanding us; the story of God feeling what it’s like to be human in a broken world; the story of God bringing a new perspective—a new life—to the reality of every day; and of us finding examples of God’s incarnation all around us. The Christmas story gives us the hope to go tell the good news, on the mountain and everywhere. The Christmas story gives us the hope and the energy—and the confidence and the trust—to take a deep breath of confidence . . . and get started, in this new year, yet again, with God’s intention for our life together. In the name of God: Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
5. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/world/asia/after-‐‑victory-‐‑in-‐‑myanmar-‐‑aung-‐‑san-‐‑suu-‐‑kyi-‐‑quietly-‐‑ shapes-‐‑a-‐‑transition.html?emc=eta1
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI
Page 5 of 5
December 27, 2015
The First Sunday After Christmas In Preparation for Worship
December 27, 2015
We remember the awareness of the spirit of God that sought us out in our aloneness and gave to us a sense of assurance that undercut our despair and confirmed our lives with new courage and abiding hope. – Howard Thurman Opening Sentences of Scripture The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; 2to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, …[and] to comfort all who mourn…. (Isaiah 61.1-3) Scripture: Luke 2.41-52 41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44Assuming 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. 45When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48When 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.” 49He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50But they did not understand what he said to them. 51Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor. Introduction This story is the final episode in Luke’s Christmas story. It is the only glimpse we have in all of Scripture of Jesus’ childhood. The next couple of chapters here in Luke are the introduction to Jesus’ ministry – first the temptation in the wilderness and then the synagogue scene in chapter 4 where Jesus reads words from Isaiah 61 and then says to the congregation: “Today, these words are fulfilled in your hearing.” And some in the crowd were as amazed as the teachers were when he was in the temple at age twelve. And some of the people were so upset that they tried to throw him off a cliff, and Jesus, just as he did when he was a child, met them with calm confidence and moved on to heal, and teach, and inspire. *** I remember a time, almost twenty years ago, when I was on an education trip to Central America, in the oldest part of Guatemala City. On the day we arrived, two of our group (people from out of state, who had never been out of the United States, and who had missed the orientation) decided to go find the post office. The old city is simple, it’s a perfectly square grid; we all had maps—but, you know what happened. We spent Because sermons are prepared with an emphasis on verbal presentation, the written accounts may occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.
Take a Deep Breath hours looking for each other (and, remember, that was before cell phones; there was no texting; and we had only a couple of Spanish speakers in our group). I can still feel the panic. Anyone of you who is a parent has probably had a moment something like this was for Mary and Joseph. You are in a strange place with friends; you think your twelve-year-old is with the others but at the end of the day when you all get back together, he’s not there. Even if you are not a parent, you’ve likely had something similar happen—someone for whom you had some responsibility—a niece or cousin; a child you’re watching; or a friend—suddenly he or she are not where you expected. You are close to panic. What do you do? For Mary and Joseph, the situation meant that they had to double back a day’s travel to see if they could find Jesus. In Jerusalem, they encountered a maze of unfamiliar streets, dark alleys, strangers, and fear, while trying to keep their emotions under control. Add to that the anxiety Mary must have felt over the things that she had been “pondering in her heart” since before the child—this special child, the one who was going to be a leader—was born. For three days they looked. What had happened to him; where was he? He was in the temple. Sitting with the teachers and asking them questions—and, obviously, also answering their questions, because everyone was amazed at his understanding. He had good questions, good common sense, great interest, and good answers. He was a bit of a problem child, to be sure, telling his parents that his agenda—that is, his other Father’s agenda—was more important than their own. He says, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (The King James version tells us what that means: “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?”) He was calm, very comfortable, self-assured, and confident—and he was not lost, not at all. I can just feel Mary and Joseph . . . take a deep breath. That was a breath of relief. It ended well. Often, that is the case—it’s a matter of finding the other; of working through the issues; of resolving the difficulty. But not always. Sometimes it does not end well. Not even close. The pain and fear continue. Each of us can tell a story from personal experience when it did not end well—a depression, a separation, a death, a diagnosis—maybe even for you during this past year. In our world today there are many stories that are not ending well—for parents, and individuals, and whole populations—and we are all affected, directly or indirectly—all of us. Of the top ten news stories of the year, according to a CNN article online the other day, seven were about tragedy or violence or fear—Paris (twice), Beirut, Bali, Charleston, Colorado Springs, San Bernardino…and those were just the terror or hate attacks. Then there were police shootings, airplane crashes, and refugee disasters. Only three of the ten items are those that we could put in the “positive” column – the agreement on the environment and global warming, the nuclear agreement with Iran, and the Supreme Court’s affirmation of marriage equality—and each of those three (as most of the rest) continue to be fraught with the political controversy that seems to overwhelm everything.1 This is not “good news of great joy.” This all contradicts the message of Christmas— just as losing her child threatened that message for Mary. E.J. Dionne Jr., writing in the Washington Post on Christmas Eve, suggested that “if we preach religious peace and tolerance, then we should practice them.” As his favorite carol puts it, he says, we should “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” He quotes Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who says: “When religion turns men into murderers, God 1. http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/21/world/top-‐‑stories-‐‑year-‐‑talking-‐‑2015-‐‑feat/
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI
Page 2 of 5
December 27, 2015
Take a Deep Breath weeps.”2 God weeps because God does not intend pain and violence and chaos. The story of Christmas—the story of Incarnation—shows God’s intention. That message is “good news of great joy” and part of that good news is that there really is something for us to do and we can “go tell it on the mountain.” That’s the importance of this last episode of the Christmas story. It brings us into the day after Christmas; it gives us confidence for the next year; it shows us some behavior that is helpful when we face the panic, and the anxiety, and the pain. Take a deep breath. There sits Jesus, the picture of tranquility and unconcern but also of curiosity and confidence. In this little picture of family distress, Jesus is the calm one. He is the “non-anxious presence.” He helps bring the deep breathing of his parents’ attempt to manage their panic to a deep sigh of relief and courage in order to go forward. Luke tells this story, not so much to prove that Jesus was divine and all-knowing when he was young, as to help us understand that in his birth and childhood—that is, in the incarnation—Jesus models for us a new approach. It is, in fact, a new life. It is one that does not give in to the violence around us. It does not allow the chaos to overcome us. Rather, Luke shows us the principle that it is possible to have a non-anxious presence in the middle of the anxiety of the world around us. According to theologian William Danaher, the story teaches that God’s wisdom is available to the young as well as to the old, which means that we must make room for God to surprise us with unexpected revelations given by unusual messengers. It teaches us that although God’s wisdom and holiness remind us of our limitations, it is precisely within these limitations that we often find wisdom. [And,] the incarnation represents the moment in which this wisdom enters the human sphere in all its contradictions, so that nothing is left without transformation.3 Everything is changed. The editorial board of the New York Times on Christmas morning called it a “Christmas Revolution.” They said: …Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount…his touching of lepers, and his association with outcasts and sinners were fundamentally at odds with the way the Greek and Roman worlds viewed life, where social status was everything. 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-‐‑bright-‐‑and-‐‑blessed-‐‑calm/2015/12/23/a7611dbe-‐‑a8d1-‐‑11e5-‐‑bff5-‐‑ 905b92f5f94b_story.html?postshare=5401451069168543&tid=ss_mail, quoting Sacks, Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence (New York: Schocken Books, 2015), p. 3. 3. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds., Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009,) p. 168.
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI
Page 3 of 5
December 27, 2015
Take a Deep Breath “Christianity placed charity at the center of its spiritual life as no pagan cult ever had,” according to the theologian David Bentley Hart, “and raised the care of the widows, orphans, the sick, the imprisoned, and the poor to the level of the highest of religious obligations.”4 It’s no great surprise that the rulers and the powerful found this message such a threat—then and now. At a very practical level, this story forms the basis and the confidence for us to understand Jesus’ declaration in the synagogue in chapter 4 of Luke, when he is thirty and beginning his ministry. And the story can shape our confidence in the streets of our lives. Jesus’ presence, and style, and behavior fulfill the prophet’s vision: God has anointed him—and God has anointed us, we who are sisters and brothers of the Christ—“to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives…recovery of sight to the blind…to let the oppressed go free…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4.18-19). There is plenty of justice work to do, and we are called to do that, and we are given a style, a way of behavior, a demeanor with which to go about doing justice and mercy—not just for that day in the synagogue, but for this day. This day, at the beginning of a year that promises to be at least as complicated and difficult, and quite possibly as violent, as the past year has been. There are signs of hope. There are signs of incarnation all around us, even in the chaos, to encourage us. Pope Francis brought a message of humility and peace to our country—and to the world. He challenged the wealthy and powerful in the name of the poor and the weak—and welcomed a little girl who jumped a fence to meet him, and he set a vivid example of welcome for children, immigrants, and the forgotten. Germany and France and Canada opened their arms to thousands of refugees. California passed a law that, beginning in January, will forbid discrimination based on immigration status, language, or citizenship. These are incarnational, non-anxious ways to welcome strangers so that we are able to begin to work through the difficulties that are still there with immigration status, and language, and citizenship. Aung San Suu Kyi is the newly elected democratic leader in Myanmar. She and her party were elected in a landslide last month, ending more than fifty years of military dictatorship. She is a Nelson Mandela kind of person: a Nobel peace prizewinner, she had been under arrest, herself, for over twenty years. Now she leads the nation. Everyone has been holding their breath to see how she will change things; what kind of consequences will there be for the military and the bureaucrats who have repressed the people for so long; what it will look like to “shake up the whole system” as she had promised. She has been quiet, meeting behind closed doors with advisors, minority ethnic groups, and crucial military members with whom she will have to share power. She quietly has conveyed a message that she will not rock the boat too much, too soon. She has said that she wants national reconciliation, not revenge. A news article reports that: …recently [Aung San Suu Kyi] went public in her [home district] and was surrounded by reporters and photographers eager for some hint about how her party will govern after the new Parliament is seated next month. 4. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/25/opinion/the-‐‑christmas-‐‑revolution.html?emc=eta1
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI
Page 4 of 5
December 27, 2015
Take a Deep Breath It was not to be. She had come to pick up trash, an exercise described by her party as bringing change through acts of individual responsibility. “Don’t just take photos,” she scolded the photographers as she crouched to the shrubs covering the sandy soil of the Irrawaddy Delta and began picking up bits of trash. “Help pick up the garbage.”5 Our role model is not just a twelve-year-old in a temple – it is the whole Christmas story of God understanding us; the story of God feeling what it’s like to be human in a broken world; the story of God bringing a new perspective—a new life—to the reality of every day; and of us finding examples of God’s incarnation all around us. The Christmas story gives us the hope to go tell the good news, on the mountain and everywhere. The Christmas story gives us the hope and the energy—and the confidence and the trust—to take a deep breath of confidence . . . and get started, in this new year, yet again, with God’s intention for our life together. In the name of God: Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
5. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/world/asia/after-‐‑victory-‐‑in-‐‑myanmar-‐‑aung-‐‑san-‐‑suu-‐‑kyi-‐‑quietly-‐‑ shapes-‐‑a-‐‑transition.html?emc=eta1
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI
Page 5 of 5
December 27, 2015
