First Sunday of Christmas

Colossians 3.12-17; Luke 2.41-52

This Sunday is commonly called the Sunday of the Holy Family as we read of Jesus and His parents taking their annual trip to the Passover celebration in Jerusalem. The reading from St. Paul's letter to the Colossians also contains what you might call instructions about how to get on in a Christian community, in what might be regarded and is thought of sometimes as the Christian 'family' and how we should conduct our relationships under God. Families come in all sorts of shapes and sizes these days and I don't think their is a stereotypical family now. Much is said from different individuals and groups and agencies about the demise of the family as we once knew it and the effect this has, especially on children. But however families are constituted these days, relationships still only flourish in an atmosphere of love, loving kindness, trust and forgiveness. And I think it's these 'values' and much more than values that we see and hear in Scripture passages such as we've heard this morning. And our relationship with God also depends upon these same values, values which are about ourselves as people, that make us what we are in life and how we get on with others. God Himself, as the Holy Trinity is a relationship of love into which we are drawn as we open up our minds and hearts to Him. And as we live in relationship with God and other people, our own character and personality is shaped, in a particular way; we 'become' a particular type of person. As we live in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and in that way, get to know Him, to submit ourselves to His ways, we become Christ-like; our being is formed and shaped to be like His.

This is what Jesus himself did in His own earthly family. As we read of Him this morning He's causing His parents no little consternation. And it's three days before they find Him. A significant length of time that prefigures the three days of His death and resurrection. And when they do find Him and His mother remonstrates with Him He says that He's about His Father's business. In that response we see that He has a sense of God calling Him even at the age of 12 years. But then even so, He returns to His family and St. Luke tells us that He was obedient to Mary and Joseph. Other translations of the passage say that He submitted Himself to them. So, He has much to learn both from God and from His earthly parents. As a child, He does His heavenly Father's will and submits to His earthly parents. And it's that way with us too. God calls us to Him as our heavenly Father, to do His will and His work, and as followers of Christ to become Christ-like in this world. And He also places us in relationship to other people, in the first instance and in our most formative years, in a family, however that family is formed, and we have to submit to all that it means to be part of that family, it's rules and values.

As Christians, some of our most immediate relationships are with other members of the Church, other members of the Body of Christ. And it's from these others that St. Paul says we should learn as well; that we should learn about love and forgiveness and that we should encourage and admonish one another as together we learn and grow. He says that as we do this we should continually give thanks, that we should learn from one another's wisdom with a sense of gratitude. And all this too in a context of worship, in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God, as he says. So from St. Paul we learn that being part of the Body of Christ, being a member of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is essential to our nurture and upbringing as a Christian, because it's in that Body and being part of the Body of Christ that we learn the Truth of God and the reality of Christian discipleship. We can't do it on our own, we can't learn of Christ fully on our own, we must be part of the Church.

One of the things I tried to get across in my Christmas sermon is that as we read the story and look at the events of the birth of Jesus, and read of people's response to it at the time, and as we try to understand how God could become incarnate, could be born in human form and what that means for us, there comes a point where our mind cannot grasp the significance of what is going on; we reach the limits of human understanding. And it's at that point that we have to come to the story in faith, we have to come to the story with our heart and accept in faith what is happening and then live out the consequences in faith. We do that with lots of things in life, like falling in love which is beyond understanding, like coping with illness and tragedy and death. Very often, the extremities of life bring out qualities in people that cannot be explained with the human reason and that's because they are the response of the heart. The heart often takes over where the mind gives way. And so it is with God.

And I couldn't help noticing the link between the account of Jesus birth in St. Luke's gospel we read on Christmas Day and what we've read in his gospel today. He says that when the shepherds visited Jesus and told Mary and Joseph what they'd heard and seen of the angels, that Mary 'treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.' And again also, after her difficult and possibly confusing conversation with her Son Jesus in the temple, after finding Him, St. Luke says that 'His mother treasured all these things in her heart.' The King James version actually repeats that she 'treasured and pondered all these things in her heart.'

Notice Mary's great faith. St. Luke says that she first treasures both joyful and difficult words and events, for both are mysterious in the Godly sense, that is, beyond human reason. She knows these words and events have meaning and so rather than dismissing them or trying to forget them as we often try to do with difficult things, Mary, in faith, treasures them, gives them the highest order of importance in her life. Perhaps that's natural for a mother when it comes to her son but it's an example for all of us. And then she pondered the words and events. If you look up the word 'ponder' in the dictionary you'll see that it has to do, not just with thinking something over, but is about weight and solemnity. I think we can see here that Mary is seriously contemplating these words and events, she gives them the seriousness they deserve, and she isn't just trying to rationalise things but she lets their significance draw itself out over time.

All of this is typical of our Christian formation and nurture, of our living in relationship with God and as part of the Church, the Body of Christ. We don't necessarily understand what God does with us and says and asks of us but we are called, like Mary, to act in faith, to treasure God's word to us no matter what, whether we understand or not and then to ponder it as Mary does over what can be a lifetime. And we might never work out the significance of things where God is concerned because being called into a relationship with God is being called into participating in a mystery. We are simply called to live in relationship with God and one another, in faith and when we do that then in a real sense, God's Spirit lives and works in us and God in Christ is born in us not just at Christmas but in every new day.