Bible Text: Psalm 138, Luke 2:41-52 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Norm Story | Series: Lectionary

*** No Audio because the service was canceled because of snow.***

“My Father’s Business 2015

Psalm 138       Luke 2:41-52

Today, we are approaching the ending-edge of another year, and in a few days we will enter a new one … which we could make into a very significant time of reflection and decision. It’s a good time to evaluate our priorities and direction in life:

– is the way I am living out my days actually consistent with the values and priorities that I claim matter most to me?

– if someone were to examine my truly-lived-affections, i.e. what I do with my time and how I spend my money, where would they see that my priories really lie, and what would they say matters most to me?

And suppose I am looking back over my life a year from now, at the choices I’ve made and how I invested my life this year, what are the values, priorities and loyalties that I want to have lived out as most important to me?

* What about the choices I will have made this coming year?

My friend Don grew up in a terrible home and environment of neglect. His mother was an extreme alcoholic, and none of the men who fathered Don and his two brothers were still around. Don explained to me that the best experiences of his childhood had been during Prohibition and the Great Depression when alcohol was more scarce and harder to come by. During those economic hard times, and unable to drink as much, his mother had been healthier, happier and more attentive.

Otherwise, Don was essentially on his own without much parental guidance, and so he grew up fast and angry, a tough kid of the streets in and out of trouble with little hope for a decent future. A school friend got him to attend a youth group meeting one time, where the pastor was solid, and took an interest in Don, and challenged him to think about his direction in life, why God created him, and what was his purpose for living?

That pastor provided the only caring guidance he had ever known, and he heard the Gospel news of Jesus Christ for the first time. Eventually Don responded. He committed his life to Jesus Christ, and that pastor & youth group became major influences in his life. Don’s mother hated anything religious, and was infuriated by that. One evening as he was heading out to youth group, she tried to stop him from going, and gave him an ultimatum:

“If you go out to youth group tonight don’t bother coming back. This won’t be your home, and you can’t live here anymore.”

Don was not quite 14, and was facing a very difficult choice. Either give up the only home and family he had ever known, or trust and follow Jesus Christ, despite the high cost.

After youth group that night his mother was waiting at the door. She refused to allow him inside, even to gather his clothes, and wouldn’t let him see or say goodbye to his brothers. After that night, he never saw or spoke with his mother again.

With nowhere else to go, he showed up at the pastor’s house, who was willing and pleased to take Don in and give him a home. Don followed in that man’s footsteps, and eventually became a Presbyterian pastor himself… which as he explained it, was to live up to why God gave him life, to serve usefully and be about his heavenly father’s business.

Don was my teacher and mentor during my seminary internship, and he was one of the most remarkable men I have ever known. He was an incredibly faithful and completely committed pastor, who never wavered or compromised from absolute Christian truth. Maybe because he had been forced to choose at such an early age, and because his decision to trust and follow Jesus Christ had come at such a high risk and personal cost, he never questioned or doubted his ultimate loyalty.

Having paid the price of home and family for the sake of Christ, and having experienced how God did provide and care for him, that gave him a power and certainty which he never doubted… and he was grateful every day of his life for God’s blessings that God had removed him from a terrible family situation, intervening on his behalf to give him a future, according to God’s good purpose and will for him.

Don’s life exemplifies the promise and truth of Psalm 138:

I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart; … Though I walk in the midst of trouble, … you stretch out your hand, and your right hand delivers me.

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me;  your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. You do not forsake the work of your hands.

Isn’t that a most wonderful and remarkable promise and truth, to know with certainty that in the end, God will have worked out his plans and purpose for my life.

It is that same hopeful truth and promise that lies at the heart of the story we read earlier from Luke 2 about Jesus as a youth, about making the Father’s business his chief priority, his heart and life in tune with God’s desire & purpose. All through the nativity and pre-birth stories about Jesus, Mary and Joseph had trusted in the Lord, even at great risk, because they took God at His word and faithfully obeyed.

Luke is intentional in making it clear, that with Joseph and Mary, loyalty and faithfulness to God was the way they choose to live. It is reasonable to assume that God used the environment of their home to lay the foundation upon which Jesus build his life’s mission and purpose.

As parents they were teaching about ultimate loyalty to God by demonstrating it through their own lives and faithfulness, so that even at an early age, Jesus had already learned & knew his ultimate loyalties…

… as demonstrated by this story.

We’re told that as devout Jews, each year his parents made the difficult journey to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. Travel in those days was very dangerous and treacherous, so neighbors, and friends, and families would make their Passover journeys together in caravans.  Typical of Middle Eastern culture, they segregate by gender, with women looking after the children in one travel group while nearby, the men would travel in their own group.

As a boy of 12, Jesus might have traveled with either group, and so it’s reasonable that he might not be missed until the family stopped and came together at the end of the day. Notice then, that Joseph and Mary had to leave and separate from the comfort and safety of their friends and family in order to go, to follow and search for Jesus a bit like Don’s separation from his family to follow Jesus, and the situation faced by the Christians of Luke’ community.

When the gospel of Luke was first written, it was a time of severe persecution of Christians, much of it coming from within the Jewish community, often their own family members and former friends.

When someone became a Christian, a follower of Christ, they were an apostate, a traitor and religious heretic and cut-off from community, family, friends and neighbors. So too, sometimes following Jesus may require us separate ourselves from other things we desire in life. We may be forced to choose what really matters most, to decide to whom or what we will give our ultimate loyalty.

After his parents spent three days searching, they found him, in discussion about Scripture with the Temple scholars, and like so many other things concerning Jesus, Mary and Joseph were baffled, amazed and confused.

46-48

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.

They were astonished, because in that time, place and culture, only the rabbis would be seated during such discussions… and only by their invitation would Jesus have been with them, ‘sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.’

This is intended to reveal something about who Jesus is, and its purpose is to lead to the pronouncement of this story.

48-50

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?’

“I must be in my Father’s house”, translated more literally, ‘among   the things of my father   it is necessary   that I be’ Just as Mary and Joseph had taught Jesus by example, by their own lives of demonstrating their loyalty to God, so too for Jesus, his first loyalty is to God alone.      

Do you see the connection?

Jesus sitting with the Temple scholars in Jerusalem preparing for the purpose for which God sent him, placing loyalty to God above loyalty even to family. And these early Christians having to choose at great risk between their families and communities, or their faith… is much like my friend Don, choosing to follow Jesus, by placing loyalty to God above loyalty even to family.

It was for early Christians, grappling with that life-situation that the author of Luke uses this as a teaching story to show how Jesus lived out that family vs. faith question by choosing his ultimate loyalty, even as a boy of 12.

This story retold in the gospel of Luke, is written in such a way, that can also help us think about our own ultimate loyalties. A further lesson about balance is that ultimate loyalty to God, did not preclude returning home with Mary & Joseph to Nazareth, where Jesus was an obedient son as he continued to grow up, and prepare to fulfill God’s purpose and plan for him.

This story in Luke, teaches that our absolute and ultimate loyalty is to God alone, even over family, community or culture, when necessary. And yet faithfulness to God may also entail and require of us, to live in faith, obedience & peace within our local Nazareth(s), where God is preparing us for His purpose and plan for us… which may require a great deal of wisdom and balance for us to be faithful & loyal in this time & situation where God has placed us

Today, nearing this year’s end, is an excellent time to consider the ultimate loyalties that guide and govern our lives… recognizing that sometimes faithful obedience to God’s purpose is not always obvious or the easiest and most comfortable path, but may involve having to sacrifice and make hard choices.

When Don’s faith commitment was tested, he passed and excelled. Having made that faithful decision to follow Jesus Christ even at great cost and surrendering his home-life, that set a pattern of faithfulness for a lifetime, and allowed for God’s purpose & plan in his life. When our ultimate loyalties are right and righteous, then other things in life can fall right into place.

So, if faithfulness to God truly is our ultimate loyalty in this life, then how does that play out, and are our hearts really in tune with the Lord’s will? May each of us live our out lives and struggles this next year, faithfully laying claim to God’s promise of Psalm 138,

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me;  your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.     You do not forsake the work of your hands. I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart;   I will sing your praise.