Sermon for 2nd Sunday After Christmas

Sermon for 2nd Sunday After Christmas

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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Our text for this morning comes from the Gospel lesson, especially these verses: “And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, ‘Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.’ And he said to them, ‘Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?’ And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them.” This is our text. You may be seated.

There’s a popular children’s book series entitled *Where’s Waldo?* Some of you parents of young children, and/or grandparents, have no doubt seen some of these books. Each book consists of pages of rather complicated and busy-looking illustrated pictures. Within each page, the main character of the book, Waldo, and his friends are hiding. The person looking at the book is supposed to find the red and white striped Waldo and his pals. It’s not always easy. All the colors on the page confuse the image and often camouflage where Waldo is hiding. He can be hard to find if you don’t know where you’re looking.

Have you ever had an experience similar to that with God? Does it sometimes seem that we don’t know where to find him? During hard times, like illness or economic difficulties, or the death of a loved one, it may seem like God is nowhere to be found. Or we may feel like we’ve distanced ourselves from God through some sin that we’ve committed. There are many opinions on how to get back to God, about where to find him, about how you know if you’ve found him or not.

You’d probably get quite a few different thoughts if you just went out on the street and polled people, asking them, “Where do you find God?” Some will say that if you have great material blessings in this life, that’s a sure sign that God is with you. Others may say that God is far away, up in heaven, looking down on us and laughing at our foibles and mistakes. Others may claim that God has left us. The famous philosopher of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche, declared, “God is dead.”

Some say God lives in your heart, or talks to you in dreams, or is experienced through your various emotions. But all this confusion can cause us to ask, “Where’s God?” The easy answer is that God is everywhere. So perhaps the better question is: where is God for us today?

In our text for today, we move from celebrating the birth of Christ to the boy Jesus when he’s 12 years old, and we read that Mary and Joseph lose track of their son. Oops, we lost God, they must have thought. They were performing their duties as good Jewish parents. Every year they would go to Jerusalem for the Passover feast. No doubt, they performed the sacrifices that were required of them in the law. And in doing so, they were keeping the law for themselves and for Christ, their son, whom we know kept the law perfectly.

It would have been customary for large extended families to travel together, but likely the family would split up into different groups—cousins traveling with the cousins they wanted to travel with, some moving faster or slower than others. And so Mary and Joseph assumed that Jesus was with other family members. Suddenly, they realize that neither of them knows where Jesus is. If you’ve ever suddenly been unsure where your child is, you know the panic and anxiety that that can cause. And no doubt, Joseph and Mary had similar feelings.

After three days, three days, they find him in Jerusalem, in the temple, questioning and answering the teachers in the temple, amazing everyone with his answers. Jesus almost seems surprised when his parents find him. They couldn’t tell him that they couldn’t find him. “Why were you looking for me?” Jesus asks. “Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?” The irony here is that he’s speaking to his earthly adopted father, Joseph, but speaking of his true father, God the Father, in heaven. Jesus knows that God is found in the temple, the house of the Lord. This is where God has promised to be with his people and to bless them. Jesus is in the temple because it’s really his own house.

Mary and Joseph don’t understand the answer, and their confusion over Jesus’ words is really a foreshadowing of Jesus’ entire ministry. People don’t understand him. Even his own disciples don’t understand what he’s talking about often. Three times he tells them plainly that he must go up to Jerusalem, be delivered into the hands of the scribes and Pharisees, to be killed, and on the third day rise from the dead. But they don’t get it. He speaks plainly. His teaching about God and about himself, however, often runs contrary to what people think and believe, or maybe what they want to hear.

The people don’t want to get close to God. They want to find him, and Jesus keeps saying that it is he and he alone that provides access to God. When he tells them, “You are not far from the kingdom of God,” the kingdom of God is staring them right in the face. But people don’t understand.

How much is that like us? Oh, we want to find God sometimes. We want to do it on our own terms. If you don’t want to play *Where’s Waldo,* you can just close the book. We think we can do the same with God. When things are going well and we don’t need God bothering us with all his rules and laws, well, we’ll just close the book. When we want to do something that we know is wrong, close the book. When our lives seem to be in ruins, maybe we figure, what’s the point? I won’t be able to find God anyway. And when we do seek him out, where do we look? Do we assume that if we’re happy we found God, and if we’re not, that he’s left us?

Do we assume that God will speak to us as we are out wandering in the woods or playing on the golf course? Do we look for God on the television? Do we try to find him on the internet? What about the self-help shelf of the bookstore? Is God there? Is that where God is found? Oh, there are lots of answers out there to the question: where is God? But to answer the question, we need to look no farther than where Jesus was and where he is.

Jesus found God in the temple, and Mary and Joseph found God there as well. But the temple is no more, destroyed long ago. But remember these words of Jesus from John chapter 2: “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘It has taken us 46 years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days?’ But Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body.”

The boy Jesus was lost for three days, lost by his parents, and some 20-odd years later, Mary and the disciples thought they had lost Jesus again—lost him to the hate and the cruelty of the Jews, lost him to a Roman cross, dead. For three days, they were anxious, wondering, what was happening now? Now that Jesus was gone, where is God in all of this? They must have wondered.

After three days, he couldn’t even find his body in the tomb. And they never did find him. He found them. He had rebuilt the temple of his body. The temple in Jerusalem was no longer needed. Christ had fulfilled everything that needed to be done there. His was the ultimate and final sacrifice for sin. Those who, as St. Paul says, are in Christ—that is you and I—find God in Jesus.

Jesus. There is God, depicted for you right there, dying on a cross and rising again for the forgiveness of your sins. When Christ ascended, it must have seemed to his disciples again, God is leaving. His disciples were looking up to him as he ascended into heaven, and the angels told them not to. And when Pentecost came, they understood. They understood where Jesus was. They understood where to find God.

The answer is really quite simple. God is where he has promised to be. Of Jesus, St. Matthew tells us: “Consider Peter preaching in Acts chapter 10.” The author of Acts tells us, “While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all those who heard the word.” The Holy Spirit falling on you as you hear the word. In number six, God tells Moses and Aaron, “Thus you shall bless the people of Israel. You shall say to them: The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and to be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them,” says the Lord.

And finally, Christ promised his church in the last chapter of Matthew that when she faithfully teaches and baptizes in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, “Behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.” Where God’s word is acting, there he is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is, of course, found here in this place, not because we have this beautiful building that we’ve been blessed with, but because of what goes on here—where God’s word is preached in its completeness and purity, where that word is being applied to your lives by your pastor, where people are being baptized, where you are receiving the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in Holy Communion.

There is God. We don’t have to guess if God is here. We don’t have to wait for that feeling inside of us to know that God is here. He has promised to be here, and so he is. This place, or a church that meets in someone’s house halfway across the world, or a congregation of believers meeting in a prison—that is the house of your Heavenly Father. That is where God is found. That is where he is blessing you. That’s because Jesus is here, just as he has promised to be.

Just as God was present teaching in the temple at the age of 12, so God is here teaching you today. Those of us who are in Christ, we don’t need to look for God. God has found us and holds us in his hand for all eternity. Finding God is actually a lot easier than finding characters in a book. God is here with his people—in word, in sacraments. Through these means of grace, he gives you himself. He tells you of the salvation that God has won for you on the cross and the victory over death that the empty tomb displays. God is near, not far away. He has found you, and he promises to be with you always.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.