Hide and seek
Link to YouTube video of this sermon: https://youtu.be/wZD3JgXDgaw
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
January 2, 2022—Christmas 2C
Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Luke 2:41-52
It’s such a familiar kind of story, invoking echoes within all of us. Of times that we perhaps ran away, or times that we were lost. Of times when we had lost someone, and were desperate to find them, to rescue them, to get them back. It brings with it all the excitement and terror, the worry and the longing of those stories from our own lives. And all of those experiences and feelings help inform what this passage has to teach us.
At the same time, this passage also connects the story of Jesus to the stories of so many great figures in ancient times. In the telling of their lives, there is often an anecdote from their twelfth year, perhaps because this was understood as the last year before adulthood began at 13. And in those stories, they already display signs of the greatness that is to come.[i] What’s noteworthy in Jesus’ case, perhaps, is how low key it all is. No miracles. No great confrontations with the powers. Just this: He is in the temple. He is studying (that is to say arguing) scripture. And he affirms (and perhaps extends) the Jewish conviction that a commitment to God’s Word is a greater bond than even that of family.
Which is to say that this story of the twelve-year-old Jesus tells us that one of the central truths of his life is that his family is not (only) Mary and Joseph and his brothers and sisters. His family is first and foremost the God of Israel and God of All, and then all those who dedicate their life to the living of God’s word.
Which is to say that this foretaste of the life and ministry of Jesus very much wants us to know that WE are family to Jesus, and he is family to us. Which makes this gospel story, this familiar family story of getting lost and being found, so much more than we even realized.
Jesus didn’t in fact get lost. It’s much more like he ran away, perhaps packing some food in a bandana and tying it on the end of a stick, as Brian did when he ran away as a child (let’s blame Tom Sawyer for that one). He left for the reasons that children often leave: he wanted to do different things from the ones his parents wanted him to do. Mary and Joseph just wanted to head home. But Jesus wanted to be in the house of God; to be actively engaged in scripture study; to be passionately involved in questions of what God wants for the world and for each of us.
Have you ever been pulled so strongly toward something that you were willing to leave everything for it? What was it like? What happened? And was it worth it?
And what would it be, for that thing or that someone … to be God? What is it like for your soul to be, as the psalmist describes it, “athirst for God, athirst for the Living God” (Ps 42:2)? What is it to recognize what Blaise Pascal describes as a God-shaped hole within you[ii], and to have found some small way to allow God to begin to fill it?
What would you need to leave behind, to move towards that? There might be patterns of life to be changed, or ideas about the kind of person you are that need to be reconsidered. There might be people, perhaps, who cause you to stop and look back; people who feel as though you are leaving them behind.
Moving towards God is no small and simple thing. No wonder it is told here in the midst of a story we recognize as one filled with terror and longing, of the thrill of freedom and the agony of loss.
But also, we might remember, a story that includes massive relief, probably a cuff upside the head, and a whole lot of eye-rolling on the part of the pre-teen. Jesus is dragged out of the temple to head home with his parents. And yet, he still manages to live out his ministry as the bringer of God’s Kingdom. So, it seems that it’s okay for things to be a bit ragged around the edges. Your path towards a deeper and more involved relationship with God does not need to be straightforward and single-minded.
That’s good news, especially for those of us who never come within spitting distance of such things. But the even better news, for ALL of us, is that we aren’t the only ones on the move here. I may be the one who is running away, or the one getting lost, or the one moving towards something. But God is also both seeker and sought after. God is the place I am looking for, and God is also the one who is desperate to find me. Searching everywhere … calling my name … knowing all of my favorite places and going there, hoping to find me.
What is it like, to be sought after by God? Your answer will differ, perhaps, depending on why you went missing in the first place. Are you lost, in one of the myriad ways a person can get lost in this world? Did you run, for one of the many reasons that people run? Or were you, as it turns out, driven away?
Because our relationship with God can get very, very messy. Take, for example, today’s passage from Jeremiah. Alongside God’s beautiful promise to search out and gather in the remnant of Israel lies the complicated acknowledgement that it was God who scattered them in the first place.[iii] God who sent them into exile for their faithlessness to the ways of God, and at the same time God who longs to bring them back. Not for nothing do they come with weeping, before any of the rejoicing can begin.
Now, none of us has wrestled with what it means to be driven into exile by an invading army. I don’t know whether I’d be inclined to understand it as a punishment from God. But I do have experience of the kinds of forces that threaten to drive you out of the house of God. I have personally struggled with doctrines and theological understandings that seem cruel, or culture-bound, or just plain hard to swallow, and wondered whether I could really stay within the church with any kind of integrity. And, more significantly, I have spent a substantial part of my ministry binding up those who have been savaged by the church for any number of reasons, but most frequently because of their sexuality. Honestly, it’s not surprising that so many people run. What’s astonishing is that so many can still hear the voice of God calling for them. Can respond when they sense God seeking them out, coming to them where they are. To gather them in, and to bring them home (which is to say, to the love of God, if not the church itself).
There is weeping. Of course there is weeping, because the damage is serious. But there will also be rejoicing. Because the desire of God to gather us ALL in is real, and true, and as deep as it is messy.
This is a story about hide and seek. About how we run, sometimes for good reason. About how we are seeking, not always knowing exactly what we seek. And about how God seeks after us, wherever we may be, and however sure we have become that God has no interest in us as we are. Our God is searching us out: to bind our wounds, to engage our questions, to cuff us upside the head if need be, and to bring us to our home. Which is God. May it be so, Amen.
[i] O. Wesley Allen, Jr, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-of-christmas-3/commentary-on-luke-241-52-5
[ii] Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425)
[iii] Karl Jacobson, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-christmas-3/commentary-on-jeremiah-317-14-9