Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City,
January 2, 2005, The Second Sunday after Christmas, Year A
by The Reverend Barry M. Signorelli

Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
Luke 2:41-52

In the Name of the Holy Child – in the manger, in our hearts, in the world.  Amen. 

What if you could peer into the future and get a glimpse of what would happen a few years down the road? 

Personally, I’d love to have that happen – it would be fantastic to get a head’s-up on how the decisions I make or the actions I take today would play out, how they would affect me and those around me.  It might confirm my hunch that a particular path was the right one to take, or even better, might forewarn me that certain choices aren’t the best way to go.  It would be like turning a few pages ahead in a book and sneaking a peek at what lies ahead. 

Well, essentially that’s what we get to do in today’s Gospel reading.  Here we are, still firmly within the twelve days of Christmas, hearing music about the infant in the manger, preparing for the visit of the Magi next week, the crčche still in plain site with all the shepherds and angels and sheep…and what do we hear in the Gospel?  A story about Jesus at the precocious age of twelve, astounding the elders in the Temple with his wisdom.  What gives? 

It’s all due to the peculiarity of the Lectionary for today.  You see, the Second Sunday after Christmas is something of an odd bird – depending on how the days fall in the calendar, there are some years when it doesn’t even happen, when Epiphany occurs before the second Sunday.  There are also three options for the Gospel on this day, as well, from which the preacher must choose: this year’s choices were the story of the Wise Men’s visit – which we’ll hear this coming Thursday evening – or the story of the Slaughter of the Innocents, on which I preached at last year’s Christmas II Eucharist (I thought of just re-cycling that sermon, but decided that wasn’t really an option).  And so, the remaining choice was the passage we’ve just heard, despite its seeming so out of place chronologically.  Hence, my musings about being able to peek ahead into the future. 

A glimpse of future events would have been enormously welcome in light of the tragic tsunami deaths last week throughout East Asia, as well.  I’m sure that you, like me, have been horrified at the hundreds of thousands of deaths from that natural disaster, which struck so suddenly and inexorably, with virtually no warning given to its unsuspecting victims.  Now, I’ll be up-front with you and admit that I’m not going to tackle the question of theodicy, or “why does God let bad things happen?”…other than to re-affirm my belief that God is constantly working to transfigure every event in human history into building-blocks of God’s kingdom – and that God weeps along with us for the pain and loss so many feel.  And of those hundreds of thousands who perished, God welcomes each and every one of them – the good and the bad, those of any faith and those of no faith, the young, the old, every last one of them – welcomes them home in his love. 

Now, as to that warning that never came: unlike in the Pacific, where an extensive monitoring and warning system is in place for such occurrences, there is no equivalent structure in the Indian Ocean.  I have read reports that concerns of this lack were raised at international scientific gatherings, but any interest in developing and implementing a warning system was half-hearted, if not indifferent.  The choices that were made then had a profound and lasting effect on how human history would be played out, as we have so sadly seen.  If only we could have had a peek into the future. 

At New Year’s, of course, it is traditional to make resolutions about how we’re going to change ourselves in the year ahead.  We seek to change the decisions we make and the actions we take so that our lives develop along different lines, whether it’s changing our weight, breaking bad habits, or anything else we feel needs to be altered.  The problem, of course, is that we’re very good about identifying what we want to resolve, and resolving it – but all too often those good intentions fade away in the face of the pressures and temptations of daily life, and we find ourselves right back where we started.  It’s not enough to make the resolution once, however publicly or forcefully we do it.  In order to achieve the results we want, we need to continue to make our resolutions over and over again, every day, at every opportunity that arises.  Only then do we stand a chance of making the changes stick; only then can we feel confident that, if we could peek ahead, we’d be pleased with what we see.  And of course, we need faith, because we’ll often be re-making those resolutions without any clear indication that anything has yet changed. 

The stories of Jesus’ birth contain for us an almost magical quality, reading almost like a story-book – which, to some extent, they are.  We hear and encounter them through the filter of all our individual experiences of Christmases past, they are colored for us with the jewel-tones of memory and expectation.  We can scarcely read the words “and she gave birth to her first-born son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger” without seeing the stable lit with golden light, and possibly a bit of snow falling outside (rare though snowfall is in that part of the world).  We can peek ahead, we already know how the rest of the story unfolds, so we naturally read all of that back into the very beginning.  But to the actual, historical Mary and Joseph, it wasn’t like that at all.  They would have been tired; the stable would have been dirty and smelled of the animals; any light they had would have been dim and flickering.  It would have been a time fraught with anxiety that the birth would go well for this first-time mother.  It would have been a rather ordinary event. 

And in the time between the birth and Jesus’ appearance in the Temple twelve years later, his parents would have made innumerable choices that would affect who the child would become – choices of where to live, how to relate to him, whether he would receive religious instruction, what kind of values would they model for him through their actions – all of these things would factor into the kind of person Jesus became.  Preachers will sometimes pose the question, “what if Mary had said no to the angel at the Annunciation?” – and similar questions could be asked about Joseph (what if he had had Mary put away quietly?).  We could go on in that vein – what if they had been bad parents, yelling at Jesus, not demonstrating affection, neglecting or abusing him?  What if Joseph had been a bad role model by cheating his customers?  What if they hadn’t let Jesus receive religious instruction so he could work longer in the family business?  If these things had happened, if these choices had been made, would that twelve-year-old have ended up amazing the elders in the Temple? 

We are, of course, fortunate that we will never know all these things, because it appears that Jesus’ earthly parents were good and responsible; the decisions they made and the actions they took helped form the young boy who showed such wisdom as a child, and such compassion as an adult.  Mary and Joseph didn’t get the peek ahead that we have, but they could see ahead by faith.  They knew in their hearts what their responsibilities were, and they embraced them in the expectation that whatever the future held, they had prepared the way as best they could.   

We speak at this time of year about Christ being “born in our hearts.”  What this means is that we have the opportunity to become more Christ-like in our own lives – that we in some way become one with the Child we are given charge of.  And the decisions we make, and the actions we take, will determine how that Child grows within us, and how we grow with, and into, that Child.  As we gaze at the infant Jesus in the manager – and in our own hearts – we are shown a universe of infinite possibility, full of potential and opportunity.  What we make of it will determine what will be read of us a few pages ahead: will we have squandered our chance to shape our future along the lines of God’s loving will?  or will we embrace the charge given to us, and set the stage for wonders we cannot dream of now?  The baby gazes at us from his manger-bed, waiting for us to choose.

Amen.

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