Fr. Cuthbert Brennan
Only yesterday we encountered the all too familiar scene of Mary and Joseph in a stable in Bethlehem with the baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. This morning the gospel forces us to move the baby out of the manger, out of Mary’s arms and into the world, to Jerusalem, where this gospel will end. Luke, the great storyteller gives us in these few sentences echoes of his entire Gospel. The place is Jerusalem, where the gospel begins and ends. The place is the Temple, where the gospel begins and ends. And maybe you heard some other familiar words and phrases – Passover, three days and seeking Jesus in the wrong place, such words and images we will encounter again and again as we continue our pilgrimage through the liturgical year. All we have to do is read the entire nativity story in Luke to make the connection between the baby and the man, between the heart-warming sentiments of Bethlehem and heart-stirring story in Galilee and the heart-breaking passion in Jerusalem. All you have to do is read the story and you will begin to hear his claim on your life.
When Jesus spent three days in the Temple he found out that there was a higher claim on him than the claim of Mary and Joseph. For Jesus the real authority in his life is his heavenly Father, and his life’s work and obedience to the Father’s will, will lead him back to the Temple again, where he will claim his own authority and where this time the religious leaders will conspire to kill him.
The gospel this morning shows us that Jesus is moving out of the circle of his parents, Jesus had to break with the familiar in order to truly be himself. And as followers of Christ it is a move we too have to make at times – break with the familiar, break with our families, our homes, if we are to truly find ourselves.
And maybe you hear echoes of another story in Luke. The rich young man who came to Jesus and asked “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus’ response is to ask him to sell all he has and distribute it to the poor and come follow me. But when he heard this he became quiet sad for he was very rich. He was too at home in his wealth and couldn’t break with the familiar.
Jesus’ family got him to Jerusalem in the first place but his ministry calls a new family into being. A family not constituted by blood but by a free decision to become a disciple. This Feast of the Holy Family is an invitation to rethink the multiple families that enfold us. Particularly a family that shares one faith, one hope, one love through baptism, shares the same Holy Spirit as God’s free gift, shares the same body and blood through the Eucharist, shares the command of Christ, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
What sets Jesus’ family apart as holy, long before later Christians capitalised the “h” and painted halos on their heads is their commitment to the will of God. Joseph is characterised by Matthew as a just man, faithful in his relationship with God and Mary’s primary gift was that of a disciple. She listened to God’s word and did it. Such is the example set before every Christian, fidelity to relationships, to responsibility that stems from a covenant with God.
It’s easier to keep him in the manger, wrapped tightly in swaddling clothes. We like the familiar. But the story that the church puts before us this morning forces us to move with Jesus out of the manger, out of the loving and sheltering arms of his parents, into the world – a world that is filled with sin and death and great need, with powerful people who continue to oppose Jesus and with others who turn to him for life. Just as the story moves from Nazareth to Jerusalem, so we will have to move with Jesus on the long road to Jerusalem again, to the temple again on another Passover where he will upset the authorities and upset ultimately, all the powers and dominions of this world.
The twelve year old Jesus in the Temple makes us take his power – and his claim on us – seriously. With him we move out of the safety of the manger into adulthood, into maturity, as disciples of the one who called God “Father.” Like Mary we will keep these things in our hearts until we understand who he really is. And then we will know how great this gift truly is, this sacrifice of love that claims us as family and calls us to follow him, out in to the world, into demands and needs and confrontations; out into the world, away from this safe and familiar place, to the call that claims our own lives.