"The Holy Family"
Luke 2:41-52
Epiphany 1

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

We hear a lot of talk about the importance of the family and family values.  I think that is so because we have the sense that we are losing the family.  The so-called "nuclear family," where Mom and Dad have only ever been married to each other and all the children were jointly conceived between the two, is no longer the norm.  I recently heard a statistic that we've just crossed the threshold where as many children are being born outside of marriage–to live-in couples or single Moms–as there are children being born within marriage.  The 50's ideal of Dad going off to work and Mom tending to the house and the children, of the family enjoying recreational time together or gathering around the hearth to tell stories, is quickly going the way of churning your own butter.  With parents and children going in every direction, that romantic picture is now a part of America's quaint past (if it ever truly existed as we remember it).  The rule of our day is blended families, dual income, friend of the court, after school care, custody, and guardians.

The brokenness, the failure of the family in our society, all stems from the selfish actions of sinful people.  But we shouldn't think that this is new.  Like all real vices, it is an ancient one.  If we are going to talk about the breakdown of the family, we must acknowledge that every family has its breakdowns.  There has never been a household yet that wasn't guilty of a thousand little injustices, a thousand instances of neglect and rebellion.  Imperfect Moms and Dads are never as consistent as they intend to be, nor even as consistent as they think, and tell others, that they are.  And neither are children born under the curse of the Fall as obedient, or as caring and considerate, as they pretend to be.  Our tempers flare, and discipline is more an ideal than a state actually achieved.  We become absorbed in ourselves and take out our anger at this fallen world on those we love the most.  The demons dance with malicious glee as pride, lust, and greed take over.  Thus the family is broken, wounded, hurting, and the world becomes that much more cold, painful, and lonely.

Into this fray enters our Lord Jesus Christ, right into the thick of it.  He doesn't turn away in horror at how messed up we are.  Instead, He becomes part of a family Himself to cleanse our families and make them holy.  He submits Himself to a less than perfect mother and step-father.  The Scriptures tell us that He had brothers and sisters whom He had to live with and deal with, siblings who during His ministry thought He was crazy.  Jesus is not under the curse of Adam.  For He was conceived without a human father and thus without the sinful nature of father Adam.  And so He doesn't rebel under Joseph and Mary's authority or talk back or disobey.  He is the perfect Child, not for His own sake, but for our sake, that He might fulfill the 4th Commandment and the entire Law in our place.  Through faith in His perfect obedience, we are counted as righteous before the Father.

Because Jesus is without sin, He is all the more easily neglected and taken for granted by sinful parents, who travel for an entire day utterly unconcerned about a Boy who has never demanded anything of them or been a problem for them.  What Jesus is doing during this three day separation is His Father's business in His Father's house.  His Father's business is saving Mary and Joseph and people like you and me.  And so when His mother asks Him, "Why have you done this to us?" meaning the worry and the suffering she and Joseph have endured, the 12-year old Jesus replies with words that basically mean, "Because I love you."  His Father's business is not to torment Mary and Joseph, but to redeem them.  But caught up in their own self-focused perception of things, they didn't understand it.  They forgot who Jesus was, even who His Father was, and therefore who they were.

Don't we also sometimes do that?  We get so used to Jesus that we forget who He is.  We whittle Him down to someone who fits manageably into our plans.  And then when He behaves as the Lord of our lives, we get all upset at having to fit into His plans.  But Jesus again reveals the truth of who He is to Joseph and Mary and to us that they and we might be called back to repentance and faith in Him who has come to save us.  That is His Father's business.

Let us consider our Lord's dealing with another broken family situation.  Jesus stands at a well in Samaria.  And to that well comes the home-wrecker, the adulterous woman who has had five husbands and was then living with a sixth man who was not her husband.  In their conversation Jesus reveals that He is the Messiah, the One who gives living water which would wash her clean and make her new again, which would take away her thirst and give her life forever.  Then Jesus' disciples come on the scene and offer Him something to eat.  But He tells them, "I have food to eat, of which you do not know.  My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work."  Receiving the home-wrecker as one of His own, forgiving her, renewing her, that is His Father's work.  That is how Jesus is fed, to say as He did to another woman who was about to be stoned to death for adultery, "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more."

The Church of Jesus Christ is the Church for the broken, the failures, the fools. This is the place of healing for the hurting and rejected, for those who have messed up.  It is the home of those, shameful every one, who have been forgiven.  The world might scoff and say, "Why you Christians aren't much better than we are!"  And we say, "That may be true.  We have nothing within ourselves to boast of.  But we are forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ.  He lifts us beyond this stink and gives us life abundantly!"  If you're a sinner, lonely or fearful or depressed or sad, here is the Savior for you!  He came not to condemn the world but to save the world, to sacrifice Himself in your place to set you free.

Remember that this was a Passover feast that they had attended, the feast in which a lamb was killed, its blood poured out, and its flesh eaten in remembrance of the exodus in which the people of Israel were freed from slavery and death.  Twenty-one years later, Jesus would again be in Jerusalem for the Passover, and this time to take His place in the Passover as the Lamb Himself.  He is our freedom from slavery to sin and death.  His body was broken, His blood poured out, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.

For three days Mary felt the loss of her Son, when He had to be about His Father's business, both here and when He was grown.  Mary surely recalled this day in the temple as she stood at the foot of her Son's cross, and lost Him again, this time to death and the grave, only to receive Him back again on the third day, risen from the dead.  Perhaps only then did she fully understand what Jesus meant about His Father's business.  For only then could He say, "It is finished."

So while Mary and Joseph were less than perfect parents, in their Son they found love and acceptance, grace and mercy.  And in Him, you have the same.  Those who believe in Christ are cleansed of guilt and shame, their pasts are behind them, and they are given a future where there is no sorrow or pain, no condemnation, no regret or sin.

The traditional family may unfortunately be a threatened species, but in Christ Jesus, with God as our Father and the Holy Spirit as our bond, we have a much greater family that cannot fail, the family of the Church, the family of the Holy Trinity, the family of the baptized, the true holy family.  You were adopted in the water, and now you are truly children of God who bear the family name with all its benefits.  Let us, then, be about the family business in this new year.  Let us eagerly seek the Lord in His house, hearing and receiving His words, treasuring them up in our hearts.  You who are weary and burdened, come and receive the One who amazed the teachers, who ate with sinners, who promised paradise to the penitent thief on the cross.  And there in that Sacrament, by His body and blood, find the peace which the world cannot give, the peace of Him who accomplished what He had been sent to do: make you His own.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

(Much of the above was adapted from a sermon by the Rev. David Petersen, Ft. Wayne, IN.)