At first glance our last reading this morning seems like a peculiar text for the Sunday after Christmas. But the more one looks at it, the more it fits the Christmas season. How so? It follows right on the heels of the text I talked about on the first Sunday after Christmas last year. The verse that I emphasized last year was from the Gospel of John, the first chapter, the fourteenth verse: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."

So how does this follow? Let's look at it together for the next few minutes. The first thing that often catches attention is wonderment at how such a perfect child could do to his parents, what Jesus apparently did -- that is, stay behind. The second thing follows on the first and that is how conscientious parents could let it happen. Not to make excuses, and I certainly won't tell any stories, but having been young myself, I can easily understand the first. Having had parents who had more than one child (I was the oldest of the kids), I can also understand the second. Maybe you can too. Especially if you have been here on a Wednesday night after confirmation classes end, watching parents trying to get their confirmands to leave.

At any rate, looking at what the narrative dwells on, this provides a kind of psychological proof of the inspiration of scripture. Because instead of dwelling on Jesus' staying behind, or his parents' seeming inability to watch their son, it shows that in God's plan, this story serves a different purpose.

That purpose is to accent, to emphasize, the Gospel implication of Jesus' humanity. Here we find Jesus twelve years old, the author of our faith as we read in the book of Hebrews, is growing as all boys and girls, men and women, do. The omnipotent Son of God increasing in size, nearly a teenager. Of course considering the age of legal accountability now, compared to then, being twelve has a completely different emphasis. We find the omniscient Son of Man growing in wisdom as he amazes the teachers at the temple. We find that he who was with God at the creation of the world gains in popularity with God and with humanity. We find Jesus calling God his Father, an awareness of his mission. We find Mary treasuring these things in her heart as Jesus is obedient to his parents, and to God.

Jesus is obedient to the point of death on a cross and you might say that here is a foreshadowing of the events that will take place twenty-one years later, when Jesus again goes up to Jerusalem. Then, like now, he will tarry there and we now refer to that week as Holy Week. The Son of Man, the Word became flesh, flesh of our flesh, who tarried among us, who tarried in Jerusalem on that final earthly journey, dies for our sake, in our place. And rising again from the dead gives us what I referred to on Christmas Eve as the greatest gift of all, salvation that comes to us by grace through faith. The real meaning of the season.

AMEN