Sermon – Acceptable Child Labor
1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26; Luke 2:41-52
Farmville Presbyterian Church
12/29/24
Have you ever taken anything for granted? Of course, you have. We all take things for granted all the time. There are things we just assume will happen without giving them much thought. We assume that our homes will still be there later today when we return. We assume that our lives in general will continue pretty much the same through the day, maybe even the week. We even take people for granted: the ones that we have with us now, the ones that we expect to see, and even the ones that we do not expect to see. We can pretty much assume that the status quo will stay with us for at least a while.
Another group that can be taken for granted is children. I know I take my own family for granted. It is far too easy to forget how blessed I am to have them. Joseph and Mary took for granted that Jesus was with their caravan of family and friends on their way back from the Temple. Maybe they even mistakenly took for granted that Jesus was a regular child and would behave in regular child ways.
I do not have to preach a sermon on taking things for granted, however. I feel pretty confident that everyone here and with us online knows how taking things for granted can cause us to miss how important some things are. We all know we should especially appreciate the things that are important to us.
Honestly, I have never really paid that much attention to this story in Luke of Jesus as a child. We do not really need the story for the Gospel. Luke is the only one who mentions this. What we need to know for the Gospel message is the life of Jesus as an adult, once he begins his focused ministry as the Messiah. The same goes for Samuel, easily one of the most important figures in Jewish history. He was the faithful servant who was part priest, part judge, and part prophet. He provided God’s people with faithful leadership and kept that leadership honest. He picked Saul (Israel’s first king) and David (Israel’s most beloved king) and was God’s voice among the nation. Samuel was a powerful, powerful presence in the story of God’s people, but, again, we do not necessarily need his childhood to appreciate who he was as an adult. Both authors here want us to see something about these men as children. Something about who they were as little people illustrates who they would become. Both of these figures as children are doing something in God’s work that is useful to see.
For Samuel, it is gifts. What is the best gift that you received over this Christmas time? Yes, it can be the time and laughs, maybe a special meal, or maybe just a conversation with someone important. Maybe it was good news. Those can be gifts. Maybe you received an actual special gift that means more than the thing itself. I am wearing my most precious stole today, the first one that my mother made for me. This was a Christmas present and one of the best ones I ever received. Not only is it beautiful and carefully sewn with all kinds of love and intricacy, but it also expresses her hopes for me at the time – that I would one day become a minister able to wear it. I was early in the process of becoming a minister when she did this. Technically, I was not supposed to wear it until I was ordained, so I had to just keep it for a while before I was ready. That reminds me of little Samuel’s robes. I cannot fathom how much went into making a robe back then when it was all done by hand. Samuel’s mother, Hannah, was not able to be around her son and only saw him once a year after she had dedicated him to the service of God at the holy place Shiloh in those days. She had literally given Samuel to God’s service as a little, little person. Now, she was supporting him in this work as best she could. She never forgot her son but carefully made these robes for him. These gifts would reflect how Samuel was a gift to her from God that she gave back to God. As a child, Samuel served very faithfully, and he was a stark difference from the Priest Eli’s own children who were terrible, some of the worst people in the Bible for how they abused their positions and took advantage of others. They were such an offense to God that they did not live long, but Samuel carried on day in and day out working for the Lord for his entire life. These robes from his mother showed Samuel how important she was to her and her belief in him and what he was doing as God’s servant there. Each stich was a faith statement in God’s grace.
Jesus’ work is different, and his story is a bit jarring to us. Honestly, Jesus does come across as a bit disrespectful. If a child had done that to one of us, we would be fairly upset. Seriously, if our child had run off from our care and spent days somewhere else without being worried about us at all (Jesus is not upset in the least for the worry), we would be very upset. The tone, rather, is that HE was right. We should have known where he was the whole time. It is not a flattering picture of Jesus as an obedient and respectful child which is why Luke makes a point about him being obedient from then on.
Jesus’ story is more complicated than Samuel’s. Notice that Mary says, “Your father and I were very worried.” To which Jesus answers, “You should have known I was in my Father’s house.” Here is that parentage question that has been haunting Jesus. Who is actually Jesus’ father? Jesus is putting it out there pretty clearly, and, again, it is not terribly respectful to the man who was raising him day in and day out, but Jesus’ first relationship is with God. There is no other way. It is who he is.
Luke also really likes the Temple as a setting. So much in Luke’s Gospel has already taken place at the Temple, and much more will later in his story. Luke, who is not believed to have been born Jewish, puts a lot of emphasis on the Temple which is the center of Jewish religious life. The Temple is so important that this is the reason Jesus is finally arrested by the Jewish leadership after he promises to rebuild the Temple. What Jesus was doing was very, very Jewish because from his beginning, Jesus was tied to the Temple. It was where he was celebrated and dedicated. It was where he was at home. It was where he taught, and it was where he saw his future work happening, and it was where his followers met. Jesus was someone unlike anything the world had ever seen, but it was also very, very Jewish.
The last interesting part of this story that I want to highlight today is that Luke has two stories of Jesus being missing on each end of Jesus’s adult ministry. Here, Jesus is missing just before Luke gets to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. At the end, after his crucifixion, there is the road to Emmaus story in which two disciples are mystified about how Jesus could have been taken from them the way he was. He was believed dead then, but he was now painfully missing to them. Of course, Jesus was walking with them, and they did not know it.
Whenever we think we might have Jesus all figured out, there is something new. Mary and Jospeh thought they knew Jesus. He had been their son for 12 years. Try living with someone for 12 years. You get to know them. But then, Jesus pulls the rug out, not in a mean or hateful way, but in a surprising way. Jesus genuinely wants us to know who he is, but he will never fit neatly into any box. On the road to Emmaus, he has to explain who he is to those dsciples, too. They had no idea just how much he was in the story of God’s love and grace, let alone that he was right there talking to them.
At the heart of this message is that children can truly teach us about God in surprising ways. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard that people appreciate the children’s message even more than the “adult” message, i.e. the sermon. I completely understand. I can watch Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, a childhood favorite of mine, now and get so much more out of it than I did as a child. There is a depth and richness to trying to encounter God as children that can also speak to us as adults. This may be why Jesus demanded that the disciples allow the children to come to him. Maybe we really need to come to him as children, to receive his Kingdom as children in spirit, if not in age.
Part of Christmas is remembering and reclaiming some of the wonder and spirit of being children. Christmas takes us back to our own childhood experiences, and many of us have special time with children in this season. It seems especially appropriate now to consider children in Scripture, also, from the perspective of children.
It is never too early to start helping our young people to know how special they are to the Lord and how special the Lord is to our young people. We also need to be ready for surprises, though. We cannot take any of this for granted. Jesus will surprise us. We might not understand the surprises at the time, but Jesus wants us to see him, especially through the eyes of the young.
Find God’s goodness around you in these days, and to God be the glory. Amen.