Epiphany 1 Sermon 2020

 

Epiphany 1 – Luke 2:41-52

St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, Laramie, WY

10 January A+D 2020

 

If you look at all the misery in the world, you don’t need the Bible to teach you that much of it can be traced to disobedience to parents and other masters.  Those who disrespect their parents are also more prone to be violent, fornicate, steal, slander, and be discontent.  Scholars and teachers of various religions the world over have noticed this and attempted to regulate society, government, and people’s lives by teaching them to be subject to parents and other authorities.  We need obedience from people to have happiness on earth.

 

Confucius grew up in China in a time of warring clans.  He noticed that there was order in peace in those homes and places, not where the best rules were set in place, but where there was honor for parents and other dignitaries.  He urged children to be obedient to their parents and wives to submit to their husbands.  He urged princes and kings to be virtuous so that people might follow their example.  He even, by the light of his own reason, taught the maxim, Whatever you would not want people to do to you, don’t do, an inverse of the Golden Rule which Jesus Himself taught, “Do unto others what you would have them do to you.” 

 

Even Muhammad, for all of his bloodthirst for conquest and lust for women, taught obedience in the domestic sphere, which even today results in some sense of stability even in times of war and civil strife. 

 

The fourth commandment, Honor your father and your mother, is written on the hearts of men.  We cannot love our neighbor if we do not honor our father and our mother.   It goes well with us when we obey the authorities which God has ordained. But this is only a civil righteousness, which can finally neither sustain a culture in righteousness nor bring anyone closer to God.  If rebellion against parents and other authorities causes misery on earth we can all see, then rebellion against God causes untold misery here in time and also in eternity. 

 

This is because people ignore the love that God created us for.  We by nature look only to our earthly benefit rather than to the heavenly joy for which God created us.  You will notice that whenever any relationship breaks up, the people who are fighting with each other both appeal to some good that is above them, which one or the other has broken.  The argument is always about love and righteousness.  People should treat others as they themselves want to be treated.  This is an appeal not simply to our own desires, but to a standard, a law, that is above every one of us. 

 

The first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before Me,” is also written on our hearts, but it is hardly legible at all.  It is like an inscription on a tombstone, worn away by wind and time.  We should love God.  There is an obedience we should have to the one who is above even our parents and earthly masters. 

 

And the law is that of love.  The law of love must be above those on earth whom we are to honor and obey.  The reason why we should honor our parents and other masters, like our boss, the government, the police officer, etc. is because God placed them in authority over us.  God gave us our parents because He loves us.  He created us through them. 

 

But Jesus is the eternal and only begotten Son of the Father.  He is begotten, not made.  There is no Law that is above Him.  He exists as love in the unity of the Holy Trinity.  There is no command to the Son of God that He love His Father because He loves His Father from eternity, as His Father loves Him, and the Holy Spirit proceeds in love from the Father and the Son.  This is what St. John means when he says, “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”  The Muslim and the Confucian cannot say that God is love because they don’t know the eternal object of God’s love, His only beloved and begotten Son.  And we by nature can’t know God by our own obedience.  We ignore the obedience we owe to God by focusing on our obedience to people.  And we invent a righteousness that comes from the Law telling us to be obedient.  It is a righteousness that is coerced. 

 

But a righteousness that is coerced is not the righteousness of God.  Love in the Godhead is not forced.  The Father doesn’t command the Son to love Him.  God is love.  So why does God command us in the Law of God to love Him and our neighbor?  Because we don’t love God.  Because we are sinners who have disobeyed Him who is love.  The Law is written on our hearts because God created us to live in that love.  The Law accuses us because we do not live according to this law – we do not love as God made us to love.  All of the misery in the world is due to our lack of love.  And the lack of love is a lack of love for God.  We don’t obey God willingly and freely.  The Law prods and threatens us with misery when we disobey.

 

But reason, our own understanding, can only slightly grasp this.  We focus on happy earthly lives and so we see that we need good government, good parents, virtuous children in order to have happy and good lives on earth.  But our parents will die, and Solomon died, and every government is finally brought to ruin because this love is not enough.  We don’t realize how we don’t love God, and that is the problem.  We don’t have a righteousness that is freely given.  It is a forced love. 

 

But today we find God’s only begotten Son with earthly parents.  He was conceived by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man.  St. Paul explains it this way, “When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the Law, to redeem us who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” 

 

We find twelve year-old Jesus in the temple, under the Law of God.  He is above the Law, but He became man to take our place under the Law of God that commands us to love.  He became man to join us in that misery the Law shows us. 

 

But notice what Jesus does.  If most of the misery we see in the world is caused by disobeying parents and other authorities, why do we see Jesus in the temple and not with His parents, Joseph and Mary?  After searching for three days, Mary and Joseph find Jesus “in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers.” 

 

“So when they saw Him, they were amazed; and His mother said to Him, ‘Son, why have You done this to us? Look, Your father and I have sought You anxiously.’”  A son has the duty not to despise his parents or provoke them to anger. It seems, at least according to Mary’s understanding, that Jesus despised His parents.  He ignored them for something he thought was more important. This is the most exasperating thing for parents, when children disregard what their parents say and think and do what they want to do. 

 

But Jesus isn’t doing merely what He wants to do.  He is obeying the Law of God.  The misery of our lives cannot be relieved merely by obeying the fourth commandment.  The misery of our lives is because we have had other gods.  We have disobeyed the first commandment.  Jesus said to Mary and Joseph, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”

 

We need to be redeemed, rescued, from under the Law that shows us all the misery of this earth.  The command to honor our father and mother is first a command to fear and love God above all things.  Jesus, who has never needed to be commanded to obey God because He has always loved His Father and cannot do otherwise, has put Himself in the place of sinners who have not loved God.  And that is our problem.  Our need is not some system that more or less gives a certain harmony to the majority of the populace, as Confucianism and Islam claim to do.  Our need is to be reconciled to God.  Our misery is being separate from God. 

 

And so a young man goes to the Temple.  He has not been there since he was presented there as Mary’s firstborn, when Simeon held him in his arms and called him his Salvation and a light to lighten the Gentiles; when Anna saw Him as a baby and spoke of Him to all who looked for redemption in Israel.  And now, at the time of the Passover, we find Jesus in the Temple of the living God, learning and listening and asking questions, growing in wisdom for us. 

 

It is a mystery we can’t plumb the depths of.  How can the eternal Son, who knows all things and knows and loves God and has no need to be commanded to love, be learning and growing?  How?  I do not know.  Why?  Because He loves us enough to give us what we need.  He loves us enough to obey God on our behalf and in our place.  He humiliates Himself.  He doesn’t always and fully use His divine knowledge and power.  Instead He puts Himself exactly where we are, under the Law, and He obeys it in our place.  This is why He became a man, to redeem us not with gold or silver, but with His innocent and holy obedience which we lack.

 

Josiah’s father and grandfather had been evil.  His father died when he was eight years-old.  And he early on began to seek God.  He found the book of the Law in the Temple and had it read to him.  When he heard it, he tore his robes and wept because he and Israel had not kept the Law. And God made Josiah’s heart tender through the words of the Scriptures, and he became zealous for the Lord God of Israel.  He cleansed the temple and destroyed every idol, every false altar, every high place where people worshipped the stars, and he took all the idols and burned them by the Brook Kidron. He even went out of his own territory to tear down and defile the altars of Baal that had made Israel fall.  He executed the priests and scattered their bones on the broken altars so that no one could use them anymore.  Then he celebrated the Passover of God. 

 

He told the priests to put the ark of the covenant back into the Most Holy Place.  They killed the Passover lambs and the Levites had to help slaughter the sacrifices because there was so much for the all the people.  “There had been no Passover kept in Israel like that since the days of Samuel the prophet; and none of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as Josiah kept, with the priests and the Levites, all Judah and Israel who were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.”

 

This is a picture of the obedience of our Lord Jesus Christ, who like Josiah, came as a child to the Temple and cleansed it with His presence.  As Josiah put the ark of the Covenant, which held the Law of Moses in it and the mercy seat on it where the blood was sprinkled, so Jesus, who has the Law of God in His heart to obey it in our place, fulfills the covenant God made with Israel and brings Himself, who is the true mercy seat, into the Temple, because He is every sacrifice, and He is the Passover Lamb, whose blood would be shed to turn death away from us by bearing the punishment for our sins.

 

He is the true King of Judah and Israel.  He cleanses the Temple by His understanding and questions.  Solomon was given Nathan the prophet as a teacher when he was but a child, and he built the temple, and Jesus takes all the prophets as His teachers as a child for us, because a greater than Solomon, a greater than Josiah is here.  The Ark of the Covenant is here.  A New Temple is here.  God dwells with men in the temple of flesh and blood like ours, under the Law, to redeem us who are under the Law that curses this world for its sin against God. 

 

The false idols of the world are based on their own obedience.  They think that if they can gain enough obedience from children and subjects, then they will achieve the righteousness they need for happiness and harmony on earth.  But their good works are nothing but idols which they worship.  They ascribe salvation to their own love and righteousness.  But as Josiah destroyed these false priests and defiled their altars, and cleansed the temple and threw the broken idols in to the Brook Kidron, so Jesus by His own obedience to God casts down every idol from its throne.  He shows us that we need more than outward obedience to the fourth commandment. We need the love of God that He has as a man in our place. 

 

When you see misery in the world and in your life; when you see Marxists who have no fear of God promoting the destruction of the family and demanding obedience that belongs not only to the family, but to God Himself; when you see your own sins rising up against you, and you rue the day when you disobeyed your parents because you have made things bad for yourself, then see also the reality of this.  It is as David said to God, “Against You, You only have I sinned.”  It is sin against God that destroys us, that gives us not only misery in this life, but eternal misery, the curse that constantly tells us we have not loved as we ought to.  Then you see that you have been at those altars of Baal.  Every time you have trusted in yourself and your own goodness instead of the love of God, what has happened by bringing idols in to the Temple and acting as if your own righteousness could end your misery and fulfill the Law that tells you to love?

 

But we have a Josiah here.  His name means, “Whom the Lord heals,” because in Christ we are healed.  He tears all false righteousness out of the temple of our hearts.  He destroys and silences the false priests who tell us that our good works and our righteousness is enough.  He ends the tyranny of the devil and the world, which teach us to seek our highest good in our obedience to them.  And how does He do it?

 

By humbling Himself under the Law.  His heart is tender and lowly and gentle.  He learns for you.  He takes all the Law that you have forgotten, and He remembers.  He listens to all the Law of love that you disregarded, and He keeps it.  He understand the truth when you wanted to ignore it.  And He does it all for you.  He piles up His love to God in His own flesh and blood for you.  He replaces all of your disobedience with His own obedience.  He lives and learns for you.  All that you lack, now find in Him who heals who you are in Himself.

 

Because He is the true Passover Lamb.  We get so distracted.  Mary thought Jesus had done something wrong because her misery was caused, she thought, by disobedience to the fourth commandment.  But Jesus did not disobey her.  He obeyed His true Father.  He was in His Father’s things.  That’s what the Greek says.  He was in the things of His Father. 

 

And what are the things of His Father?  The things of His Father are the works that God sent Jesus to do for you.  The things of His Father are the fulfillment of the Law of Love, the ending of all misery, the overcoming of all false fears and false hopes and false trusts and false loves with the fear, love, and trust in God above all things that we need. 

 

And you find that fear, love, and trust in God above all things in this twelve year-old boy in the Temple.  There is the mercy seat that Josiah restored to the Most Holy Place.  There is the blood that will be poured there to turn God’s anger away and all misery and condemnation away.  There is the Passover Lamb, and a little Jewish boy asking, Why do we do this, and knowing that they slayed the Passover Lamb to point poor sinners who lack to love to Him who loves for them, is obedient for them to God unto death, even the death of the cross.

 

And then Jesus goes with Mary and Joseph and is subject to them, and He grows in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men.  His obedience to the fourth commandment flows from His obedience to God.  His obedience to the Law flows from His eternal love to the Father that needs no compulsion.  He is moved by love alone, as He says, “But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do,” and “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you.”  These are the Father’s things.  This is the Father’s business.  To redeem you, to make you certain of the love you lost, and you can’t find it in you, because you are sinful, and the good you want to do has evil always present with you, but not with Jesus, not anymore.

 

All evil and all sin was laid on His obedient shoulder, and all guilt was carried in His flesh, and all innocence and all obedience is poured out in His precious blood to give you the things of the Father, the eternal love that has no compulsion, because He pours it on your freely in your baptism, so that as the Father cried from heaven to Jesus, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well please,” so the Holy Spirit cries with this same voice in your heart to testify to you in your baptism that you are a child of God. Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called the children of God!  

 

And yes we are.  We are children of God by the Child of God and Mary.  Do not doubt that.  When you see how your works have caused misery, then look to Jesus works.  He casts the idols out broken into the Brook Kidron, which he crosses weeping, to carry your sin with His obedience until your sin is replaced by His righteousness, your disobedience by His obedience, your death with His life, your misery with that eternal joy which He won for you.

 

And so He brings you to His temple.  He brings you to the blood shed for sinners.  And we bring our children there.  We teach them the word that Jesus learned and taught us.  We trust in Jesus to cast the idols out of our hearts and out of our children’s hearts, so that we learn to trust only in Christ’s righteousness and love.  From that obedient vine grows all obedience.  From His tree of love grows all love.  From His sorrow we will draw joy our entire lives and into eternity. 

 

No Confucius or Mouhammed can give us this.  They are cast out of the temple and in their place we find the Lord Jesus, gently guiding us away from sorrow over our sins to joy over His obedience.  There bring our children, dear Jesus!  If we have sinned by neglecting our duty as parents; if we have thought our children’s obedience matters more than Yours, forgive us, and turn our hearts, make our hearts and our children’s hearts tender to hear Your voice, which calls to the true Josiah, the true Solomon, to You, the obedient Passover Lamb who gives us peace with God and establishes righteousness and love in our hearts.  Amen.