The First Sunday of Christmas

Gifted Child

Luke 2.41-52

1st Sunday of Christmas, Year C

29 December 2024

The Revd Devin McLachlan

Indulge me, if you will, in a pet theory.  It’s about the windows along our south wall, the ones facing into Corpus Christi college.

We were, as most of you know, the chapel for the college for several centuries. In fact, when ‘Corpus Christi’ was an impolitic name in the earnestly Calvinist period of the English reformation, smacking far too much of Latin and ‘popery’, the college was known as  St Benet’s College.

Now, the south aisle windows were installed in the 19th century while the college built its own chapel in the mid-16th  century, but I still suspect the windows might have been chosen as a sermon to students:

In the first two sets of windows, from East to West, Jesus is meeting with the elders, the scholars, and the leaders  — the Fellows if you will. In the very first window, we’ve the story of the healing of the centurion’s servant; “He sent unto him the elders of the Jews” the text along the bottom of the window reads.

In the second, middle, set of windows we have today’s lesson: Jesus again with the Fellows, this time the scholars of law in the Temple. The text in the bottom of the window underscores my academia theory: Christ Disputing with the Doctors in the Temple.

It’s almost as if we have the medical students in the first window, and the students of law and theology in the second. And then there in the very last, westernmost window: the story of Martha and Mary. Martha is looking harried and busy, and Mary is quietly listening at Jesus’ feet.

As if the whole south aisle is saying: Here is Jesus, excelling in medicine and healing, and here is Jesus engaged in youthful debate with theologians.  And all that, the windows say, is inspiring and worthy and wonderful — but Mary, Mary has chosen the better part.

Put the books down for a moment, the windows say. Step away from your studies and the busy-ness of your work, and, like Mary, be still. Listen and sit at the feet of our saviour.

I’d like to look at today’s story in that light. Because otherwise we can look at this passage in Luke’s gospel like the meme that floats around every year near Hallowe’en. It’s one that might cut a little close to the bone for some of us:

Going as a former gifted child for Hallowe’en, and the whole costume is just going to be people asking: What are you supposed to be?, and me saying: I was supposed to be a lot of things.

Ouch.

It’s tempting to read this story in Luke just as “Jesus the Gifted Child,” kin to the stories in the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of St Thomas: Jesus the miracle child, who when rebuked for making clay birds on the sabbath (and let’s not even go down the road of making graven images) claps his hands and turns them into real birds.[1]

And as far as they go, they’re good stories.

They help us understand the specialness of Jesus, [though we might wonder then at the reaction in Matthew 13  when Jesus returns to his hometown and his neighbours exclaim  "Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? Is this not the carpenter’s son?” (Matt. 13.54).]

It’s not just that Jesus miracles are more part of his adult ministry. Jesus himself brought a pretty serious hermeneutic of suspicion to his own miracles.  He didn’t like performing them for crowds, and he resisted again and again the demands for wonder-working.  Repeatedly he taught, in both word and deed: These miracles, they are the signifier, not the signified — they are the busy-ness of the work, but Mary, Mary has chosen the better part.

12-year old Jesus was not in the temple disputing with the doctors.He is no child star with Mary as stage mother, hamming it up with the clever grownups. Scripture is clear:  Jesus was “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions”  (Luke 2.46)

Sitting. Listening. Asking.

(And yes, also making his parents sick with worry,  but that’s another sermon for another year).

Jesus, on the cusp of Jewish adulthood, is modelling what good theology looks like: Sitting. Listening. Asking.

When we sit down to read the Bible, when we approach our studies and our work, in ministry, in healing, in prayer, in any labour of love, it’s not fancy footwork that God is asking for us.  It’s not being always the most brilliant person in the room. It’s not even being right.

Yes, do the hard work, our windows tell us,

But the most important disciplines you can bring— to your work, to your relationships and your private prayers is this: Be still. Listen. Ask.

Be still and know that God is God. Listen to what the Spirit is saying. (Rev. 2.7) And keep asking questions. It’s what Jesus showed us in the Temple when he was 12.  And it’s what we’re still invited to do with our faith:

Be still. Listen. Ask.

that like Mary, we may treasure all these things in our hearts. Amen.

[1] The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Section 2 — a miracle also referred to in Islam in the Qur’an, sura 3 verse 49.