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S.Christmas 2.26 Luke 2:40-52

And when they saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, ‘Son, why have you treated us so?’…

Which was a bad question, showing the real problem. The good question Mary should’ve been asking is the opposite: “Why have we treated you so? Treated you like an ordinary little kid instead of the Son of God?”

But, of course if she could’ve asked that question, at that juncture, she would have had her answer, and would never have had to ask or go on her frantic 3 day search (interesting that it’s 3 days, right?! The end of the Story involves another 3 days’ losing track of Jesus 😉 And the answer is obvious: they treated Jesus so because they’d clearly forgotten—12 years into their strange, sacred journey with him—who he really is!

And you know, not even 12 days after celebrating Christmas, are we really in any better spot than Mary and Joseph were, frantically searching Jerusalem for the supposedly “missing boy?” Or have we much more quickly and with much less warrant already forgotten who he really is?! If we’re asking for the world, in general, the answer is obviously YES! Just the day after Christmas, any kind of realization that God has become man to save us seems gone from the world, like the Christmas cookies left out for Santa…

But even if we’re asking for ourselves (and not a friend 😉 I wonder if we can boast of that much better recollection? The most “conservative” and “orthodox” Christian denominations—like our own Synod—are consumed with “missional” efforts to “reach the lost” as if Jesus needs our help with such “outreach”! And that seems to me the ultimate failure to grasp who Jesus really is!

Because he never NEEDED Mary and Joseph’s help! He submitted to the humiliation of being a baby under human parents’ tender care. He was being condescending (that means talking down to you 😉 when submitting to his parents’ authority. But, as he reminded the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, when the soldiers showed up to arrest him and Peter’s swinging away wildly with his sword to defend him…

“Stop it! Sheath your sword! Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than 12 legions of angels?”! In the same way, Jesus could’ve had a palace full of angels serving and attending him as the Infant King, obeying his every whim—instead of him obeying Joseph and Mary’s—if that had been what he wanted!

Food for thought! Even when submitting to Mary and Joseph “helping” or “guarding” him, Jesus’s always already watching over and guarding them as LORD of Heaven and Earth—MULTI-TASKING!

But why would he do this? Ah, it’s as Athanasius astutely observed long ago contemplating the Mystery of the Incarnation as scriptures tell it: “He became what we are so that we would become as he is.”

“God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in him we would become the justified of God”, as St. Paul says at the end of 2 Cor. 5. Since by our rejection of God, in the Garden—taking knowledge and power and rule over ourselves into our own hands by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (which had been forbidden us)—we became slaves of sin, prisoners under the Law. So! God himself came in the Person of the Son to take on our flesh, to humiliate himself and be subject to the Law and our sin and death in order to redeem us, and bring us back into his Kingdom as sons and daughter of the King.

The wise old church fathers, contemplating this mystery, summed up the scriptures’ diverse, sometimes elusive, and fairly indirect teaching on this with a distinction between Christ’s state of humiliation and his state of exaltation. This is the one part of scholastic theology that Luther and his friends found actually scriptural and useful… 😉

Simply put, it goes like this: during his state of humiliation (which involved everything from the moment of his conception in Mary’s womb till the moment he rose from the dead Easter morning) Jesus didn’t always or fully use his divine power hidden in his human nature. It’s a simple and rather obvious thing that has powerful implications! And though I really hammer away at this at length in confirmation classes, I’m not sure that many people remember this important observation and so they are quite often CONFUSED! about the nature of Jesus’ divine condescension in receiving our care and love and service…

It’s actually much like my letting my then-3 year old son “drive” the car, sitting on my lap sawing away at the wheel while I steered with my knees. God lets us have a hand on the wheel for our joy, not from his NEED!!!

Yet, during Jesus’ state of humiliation—which is most of what the Gospels recount for us!—the DIVINE POWER was always fully present, (though hidden) in Jesus’ human nature . But thing Luther notices (and most miss!) is that during the state of humiliation, Jesus never uses that divine power for himself, ever! He operates always in “human mode”.

This, BTW, explains “faith healings” and why all Jesus’ miraculous healings are faith healings in the NT! Jesus never initiates these mighty deeds of power, healing the sick, raising the dead, feeding the hungry. NO! The sick, dead, hungry are presented to Jesus by themselves (or friends) for him to re-make, and his compassion moves him to do so. And such presentation of ourselves to Jesus to do with as he pleases is what faith alone is and does 😉

So, where there is the rejection that Jesus is LORD (as in his hometown and with his family 🙁 no miraculous stuff happens!

Someone asked a good question Tuesday morning: “What did Jesus know about himself?” And the answer is that he always knew who he is: God come in our flesh to save. But, in his state of humiliation, Jesus knows always only “in human mode” that is, according to the human faculties a baby, a boy, or a man has—which are never more nor less than hearing the Word!

So (and this is fun!) Jesus—the Word made flesh—learned the Word just as we do—from God’s revelation, from the scriptures (which all testify to him, the Incarnate Son of God). So his questions and answers to the priests are not drawing on some divine store of knowledge, but are just what any (non-sinful!) literate 12 year old would know from hearing the scriptures and taking them at face value.

To the extent we live by humble reception of God’s Word, the Story scriptures tell, we know just as Jesus knew and can increase in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man just as the boy Jesus did.

But sin makes us… forget, keeps us from receiving all that is on offer in Christ’s word and sacraments—which show us the LORD who became what we are that we would become as he is, the treat that bestows Peace, surpassing all understanding, guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.