Year B
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84:1-8
Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a
Luke 2:41-52<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May the words of my mouth\u2026 O God\u2026 speak your Truth\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the Oxford English Dictionary\u2026 a nuclear family is the family group made up of a father\u2026 mother\u2026 and their children\u2026 and has been regarded as a basic social unit\u2026 and an extended family is made up not only of the parents and children\u2026 but also blood-relatives and married relatives living nearby\u2026 though we know that there are single parent households\u2026 and blended families\u2026 and families of choice…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The popularity of the western nuclear family… came about in the early 20th century\u2026 prompted in part… by the business practices of Henry Ford\u2026 who introduced the “eight hour day and $5.00 week”\u2026 and later the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt\u2026 both of which enabled more and more families to become economically independent\u2026 and to own their own homes\u2026 and although nuclear families are known into antiquity\u2026 it’s really extended families which have long been the basic family unit\u2026 and we know of some it-takes-a-village examples\u2026 and it was in this kind of extended family unit that Jesus and his family were traveling\u2026 after they celebrated the Passover in Jerusalem\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was growing up\u2026 my family\u2026 my aunt’s family\u2026 and my uncle’s family\u2026 with its six parents and us five cousins\u2026 made up our extended family\u2026 and we celebrated religious and secular holidays together\u2026 and us kids stayed over at each others’ homes during the summer\u2026 we went to day camp together\u2026 and we traveled and took sightseeing trips together\u2026 and I also counted myself fortunate too\u2026 because New York City was a 40-minute and 65\u20b5<\/sup> bus trip away\u2026 and starting probably when I was about twelve years old\u2026 I made countless trips into THE CITY\u2026 to wander around\u2026 go to the stores and museums\u2026 and Central Park\u2026 shows on Broadway\u2026 the Jewish delis\u2026 and Chinatown\u2026 I was stepping out\u2026 and these experiences helped me feel more comfortable forging out on my own\u2026 helped me expand some boundaries and become more self-reliant\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n And the summer after I graduated from high school\u2026 I was able to spend eight weeks in Israel\u2026 one hundred and twenty mostly college freshmen and I spent two weeks taking courses at Tel Aviv University\u2026 we spent three weeks on an archeological dig in Beersheba\u2026 we toured the country for two weeks\u2026 from the Dead Sea in the south to Haifa in the north\u2026 including a whole week in Jerusalem\u2026 both the modern city and the ancient one with its markets and religious sites\u2026 including the western wall of Herod’s second Temple\u2026 and at the end we had a whole week on our own\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n And I made some friends that summer\u2026 Jewish kids who lived not too far away from where we did in New Jersey\u2026 and at Christmas break that fall\u2026 I embarked on an imperfect plan\u2026 I told my parents that I was going to take a train up to Boston to visit some of them\u2026 even though none of them knew that I was coming\u2026 and after I arrived in Boston\u2026 with enough chutzpah for two of me\u2026 I simply called one after another\u2026 and said that I was in town\u2026 and could I stay with them and visit for a day or two\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had not considered that some of them might themselves be away on Christmas break\u2026 or that they’d say No\u2026 and I certainly had no money for a hotel\u2026 it was quite brazen of me\u2026 but several were there\u2026 and were happy enough for me to crash on their couch or in their dorm rooms to make a visit happen\u2026 and I had managed\u2026 figuratively at least\u2026 to slip away from my parents and strike out on my own\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n When we were in Jerusalem\u2026 we prayed at the Wailing Wall\u2026 and if the feeling there at the Temple Mount was even a small fraction\u2026 of what it was when Jesus lived\u2026 it’s no wonder he was touched so deeply by what he experienced there\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Luke’s is the only Gospel with stories of Jesus as a boy\u2026 the Angel Gabriel had already told Mary that Jesus would be called the Son of the Most High\u2026 and that God would give him the throne of his ancestor David\u2026 and Jesus is carried into the Temple before he can walk\u2026 there Simeon recognizes him as the fulfillment of God’s promise\u2026 sees something in him that amazes even his parents\u2026 and tells them that this infant is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel\u2026 and in today’s Gospel\u2026 twelve-year-old Jesus is back in the Temple\u2026 asking questions of the teachers… and being in conversation\u2026 and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n In his book\u2026 A Rabbi Talks with Jesus<\/span>\u2026 Jacob Neusner makes the point that in Jesus’ time\u2026 Torah was understood to take precedence over genealogy\u2026 and while this Jewish understanding never became license to abandon one’s family\u2026 it did underscore the seriousness of Torah study\u2026 and in another book\u2026 The Jewish Life Cycle: Rites of Passage from Biblical to Modern Times<\/span>\u2026 by Ivan Marcus\u2026 we’re told that in Biblical times\u2026 it was being twenty-years-old\u2026 that marked an Israelite boy’s time of maturity\u2026 and even after the rabbis introduced age thirteen for the first time to go along with signs of physical maturity\u2026 twenty continued to be significant as the minimum age\u2026 for example\u2026 to buy and sell real estate\u2026 it’s not clear when the significance of age thirteen first emerged\u2026 and we don’t know what it implied about how a boy could act religiously before be reached thirteen\u2026 so this would make Jesus’ appearance in the Temple at age twelve\u2026 and his conversations with the teachers that much more astounding\u2026 and while it may not have excused his impatience with his parents\u2026 it may explain why\u2026 because of his compassion for their distress\u2026 that he then went down with them and came to Nazareth\u2026 and was obedient to them\u2026 and why his mother treasured all these things in her heart\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n John Shea writes\u2026 that too many people equate holiness with perfection\u2026 no negative feelings\u2026 no hurtful words\u2026 no lying\u2026 kids always obedient to their parents\u2026 and parents always understanding their kids\u2026 and if there is friction\u2026 the Holy Family resolves it in half an hour\u2026 like one of those nonsensical family comedies on TV\u2026 so if Mary and Joseph\u2026 who were fully human\u2026 and the fully human part of Jesus\u2026 made up the Holy Family\u2026 then in ways we may feel uncomfortable acknowledging\u2026 the Holy Family was imperfect too\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is palpable sense of holiness in some physical places\u2026 because of how they were created or because they are naturally occurring\u2026 like Navaho sacred circles\u2026 or Stonehenge\u2026 or Lourdes\u2026 or Mt. Sinai\u2026 in Israel I felt as though I could almost cut the holiness with a knife\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n But we also know that there is no place where we can go where God is not\u2026 and so we are all part of the Body of Christ\u2026 of the extended human family\u2026 we know that Jesus’ message was and is for all people\u2026 and Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that Jesus is Sophia’s child as well as Mary’s son\u2026 whose first awareness of his truest parentage\u2026 comes to him in his Father’s house\u2026 at twelve years old\u2026 pushing the envelope to grow fully into his potential\u2026 and so it is the same for us as we discern where and when and how\u2026 we feel God’s presence\u2026 and hear God speaking to us\u2026 and what we choose to do\u2026 to accept God’s invitation into Wisdom\u2026 and to nourish that conversation ourselves\u2026 Holy God\u2026 help us to make it so\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Year B Jeremiah 31:7-14 Psalm 84:1-8 Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a Luke 2:41-52 May the words of my mouth\u2026 O God\u2026 speak your Truth\u2026 According to the Oxford English Dictionary\u2026 a nuclear family is the family group made up of a father\u2026 mother\u2026 and their children\u2026 and has been regarded as a basic social unit\u2026 and an extended family is made up not only of the parents and children\u2026 but also blood-relatives and married relatives living nearby\u2026 though we know that there are single parent households\u2026 and blended families\u2026 and families of choice… The popularity of the western nuclear family… came about in the early 20th century\u2026 prompted in part… by the business practices of Henry Ford\u2026 who introduced the “eight hour day and $5.00 week”\u2026 and later the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt\u2026 both of which enabled more and more families to become economically independent\u2026 and to own their own homes\u2026 and although nuclear families are known into antiquity\u2026 it’s really extended families which have long been the basic family unit\u2026 and we know of some it-takes-a-village examples\u2026 and it was in this kind of extended family unit that Jesus and his family were traveling\u2026 after they celebrated the Passover in Jerusalem\u2026 When I was growing up\u2026 my family\u2026 my aunt’s family\u2026 and my uncle’s family\u2026 with its six parents and us five cousins\u2026 made up our extended family\u2026 and we celebrated religious and secular holidays together\u2026 and us kids stayed over at each others’ homes during the summer\u2026 we went to day camp together\u2026 and we traveled and took sightseeing trips together\u2026 and I also counted myself fortunate too\u2026 because New York City was a 40-minute and 65\u20b5 bus trip away\u2026 and starting probably when I was about twelve years old\u2026 I made countless trips into THE CITY\u2026 to wander around\u2026 go to the stores and museums\u2026 and Central Park\u2026 shows on Broadway\u2026 the Jewish delis\u2026 and Chinatown\u2026 I was stepping out\u2026 and these experiences helped me feel more comfortable forging out on my own\u2026 helped me expand some boundaries and become more self-reliant\u2026 And the summer after I graduated from high school\u2026 I was able to spend eight weeks in Israel\u2026 one hundred and twenty mostly college freshmen and I spent two weeks taking courses at Tel Aviv University\u2026 we spent three weeks on an archeological dig in Beersheba\u2026 we toured the country for two weeks\u2026 from the Dead Sea in the south to Haifa in the north\u2026 including a whole week in Jerusalem\u2026 both the modern city and the ancient one with its markets and religious sites\u2026 including the western wall of Herod’s second Temple\u2026 and at the end we had a whole week on our own\u2026 And I made some friends that summer\u2026 Jewish kids who lived not too far away from where we did in New Jersey\u2026 and at Christmas break that fall\u2026 I embarked on an imperfect plan\u2026 I told my parents that I was going to take a train up to Boston to visit some of them\u2026 even though none of them knew that I was coming\u2026 and after I arrived in Boston\u2026 with enough chutzpah for two of me\u2026 I simply called one after another\u2026 and said that I was in town\u2026 and could I stay with them and visit for a day or two\u2026 I had not considered that some of them might themselves be away on Christmas break\u2026 or that they’d say No\u2026 and I certainly had no money for a hotel\u2026 it was quite brazen of me\u2026 but several were there\u2026 and were happy enough for me to crash on their couch or in their dorm rooms to make a visit happen\u2026 and I had managed\u2026 figuratively at least\u2026 to slip away from my parents and strike out on my own\u2026 When we were in Jerusalem\u2026 we prayed at the Wailing Wall\u2026 and if the feeling there at the Temple Mount was even a small fraction\u2026 of what it was when Jesus lived\u2026 it’s no wonder he was touched so deeply by what he experienced there\u2026 Luke’s is the only Gospel with stories of Jesus as a boy\u2026 the Angel Gabriel had already told Mary that Jesus would be called the Son of the Most High\u2026 and that God would give him the throne of his ancestor David\u2026 and Jesus is carried into the Temple before he can walk\u2026 there Simeon recognizes him as the fulfillment of God’s promise\u2026 sees something in him that amazes even his parents\u2026 and tells them that this infant is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel\u2026 and in today’s Gospel\u2026 twelve-year-old Jesus is back in the Temple\u2026 asking questions of the teachers… and being in conversation\u2026 and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding\u2026 In his book\u2026 A Rabbi Talks with Jesus\u2026 Jacob Neusner makes the point that in Jesus’ time\u2026 Torah was understood to take precedence over genealogy\u2026 and while this Jewish understanding never became license to abandon one’s family\u2026 it did underscore the seriousness of Torah study\u2026 and in another book\u2026 The Jewish Life Cycle: Rites of Passage from Biblical to Modern Times\u2026 by Ivan Marcus\u2026 we’re told that in Biblical times\u2026 it was being twenty-years-old\u2026 that marked an Israelite boy’s time of maturity\u2026 and even after the rabbis introduced age thirteen for the first time to go along with signs of physical maturity\u2026 twenty continued to be significant as the minimum age\u2026 for example\u2026 to buy and sell real estate\u2026 it’s not clear when the significance of age thirteen first emerged\u2026 and we don’t know what it implied about how a boy could act religiously before be reached thirteen\u2026 so this would make Jesus’ appearance in the Temple at age twelve\u2026 and his conversations with the teachers that much more astounding\u2026 and while it may not have excused his impatience with his parents\u2026 it may explain why\u2026 because of his compassion for their distress\u2026 that he then went down with them and came to Nazareth\u2026 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