St. John’s Episcopal Church
Tallahassee, FL
Luke 2:41-52
Happy New Year and
happy 11th day of Christmas.
I hope all your pipers are a-piping
and that you had a good holiday.
Every year,
right after Christmas,
the Church gives us
this gospel you just heard.
Here we are, coming down from
all our Christmas travel and revelry
just as Joseph and Mary
are also coming down from Jerusalem
and their Passover travel and revelry
when suddenly (plot twist) . . .
Jesus
goes
missing.
I can’t help but think of Mary
as Kate McCalister in Home Alone
the moment she sits up on the plane
and realizes she’s left Kevin in Chicago,
except instead of screaming “Kevin”
she screams “Jesus,”
and instead of leaving him in Chicago
she has left him in Jerusalem,
and instead of forgetting her son at home,
she has, yea verily,
lost the living Son
of the Most High God.
So Mary and Joseph do
what any parents would do
if they misplaced the Messiah:
they panic;
they retrace their steps;
they search everywhere.
But then Luke drops in a detail
that’s easy to miss
if you don’t slow down.
He says:
“After
three
days,
they found him.”
Did you catch that?
How many days?
Three days.
That detail ought to make you
sit up a little straighter
and lean in a little closer
because two decades later,
something else will happen with Jesus
after
three
days.
What might that be?
Oh, just a little something
we like to call
the resurrection.
Luke wants you to notice
the length of that waiting and worry
that Joseph and Mary go through
not just because it makes
for suspenseful storytelling,
but because it foreshadows
the rest of the story
and how God acts.
In Luke’s gospel,
it’s almost as though
three days is the space God uses
before showing us
what was true all along.
It’s a pattern:
a pattern of loss,
followed by waiting,
followed by finding.
A pattern of fear,
followed by confusion,
followed by revelation.
Three days of absence,
followed by unexpected presence.
Don’t you see? Right here
in the waning days of Christmastide,
Luke is already setting us up
for the promise of Easter.
And Mary,
who stands here at the beginning,
will also be standing there at the end.
She loses Jesus
(or so she thinks)
at twelve years old
just outside the gates of Jerusalem.
She will lose him again
(or so she thinks)
at thirty-three years old
in nearly the same place.
But here’s the turn.
When Joseph and Mary finally find Jesus,
he is not hurt.
He is not scared.
He wasn’t actually “lost” at all.
Instead, he is in the temple:
listening,
asking questions,
dwelling in his Father’s house.
Which tells us something crucial.
You see, it turns out
the problem isn’t that
Jesus wandered away.
The problem is that
Mary and Joseph assumed
he would still be
where he had always been.
But by this point,
Jesus is twelve.
In Jewish life,
that’s a threshold age,
an “in-between” moment.
No longer a little child,
not yet a man.
And in showing us
this threshold moment,
Luke is showing us
that growth—real growth—
often feels like loss
before it feels like clarity.
We all know the hard
nostalgic ache of growing up,
of leaving parts of ourselves behind
to step into what God has next for us.
Not to force too many
pop culture references into one sermon,
but if you spent your New Year’s Day
watching the Stranger Things finale,
your bore witness to a beautiful representation
of the ache I’m describing:
that transition from childhood to adulthood
and the nostalgic mix
of melancholy and hope
it inevitably brings.
It happens as we move
from childhood to adolescence.
It happens as we move
from adolescence to adulthood.
And it happens many more times from there
through all the losses and changes of our lives,
some of which we anticipate,
many of which we don’t.
Life changes.
We lose things.
God stretches us.
God grows us.
God makes all things new.
That’s true in life.
It’s true in the gospel.
And it’s true in the Church.
* * *
Which brings us
to this moment
here at St. John’s.
Next Sunday,
we begin a renewed rhythm of three services,
not because something is wrong,
but because many things at St. John’s
are really, really right.
And yet . . .
let’s be honest.
Any time something familiar changes,
it often feels like loss
before it feels like growth.
Every threshold moment does.
Mary and Joseph didn’t know
on day one,
or day two,
or the start of day three
what God was doing.
All they knew
was that their lives
had been disrupted.
The disciples didn’t know
on day one,
or day two,
or the start of day three
what God was doing.
All they knew is that
they thought their friend and teacher had died,
and now everything had changed.
Maybe that’s where we are right now, too:
not lost,
but not yet fully oriented either.
Standing between
what we’ve known
and what we cannot yet fully describe.
* * *
Beginning next week,
you’ll have three options to choose from:
A 7:45 a.m. service
that holds a space
for steady, quiet, traditional faith
and an unhurried
early start to your day.
A 9:00 a.m. service
that feels lively and familiar,
with cooing babies,
children’s chapel,
and the kind of boisterous joy
that brings energy to our faith.
And an 11:15 a.m. service
that leans into the mystery of God
with all five senses through
incense, chant, music, and prayer.
It’ll be heightened but not hoity-toity,
sacred but not stuffy,
reverent but not rigid.
Different doorways.
Same St. John’s.
Same table.
Same Jesus.
Will it take a little time
to find our footing?
Probably.
Will there be moments
when you wonder
if you’re in the right service,
at the right time,
doing this the right way?
Almost certainly.
Luke doesn’t tell us that Mary
immediately understands everything
right off the bat.
He tells us she ponders.
She holds the moment.
She carries it.
She stays with the mystery
long enough for things to grow.
And maybe that is the invitation for us, too.
We know whose house this is.
And we know
that when we seek him,
we find that he has been here
the whole time.
So come next week,
and come all the weeks after.
Come and try on a service
that may not be the one you’ve always known.
Come early,
or come later.
Come ready for quiet,
or come hungry for music and movement.
Come and give yourself—and one another—permission,
and in time, you’ll know where your heart settles.
You don’t have to get it right the first week.
Mary didn’t.
Neither did the disciples.
But here on this day,
in the light of this gospel
where the hope of Christmas
and the promise of Easter join hands,
trust in this:
trust that the same Jesus
who was found
inside the temple as a boy
and outside the tomb as a man
is the very same Jesus
who will be right here
waiting for you.
In this place.
At this table.
In this beautiful,
faithful,
growing,
changing church
where deep roots,
true belonging,
and abundant grace
are always to be found.
Amen.