Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

“What to Learn in the Temple!”

From the Old Testament of the Day: And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the Lord unto His place, into the oracle of the house, to the most holy place, even under the wings of the cherubim. [1 Kings 6.6]

From the Epistle of the Day: I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. [Romans 12.1]

From the Holy Gospel: And after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. [Luke 2.46]

 So much to cover! So little time! That is the way things are with the themes of the Second Sunday after Christmas, of Epiphany, and of the 1st after Epiphany. The place on the Historic Lutheran Calendar for the event of Jesus at twelve years of age, being found in the temple at Jerusalem, is the 1st Sunday after Epiphany. However, sometimes like last year, there is only one Sunday after Epiphany, the Last Sunday of the season, thus being the Transfiguration of Our Lord. So much to cover! So little time!

To make things even more confusing, there has arisen among Lutherans a desire to take the Baptism of Jesus, which from  Reformation days is observed on the 13th of January, one week after Epiphany, and put it on the 1st Sunday after Epiphany, as it is on the 3-year calendar also found in your hymnal.

An alternative is to put Jesus in the temple on the Sunday BEFORE Epiphany, as a Christmas theme, just as St. Luke does in His Gospel account, labeling  the Day as Holy Family Day. So much to cover! So little time! Today, we take up this last solution today: the Day of the Holy Family, where you find Jesus’ mother and Jesus’ father and Jesus Himself – the Holy Family – involved in the event that St. Luke records in ch. 2, vs 41 to 52, under the theme: “What to Learn in the Temple.”

I.

The Holy Gospel for this day begins by noting: “His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover.” This year, in the text, is a special one for their family, for their Son, Jesus, is about to reach 13 years of age, at which time He will have the Jewish rite of spiritual adulthood known as the “Bar-Mitzvah,” meaning a “son of the commandment.”

This Gospel presents a very important time in the family of Joseph and Mary. The holy family spends at least 8 days in Jerusalem, for the Festival of Passover is followed by the week-long Feast of Unleavened Bread. It is not a time simply to observe the religious obligation and then spend the rest of the time enjoying the company of relatives. It is a time for the family to formally introduce their boy to the fullness of the adult religious life and responsibilities that he will assume at His Bar Mitzvah later in the year.

So, the boy Jesus is at the temple every day, seated in one of many groups of boys receiving religious instruction from the teachers of the Law. This instruction summarizes all they had been learning from their parents at home and their rabbis in their own synagogues. But something new happens during this Passover! As the Old Testament shows the ark of the covenant being brought into the temple, to be the place of the Father’s business, so the true ark, in the person of Jesus, is brought into the temple at 12, to be about His father’s business.

II.

Again, this is the only picture of Jesus as a child that God has revealed to you. As your pastors remind you whenever Jesus at twelve is the theme: this is probably a very good thing. Can you imagine what life would have been life for you if your parents had a list of what Jesus did and didn't do as child, a list they could then compare it with your life? "Jesus wouldn't do this that you have done. Jesus certainly would have done what you failed to do, etc." Imagine what damage could have been done to you! By the time you reached 12 years old, one of two things would have happened: either, you'd consider yourself good enough to be compared to Jesus, in which case your parents would have succeeded in making you a Pharisee for life; or, you'd chafe so much over being compared to the perfection of Jesus at your age that you'd wish never to hear of Jesus again!

The same sort of reaction can be cultivated in Christians by what many make of today's Epistle: "I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God." My, the havoc that has been created by the misuse of this application on the part of well-meaning Christians as they apply it to themselves, and even more so to others! What God has given you here is not some burdensome, impossible demand to perfect you. God doesn't intend for you to perfect yourself by this command any more than He intends for you to perfect yourself by comparing your life to the behaviors of Jesus.

God knows, and He tells you in the Scriptures that He knows, that you cannot become perfect in your behaviors. Nor does God set forth His glorious Gospel in order for you to TRY to become perfect. It can't be done! If it could be done, there would be no need for Jesus, no need for the incarnation, no need for the cross. If God simply wants you to try to be perfect, He would just send you more law books along the Holy Spirit to help you become perfect by following them. And Christ could just as easily stayed in heaven through it all.

But, God the Father didn't do that! Instead He sends you a Savior. He sends you a Substitute for lifelong sinners, One who takes on your human nature, including the growing-up process of the human nature. He sends you the Lord Jesus as the Advocate, the defense-attorney before the heavenly bar of justice, and He sends the Holy Spirit as the Comforter, One who comforts your conscience in the face of your sins, failures, and struggles, by means of God’s Word Law and Gospel.

III.

So, when God calls on you to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, He is not commanding you to become holy, but rather celebration the fact that in Jesus, the Substitute in the Temple, the Substitute on the holy cross, and for His sake, you ARE holy and acceptable to God. People who believe that, who trust that, and who let themselves live as though that is true about them -- those people do give God the proper worship and praise by what it is that they believe. This is the worship and praise that is meant by the phrase, "which is your reasonable service," or, as other translations put the same Greek phrase, "which is your spiritual worship."

It is by faith that you live in peace and joy before God. It is by faith that your bodies, your in-the-flesh lives, are present both to God and to the watching world. What God wants you to do is to believe this, for it is His promise to you, and His Holy Spirit will bring forth in your daily living this reasonable service, this spiritual worship.

It is when you are gathered around the Word and Sacraments in this congregation that the Holy Spirit is at work to cultivate this faith. Thereby He brings forth in this midst the life of the family of God. Here you are about your heavenly Father's business, as you discover anew, day by day, week by week, what a wondrous identity and future that God has given you in Christ, as a member of His family. Here it is that your mind is renewed, not as the world would shape it, but rather as it is shaped by the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. And the continual discovery of your identity and your place before God and your gifts from your heavenly Father shapes your life in your Father's house, and in every place He leads you in your life.