“ALWAYS IN THE TEMPLE”
Saint Luke 2. 41-52
The Sunday after The Epiphany: 9 January Anno Domini 2011
The Revd Fr JW Watson SSP, pastor
It doesn't matter that a pastor or a fellow parishioner might be glad that you are in "church" this morning. What matters is that God desires your attendance. Yes it is the "Law" that you SHALL "sanctify the Holy Day" (i.e. "thou shalt honor the Sabbath") but that is not a restraint or onerous burden when viewed through the eyes of the Christ. Luther explained: "[You] should fear and love God that [You] do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it."
But if you only come here to the Service, or to the study hour, out of a sense of duty and obedience, GOD SAID IT - I'M DOING IT, then you are a pitiful Pharisee that doesn't have a clue what's really going on in the Temple. God does not delight in the blood of bulls (i.e. your works or displays of discipline) but in contrite hearts and repenting souls. If you're here to engage the Lord with spurious and specious questions, and mystic enigmas of your own fevered imaginations, then you don't understand what gift it is that He gives; you don't "get it" that it's the Holy Ghost that draws you by the Good News, so that you might be refreshed, fed, comforted, and strengthened.
The Holy Family went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of the Passover. That festival was a commemoration of the greatest Gospel Story in the Old Testament. It was always God pleasing for faithful believing Jews (Jews who believed the Promise of the coming Messiah Who would set His children free from sin and self); it was always good for people such as the Holy Family to go to Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Zion, THE TEMPLE, was God's earthly, "city-type," of both His Church Catholic, and of His Only Begotten Son. The Temple of Solomon, now reduced to the smaller less magnificent, Temple of Zechariah as remodeled by Herod the Great, was nonetheless that great reminder of how The Lord God had tabernacled with His people in Glory and actual revealing presence over the Mercy Seat.
Jesus is the true Mercy Seat. Jesus is the true covering-over of stone tablets, the genuine slain Lamb Whose blood is poured out for the sins of all His people.
Saint Luke, that gentile, historian, physician-turned iconographer (not only of the Blessed Virgin but of the God/Man Himself), after all his careful research and sleuthing, sees fit (by the power and inspiration of the Holy Ghost) to share with you only one Jesus as a youth story. The Lord is 12 years old at this morning's account of Temple Presence!
Of interest, twelve is that number for the days of creation times two. The doubling feature in Scripture gives emphasis and favor. But of significance is that twelve is God's number for completion and perfection. The Lord established his Church (His people) as His Kingdom through the Twelve Tribes of Jacob; Jacob whom He renamed Israel (the people of God). Even as the names of the Twelve Tribes would be inscribed in groups of three on each of the four Temple gates, so too the great Brass Basin for the Priests to wash themselves in (a Type of Baptism) would rest on the hind-parts of Twelve Oxen, trident-like in a four-sided out-looking presence. The oxen looked out and beyond to the North, South, East and West. Thus it is fitting that Saint Luke's own tetramorphic symbol (avatar) would be the Ox, for Luke's Gospel to the Gentiles would go to the very ends of the earth with the Apostolic mission.
The young Jesus was simply the young God in the Flesh. For Him to tarry in the Temple in the presence of the scholars, scribes and elders was nothing more than God the Word showing forth forgiveness, mercy, truth and light to all His people… first to the Jews… and then to the World at large. God in His Kingdom of Power is omnipresent. That's nice; and even better, it's comforting and terrifying and so LARGE as to be hard to fathom. But God "for you," for you sinners, is to always be found in His Temple. In His Holy House the God/Man is there (and here) speaking, teaching, and bestowing tender words of forgiveness and love.
The Blessed Virgin and the Guardian of Our Lord were lead by the Spirit to apprehend the Christ in the Temple. Where you see Jesus "for you" it will be in the Church. Where you seek to find the true Church, the salutary parish, it will be where Jesus and His Word are "for you." You, the New-Testament Holy Family find the Lord on the same Third Day… Easter remembered a greater feast than even Passover.
One properly went to the Temple so that the shedding of animal blood would impress and catechize the belief in the coming Lamb of God; so that sins would be revealed by Law and sins forgiven by God's Grace in lieu of, and because of, the coming Incarnation and Atonement. One comes to the Church of the Living God today not to study and amass facts, trivia, archeological discoveries, word etymologies, or tips for successful living and Spirit-Filled financial investing. One comes to the Church to receive the Blood that was shed on Calvary. One comes to the Temple of Augsburg to have sins washed away in that fountain flowing from His Body; Body eaten.
The Doctors of the Law (the Torah) surrounded the Messiah that day. Luther is correct when he says that the only true doctor is one who knows the sweet Gospel of the simple catechism of Christ's Person and Work. You the brothers and sisters of Christ are grouped around His Body and Blood right now, His Word, and you likewise are astonished at His goodness and marvel at His love.
You are His Father's business! You have always been His Father's business.
He was then in the House of God. But that edifice is no more. The true Ark of the Covenant and the true Temple of the Trinity is now forever incarnate in the Nazarene, the Christmas Savior, the Epiphany Redeemer, and the Augsburg Forgiver-For-You! And in a moment, that true Temple, that Amazing Grace Jesus, will be in your own Temple of the Holy Ghost.
His Father's and HIS business for you!
In the Name of The + Father and of The Son and of The Holy Ghost