But Wait...There's More
But Wait…There’s More
Luke 2:41-52
If you grew up when I grew up, the name “Ron Popeil” should mean something to you. Mr. Popeil was an American inventor in the tradition of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. However, instead of the lightbulb or the telephone, Ron Popeil gave us the “Chop-O-Matic,” the “Veg-O-Matic,” the “Popeil Pocket Fisherman,” and “the smokeless ashtray,” among many other things. He would show up on television at weird (a.k.a.—cheap) times on long infomercials. That’s where I learned that Ron Popeil was an amazing salesman. The man could sell anything to anyone.
Popeil knew how to get people’s attention. He hammered home catch phrases like, “And it really, really works!”—which the audience would repeat with great enthusiasm. Eventually, Mr. Popeil would tell us about the great deal that we were so lucky to be offered today: “You can get a “Chop-O-Matic” for only $19.99, “But wait, there’s more!” The audience would gasp. “If you order in the next 60 minutes, you’ll get, not one, but two “Chop-O-Matics”—all for $19.99!” The audience would burst into applause!
Although I never actually bought any of Mr. Popeil’s products, I was tempted by the “Popeil Pocket Fisherman.” (After all, who wouldn’t want to fish with an 18 inch long rod that had all the flexibility of a telephone pole?) What I actually did “buy” was the power of understanding someone else’s struggles and connecting with them right where they were.
Ron Popeil watched someone pop a button off their shirt and thought, “The problem with buttons is…they always fall off.” So, he invented the “Buttoneer.” He thought chopping things was annoying and figured others did too so he invented the “Chop-o-Matic.” He watched someone who was trying to maneuver a fishing rod around and thought, “That should be shorter!” He had an eye for life’s little challenges and said to people, “Let me make your life easier…” People love anything that makes life easier, right?
As a pastor, in some ways, I want to make your life more complicated—a much tougher “sell.” I want to convince you that there might be a different way to live, that there might be a deeper way of understanding things, that there might be moments in this life where we catch a glimpse of the way that this world could be and should be, that there might even be moments when we catch a glimpse of the presence of God in our midst. Maybe you already feel stuck or you feel like something is missing. If so, then listen a little more closely when I look you in the eye and say, “But wait…there’s more.” The challenge is to get you to take another look at what you are pretty sure you already know.
This is pretty much what Luke is doing early in his Gospel—getting people to rethink who they think Jesus really was. “Okay…you may have heard about Jesus of Nazareth, the grown up, the teacher and preacher and healer who died on a cross…but wait there’s more. Just give me your attention and a minute of your time! Let me tell you about the early years…”
Luke understands that most people would have already heard about Jesus’ clash with the authorities—both the Roman authorities and the rulers in Israel. A lot of folks probably assumed that Jesus was just another rebel, another dissident, another person who got mowed down by the powers that be. So, Luke addresses this reality first. He begins with the Roman occupiers and their hated census. Luke immediately has the audience on his side: “We all hated that census, right! We all knew that it was just a big excuse to tax us more!” From the beginning the backdrop of Luke’s gospel is invasive, intrusive, coercive, worldly power. In the beginning, those powers would force Mary to ride a donkey at the end of her pregnancy. Years later, everyone knew, the same “powers that be” would break Mary’s heart and end her son’s life.
Cast against the backdrop of overwhelming power is this powerless couple, preparing for a child though they are not yet married. (Read carefully! Luke makes absolutely no mention of a virgin birth. There is no angel who reassures Mary. Mary does not raise her voice in song.) Everything is going wrong—pregnant but not married, traveling to appease the authorities instead of being at home, giving birth in a barn because there was no room in the inn for them. However, Luke just keeps connecting to what the people already knew: Jesus’ family were humble folks which helps make sense of the humble guy he turned out to be. Luke anticipates all those people who ask, “Well, if he was the Messiah then why didn’t he live like a king?” His answer to them is a question, “What if being humble and living humbly was God’s design from the beginning?”
Say it with me now, “But wait…there’s more!” In Luke’s gospel, shepherds—humble people—are notified by God’s angels that this child has been born and they need to go see him. Shepherds were never invited to anything yet here they are at the top of God’s guest list. Angels talk to holy people not people like us! However, when the shepherds saw this child for themselves, they glorify and praise God. The shepherds become God’s messengers. The people ask, “If Jesus was the Messiah then why did he surround himself with all the outcasts?” Luke’s answer? God worked with and through average people from the very beginning. Doesn’t that make it at least possible that God might work through people like us, too?
Last week, Luke showed us Jesus’ faithful parents fulfilling the law. Everyone knew that Jesus of Nazareth riled up the priests and the Sadducees and the Pharisees. Luke shows us that Jesus was steeped in authentic faith from day one. Just as importantly, the people who recognized who he was from the start were never priests or Pharisees or Sadducees. Rather, it was the genuinely faithful people who saw him and instantly recognized him. The people ask, “If Jesus was the Messiah then why were the priests and the Sadducees and the Pharisee’s so opposed to him?” Luke says, “What if the really faithful people are not necessarily the ones with a title. What if it was people who lived their faith, regardless of their title, who would recognize him for the rest of his life and beyond.”
That brings us to our text. Now, Jesus is twelve, hovering right on the cusp of adulthood in his world’s understanding. This was when a typical boy would have prepared for a bar mitzvah. Those boys would have been schooled in how to read the Scriptures. They would have been taught all the proper answers to all sorts of faith questions. Afterward, they would be allowed to participate in worship as adults and even to help lead worship. Their job from then on would be to do what the priests and rabbis told them to do.
Jesus cared deeply about faith but didn’t seem to be big on conformity. The adult Jesus was known as a rule breaker, not a real “church going” kind of guy. Luke tells us a story that asks us to think a little deeper about this. Jesus and his parents travel with a whole group of friends to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. This is what faithful people did. The festival happens. Everyone is heading home. In fact, they’ve been on the road for a day, when Joseph and Mary realize that they haven’t seen Jesus for a while. When no one else has seen him either, they head back to the city to search.
Now, of course, this part of the story alone is foreshadowing—an invitation to us as readers to make a bittersweet set of connections. People knew that the adult Jesus had approached Jerusalem years later with a group of followers on what we now know as Palm Sunday, right at the beginning of the Passover Festival. Folks who knew the adult Jesus were aware that almost all of those who loved Jesus “lost track” of him—abandoned him, in fact— once things got difficult. No one was safe. Everyone was upset and afraid. The adult Jesus was dead for three days before the women found the risen Jesus near the empty tomb. The boy, Jesus, is found in the temple after three days.
What twelve year old who is on the loose decides that the temple is the place to be? Yet, that’s where Joseph and Mary find him—in the temple, talking to the authorities. Luke tells us that the authorities are quite amazed at both Jesus’ questions and his answers. The boy Jesus is now the teacher and he’s schooling the teachers. Presumably, he’s helping them to grow in their faith. Every person who heard this in Luke’s day would have been struck by this irony. After all, some of these authorities who were so charmed by Jesus as a boy might have been the very same authorities who years later would condemn Jesus’ vision of faith and send him to his death because he was a threat to everything that they believed. On this day, though, he was a harmless amusement, a charming prodigy, someone whom they were so sure that they could shape and lead into conformity. In 20 years, though, he wouldn’t seem harmless…not for a second. He would be the kind of person whom powerful people who felt powerfully threatened would sentence to die on a cross.
Luke challenges everyone who thinks they already know who Jesus was: a rebel, a rabble rouser, a healer a prophet. “Take another look!” Jesus was humble from the start, as were his parents. He was a part of the faith community as were his parents. The people who recognized him as the Messiah were never the authorities but always the faithful people who actually lived what they believed. Even when he was just a boy, he knew more about genuine faith than the authorities ever knew…and they knew this was true. What he exposed was that they loved their power more than they loved God.
Joseph and Mary chastise their son for worrying them. (We smile a bittersweet smile and think to ourselves, “They have no idea what’s coming…poor souls!”) Luke tells us they left Jerusalem and headed off to Nazareth. (We think to ourselves, “Good choice. He’ll be safer there.”) Luke assures us that Jesus spent the next years of his life growing up, in body and in spirt, blessed by God and the presence of loving people. All of which sounds amazing until we think to ourselves, “But wait, we all know there’s so much more.”
Luke, the master storyteller, has pulled us square into this story. We think to ourselves, “Okay, Luke…You’ve got my attention. Tell me the rest of this story…”