"You Have Arrived"

“You Have Arrived”
Luke 2:41-52
Todd Buegler
Dec. 30-31, 2006
Lord of Life


Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, the gift who dwells within! Amen.

Beginning (Monday) tomorrow, we will all be faced with the annual challenge: learning to write the new year date on all our important papers, letters & checks. '06 will become '07. As much as we sometimes want to resist the idea, New Year’s reminds us that time continues to march on.

Every parent here can testify how much of a difference one year makes in a child. In one year a child can shoot up with 4 or 5 inches of new growth, speak up with a new voice and with new insights and knowledge. Our boys, Nathan and Samuel, who are 5 and 4, are constant reminders to us that God continues to create. Nathan now has a half-year of Kindergarten behind him, and every day I am surprised by new things he’s learned…The kid is doing calculus…who’d have thought it! And as kids enter adolescence, one short year can transform a child into a young man or a young woman in body, mind and spirit.

This week's gospel is a sneak peak into Jesus' childhood. In our gospel last week, Jesus was a new-born. Next week, he will be a grown man. This is the Gospel’s only up-close and personal view of Jesus as a boy not a baby, as a child not a messiah. And we all can understand the emotions experienced by Mary and Joseph in today's Gospel.

Have you ever lost track of a child? Traveling together in the safety of a family caravan, at the end of the first day's travel back towards Nazareth, Jesus' parents are horrified to discover that their son is not among them. Immediately Joseph and Mary turn around and travel back to Jerusalem, frantically searching for Jesus.

Think of all the possible scenarios that must have haunted the panicked parents on that return trip to Jerusalem. The possibility of being lost, or of having someone you care about be lost, is, one of our base fears. When lost, we simply feel too far out of control.

I hate feeling lost. When I travel, and have to rent a car, I now always select the “NeverLost” option. Have you seen these things? This talking GPS interactive map literally guides me from place to place. It tells me, “Turn right on highway 7 in two miles…” or to “Keep to the left, in ½ mile…” Occasionally I’ll hear “At your first opportunity, please return to the highlighted route…” (which is it’s polite way of telling me, “you’re lost”) and my all-time favorite, “You have arrived.” “You have arrived” means my journey is over. I am there. I’ve made it. NeverLost helps me get from place to place in a strange city. But even more importantly, it makes me feel more comfortable when I am, off of the map. At least someone (or something) knows where I am!

There are times when I think that it would be nice to have a NeverLost system for the other parts of our lives. Family? Career? Education? Big decisions? For us to have a voice, a guide that could tell us the direction to go when faced with difficult choices. It could spare us from the angst that comes from the process of deciding: What should I do after high school? “Go to a 4 year school”. What should I study? “Get a degree in math.” What about this relationship I’m in? “Marry your childhood sweetheart” and when we have made the right decision, “You have arrived.” With a guide like that, we’d always feel connected. We’d always feel watched over. We’d never feel lost. But we don’t have such a guide. We have to figure out these things on our own.

And Jesus’ parents didn’t have NeverLost either. They didn’t know where Jesus was. For them, there was no comfort.

Three days after they first left Jerusalem on the way home, Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the temple, calmly sitting there, absorbed in learning at the feet of his elders. An emotional Mary said "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you."

Jesus' response to his mother's furious outburst is full of a refreshing (if aggravating to parents) adolescent honesty: "Didn’t you know I’d be in my Father’s house? Why were you searching for me?"

Why? DUH!?! You’re 12 years old!

The first words the young Jesus utters show the unique intimacy of his relationship with God. Even at the age of twelve, Jesus felt the embrace of divine love, the special closeness of God the Father. Jesus understands that he must be "in my Father's house." There, in the midst of the holy temple, Jesus felt God's presence most fully and as a result felt completely at home. Jesus response, in classic NeverLost style, was “Calm down Mother, I have arrived.”

The twelve year-old Jesus revels in the relationship that he feels between himself and his divine Father. He knows that wherever he is, whoever he is with, he is always in the presence of God, His father. He literally “has arrived.” He feels at home. He knows that being in the presence of God is the right place for him to be. In a time when the rest of Jewish culture was focusing on trying to be worthy of being in God’s presence…of trying to follow the directions…of trying to live up to the law…of working, striving to be worthy of God’s love, Jesus knew that God’s love didn’t work that way. Wherever God’s people are, God’s love would come to them. It wasn’t a matter of following directions: They didn’t have to do works to receive God’s love. They had already arrived in God’s love.

Yet despite Jesus' words, despite the sense of rightness he felt in the temple, Jesus left the temple with his parents. The gospel says he "was obedient to them". Although the twelve year old child could not understand his parents' frantic search for him, later, the adult Jesus surely understood how powerfully their love for him had driven them.

Let's try a little experiment, shall we? Let's read Jesus' story of the lost sheep, from Luke 15, keeping this temple experience in mind.

So Jesus told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them 'Rejoice, with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.'"

Mary and Joseph taught Jesus how hard love will search for the lost. As an adult, he took the knowledge of this intimate, unbreakable bond between himself and the Father on the road.

After his trip to the temple, Jesus had learned to take his Father's house with him wherever he went. Jesus could never be lost or alone:
Even as he argued with the scribes and Pharisees he used to learn from, he knew he had arrived.
Even as he separated himself from his confused and doubting family. He knew he had arrived.
Even as he felt the heat of the political power's anger. He knew he had arrived.
Even as he faced his betrayal by those he loved most. He knew he had arrived.
Even as he hung on the cross at Golgotha. He knew he had arrived.

Always and everywhere Jesus was at home. “He had arrived” because he was always in God's presence and love. Everywhere Jesus went was home. Everyone he encountered was family. He abided…lived in…God’s grace.

And this same Jesus wants to make his home in us -- in you and in me. Jesus wants you to know that wherever you are, wherever you go, you too have arrived...you too abide in God’s grace. We receive this gift because in the same way Jesus lived in the presence of the Father, we live in the presence of the Christ. Quite literally, “you have arrived.”

Our family spent Tuesday with my extended family, all visiting my grandmother, who lives in a nursing home in Trimont, Minnesota. My grandmother is 98 years old, and until 3 years ago, spent her entire life on the farm. As I watched Nathan and Samuel interact with their great grandmother, I was struck by the powerful contrast. Samuel the four-year old sat on her lap, and stroked her hand with his. These two people are at very different points in their life journey. Yet there is one thing they both have in common: My grandmother received the promises of God, and first heard “You have arrived” in her baptism 98 years ago in Story City, Iowa. Sam received the promises and was first told that he had arrived four years ago, here, in our font. Yet they both heard the promise. They both received the gifts of God. None of us will fully understand what it is to arrive until we are reunited with God in death and resurrection. But we hear the promise, and the promise does not depend on who you are, how old you are, or what you do.

Whether you are 4 like Samuel, 12 like Jesus, 41 like me, or 98 like my grandmother, this New Year, is the perfect year to begin a fresh journey in your own unique relationship with God. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ took down the barrier of sin that keeps you separated from God. Christ makes it possible for you to experience that same immediacy, that same intimacy, with the Divine as Jesus himself did throughout his life. The gift of relationship with God, it is for you.

Travel boldly through 2007, then. Don’t be afraid of being lost. Wherever you may journey -- through adolescence or assisted living, on wilderness walks or urban commutes, into your first home or into your last resting place -- God goes along with you. Jesus says to you "I will never leave you or forsake you. Wherever you go, you are here with me." Feel the presence of God and be reminded of His promise for you: “You have arrived.”

Amen.