Epiphany 1

Luke 2:41-52 - Epiphany One - January 12, 2014           
Whose Children Are We

I remember when Monica and I brought our oldest child home from the hospital after he was born.  As far as anyone could have assumed, we were totally prepared for it.  We had fixed up his room; we had a bunch of diapers and stuff; and his car seat was all strapped in.  But once we were actually on our way to our apartment, it struck us how crazy it was that they were actually letting us take him home.  Did they know how little experience we had being a mother and a father?  Did they actually trust us to take care of this child?  Certainly, he would be better off in the hospital where the inevitable blunders of his parents could at least be offset by ready access to medical attention.  Well, of course, we were just nervous.  And as it turned out, he was much better off in our home.  And seeing as he’ll be turning six in a month, our inexperience wasn’t as dangerous as we thought. But besides all this, it’s not like they “let” us take him home at all.  He was never theirs.  God gave him to us, not to them. 

And this is the greater mystery to ponder: not that nurses and doctors let us go home with a baby, but that God commits to our care little children whom he loves.  They are his.  He gives them to us.  They are his before they are ours.  He gives them to us so that we might take care of them.  He loves them before we know them.  It is therefore our chief responsibility as parents to teach our children of the great love their Father in heaven has for them.  That is why we bring our children to be baptized according to Jesus’ command and promise. 

This parental duty goes together with the first commandment, as God says in Deuteronomy 6:

 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

This means that the word of God is to take the highest place of honor in the Christian home.  And this is not only for the sake of our salvation, but for the sake of our children’s salvation.  The father who fails to teach his child the word of God will have to answer to God as to why he did not. 

The world doesn’t regard this as a real duty.  “Oh, religion isn’t necessarily bad,” they might say, “but it probably is bad to shove it down their throats.  Let the kids decide for themselves.”    I’ve heard this a lot – even from people who call themselves Christians.  But we don’t live in a spiritually neutral world.  If we leave our children to decide for themselves, that’s exactly what will happen.  Their flesh will choose what the flesh desires and they will reap the due reward of sin.  As St. Paul writes, “For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life” (Galatians 6:8).  It is a sin to let children make up their own minds regarding how to worship God.  God commands fathers – and mothers as well – to make up their minds for them.  We teach them the pure word of God, and the Holy Spirit creates saving faith in their hearts.  We can’t make them believe.  No.  But we can be faithful in confessing the God who alone is able to give them life. 

We don’t make children.  God does.  People think they do make children.  They look at children as a commodity that they can reproduce at will, or else as a burden to be put on hold.  And certainly this outlook has an effect on what they think their duties are toward their kids.  Even Christians will talk this way as they cleverly plan out their families according to their own wisdom as though they were in charge of these things – as though they knew what was best.  But they’re not – and they don’t.  Christian couples should know this.  God makes children.  God is in charge.  God knows what is best – both for us and for the life he commits to our care.  That’s why he cares for them even while their lives are in our hands.  God calls children a blessing, and it is he who both opens and closes the womb, even as he so richly blesses the children he gives us.  Since it is God, and God alone, who gives life, it is also God who establishes the responsibilities that fathers and mothers have toward the kids entrusted to their keeping. 

Some responsibilities come naturally.  It isn’t long before new parents are in the swing of things.  Their own inexperience becomes less an obstacle and more of a cause for adventure really.  And this is good.  Through sickness and temper tantrums and the occasional popcorn kernel stuck up the nose, young parents learn to take things in stride and not be discouraged by how unprepared they often feel.  After all, the tools are available to deal with whatever may come.  And so we give these tools to our children too, and teach them to make their own decisions.  We equip them with the necessary tools to deal with the world wisely as they grow more and more ready to leave the nest. 

And yet how many Christian parents neglect the most important preparation for their children!  They are satisfied to see their children provided for in ways that even unbelievers are attentive.  They make sure they are healthy, that they are doing well in school, that they are enjoying whatever sport they might be in – as though any of this matters at all compared to the gift of eternal life in Christ.  And if they do permit religious instruction, they are satisfied to have someone else do it for them like with the rest of their education, forgetting that it is their responsibility first. 

But how?  How do Christian parents become so influenced by the world in seeing to their children’s needs that they neglect to teach them the greater need that Christ has filled?  Well it’s a spiritual problem.  It’s because – just like their inexperience once stopped feeling like such an obstacle to their parenting, so also their sin stops feeling like such an obstacle.  It doesn’t seem to be as dangerous as they thought.  But it is an obstacle.  And it is dangerous.  And it remains this way for every single one of us throughout our lives.  We must not take our sin in stride, but deal with it squarely and promptly with the word of God — or rather permit God to deal with us according to his word — as often as it occurs to us that we are poor miserable sinners. 

And hardly can anything do a more effective job of teaching us how unworthy and inadequate we are than the task of raising children.  It is a task so far above us that it cannot help but humble us.  This is so true not only as we consider how selfish we are and lazy, and intemperate, and whatever other vice we might struggle with as a father or mother — but it is true especially as we see our children manifest the very sin that we ourselves cannot overcome.  They have inherited our sin.  And they mimic our sin as well. 

To what can we turn when we see our failures as parents?  What comfort can we find when we see that we have sinned against the God who gave us life – especially when the fruit of our failures in many cases just may spell eternal death for one we love?   This is what is so wonderful about what God requires of us in the first place.  Because it is to this that we sinners return as often as we fail.  We return to the gospel.  We flee to Christ.  In our guilt and shame and regret that we can’t do or undo this or that, we find forgiveness in the very gospel that God tells us to teach to our children.  And it remains the gospel.  We remain God’s children.  Surely if our affection does not fade, God’s commitment cannot waver.  He keeps his promises long after we have broken them. 

Knowing this, that we are God’s beloved children, is what equips us to raise his children as godly parents.  It’s like what those radio commercials tell us: you don’t need to be perfect to be a perfect parent.  It’s clever, isn’t it?  And there’s something to it.  But we do need to know who is perfect, and who lived the perfect life in our place.  Because he’s the one who takes our guilt away. 

Mary and Joseph were not perfect parents.  They knew it better than anyone who ever lived.  Can you imagine the pensiveness with which they would have embarked on being this Child’s mom and dad?  The knowledge of their own inadequacy can’t even be compared to the most unprepared young couple driving home from the postnatal ward for the first time.  Their God lay in their care.  God was committed to sinners.  Their Creator who required from them what he required from every father and mother here humbled himself to depend on them to do the job right.  What a responsibility!  How did they manage? 

Well, they managed in the same way that God expects us to manage.  They studied the word of God.  They clung to it.  They found encouragement and a good conscience knowing that they were doing the right thing in teaching this Child what God had taught them.  They found forgiveness for their foolishness, and for their failures, and for their doubt.  They found God’s grace and mercy in the word that they were required to teach this Boy.  He was the Word of God made flesh.  But he submitted with eager ears to the instruction of sinful parents who taught him from the Bible.  Not only does this tell us how God regards the office of father and mother, that he would submit to their authority and learn from them, but it teaches us how God regards the written word of Scripture as well. 

Jesus knew as much as he did while spending his time in the Temple talking with the priests because Joseph and Mary had taught him at home.  As God commanded, they brought him to celebrate the Passover, and taught him what it meant.  Of course as God, he knew all of this.  But he had humbled himself.  This means he didn’t make use of his divine knowledge of all things.  In his humility, he chose to learn it as a Child.  And he learned it well.  He chose to take our place, and the place of our children – not only to be instructed by the law, but to fulfill it. 

St. Paul writes to Timothy: “from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:14-15).   So also from childhood Christ Jesus learned to know the Scriptures.  He who was divine Wisdom incarnate, submitted to what the Bible teaches in order to fulfill its promises and save us.  The Bible taught him what it teaches us.  It teaches us concerning our Father’s business.  That’s what Jesus said when Mary scolded him.  “You should have known where to find me.  You taught me.  I am here in the Temple where the blood of the sacrifices is shed.  I am here, learning what it is that my Father will require of me.  This is where you need me to be.” 

And this is where we need our children to be too.  We need them to be where Christ has shed his blood to fulfill the Father’s wrath against sin.  We need them to be where the Father’s face shines graciously upon sinners for the sake of his Son Jesus Christ who obeyed him in all things.  This is the Father’s business: it is to give to us what his obedient Child fulfilled, and to lay on his Son what we, his disobedient children, deserve.  That is why we come here – with out children – or if they are grown, with our children in our hearts and prayers — we come here because Jesus is here about his Father’s business.  He is here covering us in his own righteousness, claiming us as his brothers and sisters through the waters of Baptism, and feeding us as his children through the Sacrament of his body and blood.  He forgives us.  He gives us life. 

It is hard to raise children.  It is humbling to see that they are sinners, patterned after our own weaknesses.  In your children’s failures and stubbornness, you see your own.  But you will not find your worthiness as a father or mother in your ability to do what God requires of you.  Instead, find your worthiness in the perfect obedience that Jesus rendered to Joseph and Mary.  Jesus shows what kind of sinners he came to redeem by going home with them and being subject to them.  And so he goes home with us as well, and serves us.  He blesses our homes.  He covers our sin.  He loves our children and seeks their eternal good.  They are his through the faith he grants them.  And so are we.  God grant that we may of His infinite love remain in His merciful keeping.  

In Jesus’ name, Amen.