Wednesday, December 30, 2020       (today’s lectionary)
The Sixth Day of Christmas
Teach the children, teach the parents
Today’s gospel brings us back into the temple with Jesus, Mary and Joseph with 84 year old Anna, a prophetess, who herself never left the temple. Like Julian of Norwich, Anna was an anchorite.
She gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem. And the child grew, became strong and filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him.
Baby Jesus didn’t look like a warrior, not a man who would lead his people against Rome. What in fact does the redemption of Jerusalem itself look like? The non-violence Jesus introduced challenged every old apocalyptic vision of Roman removal from the homeland. He looked beyond the ordinary, beyond the obvious into heaven.
Say among the nations: The Lord is king. He has made the world firm, not to be moved. And he governs the peoples with equity.
What does Jesus see in the deep beyond? What hope does he hold out for freedom within Israel’s earthly bonds? I know this feels to me, to my own freedom. When I look out, I feel captured, powerless and even trapped, depending entirely on circumstances. But when I look within there is nothing but freedom, and my breathing comes easy. Then I relax and know, as Paul knew, there is “nothing that can separate me from the love of Christ.” Circumstances become suddenly and entirely irrelevant.
John, writing at the other end of the New Testament age, had been born about the time Jesus was born. He was not crucified and grew to be very old, perhaps nearing 100 when he wrote his letters and his gospel. How long does it take to learn to look inside yourself? How can we help each other?
I am writing to you, children, because you know the Father, and your sins have been forgiven for his name’s sake. I write to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God remains in you. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. Whoever does the will of God remains forever.
Graham Nash wrote songs like he was a family man, and perhaps at times he was. “Our House,” Teach the Children Well” might have been written by John the Apostle, if you can imagine that. John probably wrote his letters from a home in Ephesus that for many years he shared with Jesus’ mother, Mary. Whether he had a wife and children, or he thought of his friends and followers as his children, it’s clear that he loved them like a father.
You, who are on the road must have a code that you can live by. And so, become yourself because the past is just a goodbye. Teach your children well, their fathers’ hell did slowly go by, and feed them on your dreams, the one they pick’s the one you’ll know by … don’t you ever ask them why?
But Graham’s songs are almost wistful, as if he knows he can’t get to where he wants to be. Just a taste of freedom is all he expects. John opens his eyes wide, and reaches out his arms, holding hands with his memories of Jesus. He knows we all are so much more than we can be alone. Outside the gates of Eden we flounder helplessly in our painful labors and desires, thorns and thistles of circumstance, and the endless sweating of our brows. For dust we are.
Even then, within ourselves freed and forgiven, inside the gates of heaven, there is only joy.
We follow Jesus, baby then boy then man then messiah in a way no one expected. In these days of our lives, this following which we do not forsake, brings us home.
And they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong. The favor of God was upon him.
#
