Patrick Comerford
On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me … ‘five golden rings, four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree’.
This is the fifth day of Christmas, the First Sunday of Christmas and we are still in the Festival of Hanukkah. Later this morning, I hope to attend the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, and we have been invited to a Hanukkah party this afternoon.
Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 2: 41-52 (NRSVA):
41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44 Assuming that he was in the group of travellers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ 49 He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ 50 But they did not understand what he said to them. 51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour.
Today’s Reflection:
The Christian interpretation of the song ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ often sees the five golden rings as figurative representations of the Torah or the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
The Fifth Day of Christmas, 29 December, falls on a Sunday this year, but in other years is the Feast of Saint Thomas Becket in many parts of the Anglican Communion. In 1170, on the Fifth Day of Christmas, four knights from the court of King Henry II burst into Canterbury Cathedral as the archbishop is on his way to Vespers. Inside the cloister door, they murder Thomas Becket, whose defence of the rights of the Church has angered the king.
In his play, Murder in the Cathedral, TS Eliot reconstructs from historical sources the archbishop’s final sermon, preached in Canterbury Cathedral on Christmas Day. It is a remarkable meditation on the meaning of Christmas, martyrdom, and the true meaning of ‘peace on earth.’
Many people may not be expecting this morning’s Gospel story (Luke 2: 41-52) as the Gospel reading on this, the First Sunday of Christmas? Perhaps they are expecting another traditional Christmas story, such as:
• the visit of the Shepherds and the naming of Jesus (Luke 2: 15-21), the Gospel reading on Wednesday, New Year’s Day (1 January 2025)
• the Presentation in the Temple and the encounter with Simeon and Anna (Luke 2: 22-40), the Gospel reading on Wednesday, New Year’s Day (1 January 2025)
• the visit of the Magi (Matthew 2: 1-12), the reading for the feast of the Epiphany next week (Monday 6 January 2025)
• or, perhaps the flight into Egypt, part of yesterday’s reading (Matthew 2: 13-18)
Some may wonder why are we jumping from the story of Jesus’ birth in a stable in Bethlehem on Christmas Day to the story of the teenage Christ who is lost in the Temple on this first Sunday after Christmas. What happened to the intervening years, between the story of the stable and Jesus at the age of 12?
But this story completes the early identification of who Jesus is in Saint Luke’s Gospel. The Angel Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary that her child will be ‘holy’ and will be called the ‘Son of God’ (Luke 1: 35). At the Presentation, he is identified as ‘holy’ (Luke 2: 23). Now, in this reading, he identifies himself as God’s Son.
In the reading, the family travels from their provincial home to Jerusalem to worship in the Temple and there they find their young son ministering in the Temple. But this morning we might ask ourselves where do we find Christ?
Where do we seek him? Where is God’s Temple, the place where we are found to be truly in communion with God? And who got lost … the child or the parents?
I still remember with dread how I once lost sight of one of my children on an evening out in Crete 30 years ago. He was about three or four at the time and was missing only for a few moments. It may have been for only three or four minutes, but the fear and panic that struck me made it feel not like three or four minutes as I searched and shouted out his name, but like an eternity.
Temporary fears seemed to have everlasting consequences that I could not even bear to contemplate in my furtive search. I still remember the horror of that moment, it was so vivid and so real. When I found him, he knew where he was all the time, and could not grasp the enormity of my fears.
What was he doing that he lost sight of me? What was I doing that I lost sight of him? Who did I blame? Did I ever thank those who helped my search?
Did that experience inhibit me in his later years when I should have let my sons have the freedom to grow and to mature?
Christ is no longer a child in this reading. But Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary do not yet see him as an adult. I can fully identify with them in their panic and in their fear in this reading.
It was my pattern to go on holiday in Greece each summer, and I had felt safe, perhaps naively safe, wherever I was. Perhaps, because they went to Jerusalem for the Passover each year, Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary felt comfortable and relaxed as they moved through the courts and the arcades of the Temple, and through the side streets and the market stalls of Jerusalem.
On the way home, if Jesus was still seen as a child, he might have travelled with the women in the caravan; if he was now seen as a man, he might have been expected to travel with the men in the caravan. Any family travelling through a modern airport on holidays today, with the father taking some children through and the mother taking others, understands completely what may have happened at that Passover.
If it is an experience you have forgotten, gone without or have yet to go through, you can catch some of the flavour of the setting for this story in one of the all-time favourite Christmas movies, Home Alone (1990).
In the opening chapters of this Gospel, Saint Luke portrays Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary as a devout and righteous couple. They observe the religious rites and practices of Judaism, they have Jesus circumcised (Luke 2: 21), and three times he emphasises how they acted ‘according to the law’ (verses 22, 24, 39).
In this reading, we are told that they go to the Passover festival in Jerusalem ‘every year’ and they observe the ‘custom of the feast’ (see KJV, NIV). With this emphasis on the family’s religious devotion, Saint Luke is saying the Jewish boy Jesus grew up in a thoroughly Jewish world. It is a story that challenges antisemitism whenever and wherever it finds its ugly expressions today.
The setting for this story is the festival of the Passover, celebrating the deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Every year, Joseph, Mary and Jesus go to Jerusalem for this festival (verse 41), and they are still doing this when he is a 12-year-old (verse 42).
When the eight-day festival ends, the people they have travelled with begin the long journey back home to Nazareth. The entourage in this caravan includes both ‘relatives and friends’ (verse 42), which makes it a safe group but also a large crowd. They have gone a full day when Joseph and Mary realise Jesus is missing. Perhaps they were about to have a meal together, perhaps they were putting up the tents for the night or they had arrived at a hostel or inn were they found a room for the night.
They search for him there first of all before returning to Jerusalem. After three days, they find Jesus in the Temple, ‘sitting among the teachers’ (verse 46), the experts in Jewish law or rabbis. He not only listens and asks questions, but he also answers their questions. This was the rabbinical style of teaching at the time.
When Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary find him, they are distraught as Mary asks, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety’ (verse 48). In their eyes, Jesus is still a child.
But the words in verse 49 mark a turning point in this Gospel. These are the first words Christ speaks in the Gospels. And Jesus speaks of his bounden duty to do the work of God, the work of God the Father.
The Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph do not understand what Jesus says to them (verse 50). Now they have found Jesus, they probably have to travel back north to Nazareth by themselves, which was much more dangerous than traveling with the caravan they had had to leave. This danger is understood by everyone who first heard the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37). Perhaps this too is a literary hint at the later dangers in the journey that Jesus makes to Jerusalem.
When the family returns to Nazareth, Jesus is obedient to his parents in everyday life. In spite of not understanding what has happened and what has been said, Mary ‘treasured all these things in her heart’ (verse 51) – just as she ‘treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart’ after she heard the shepherds’ report of what the angels proclaimed (Luke 2: 19).
Saint Luke says that after this story Jesus spent his years in Nazareth, growing ‘in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour’ (verse 52). But, in the meantime, something has changed. Jesus is now on the way, on the path.
Saint Luke says Joseph and Mary search for Jesus for three days. When early Christians heard this story in the context of the Passover (verses 41-42) and the phrase ‘after three days’ (verse 46), they would have thought immediately of the Passover when Christ was raised from the dead after three days. So, we should also read this story in the light of the Resurrection.
In the Resurrection, the new family of God supersedes our earthly family, the Temple becomes the place where Christ is at the centre. He is in dialogue with the tradition, yet with a new understanding.
There can be no true meaning in Christmas unless it looks forward to Easter.
When we next meet Jesus in this Gospel, he is at the Jordan, about to be baptised by Saint John the Baptist, which is the Gospel reading (Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22) for Sunday week, the First Sunday after the Epiphany (12 January 2025).
Today’s Prayers (Sunday 29 December 2024, Christmas I):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘We Believe, We Belong: Nicene Creed’. This theme is introduced today with Reflections by Dr Paulo Ueti, Theological Advisor and Regional Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, USPG:
Let us reflect critically on the significance of the Council of Nicaea and its legacy in shaping the Christian faith. Convened by Emperor Constantine in 325 AD, the council profoundly impacted Christian doctrine, but it was also a moment when faith and imperial power intersected in complex ways. While the Nicene Creed was intended to unite the church and ensure that the divinity of Christ was firmly established, we must acknowledge the historical context in which this took place – within the framework of the Roman Empire.
The Council of Nicaea was called to resolve the Arian controversy* and stabilise the empire through religious cohesion. This raises important questions about how imperial power shaped the decisions made at the council. Unity was as much a political goal as a theological one. While the creed brought Christians together around shared beliefs, we must be aware of the dangers of equating unity with uniformity. When faith becomes entangled with political power, there is always a risk that diversity will be suppressed in the name of order.
As we commemorate the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, let us pray for a church that embraces unity in diversity, recognising the richness of different expressions of faith without imposing uniformity. In a global context where the church has often been used as an instrument of colonialism and control, we are called to reflect critically on our history and to seek a form of unity that respects cultural and theological diversity. Let us pray for a church that resists the temptation of imperial conformity and instead embodies Christ's message of love, justice and inclusion for all creation.
[* The Arian controversy was a series of theological disputes about the nature of Jesus Christ.]
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 29 December 2024, Christmas I) invites us to pray:
Lord, we give thanks for the wisdom and discernment granted to the church at the Council of Nicaea, where the foundation of our faith was affirmed. We praise you for the clarity provided through the Nicene Creed, which proclaims Jesus as fully divine and fully human, one with you in substance and essence.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
who wonderfully created us in your own image
and yet more wonderfully restored us
through your Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
so we may share the life of his divinity;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Heavenly Father,
whose blessed Son shared at Nazareth the life of an earthly home:
help your Church to live as one family,
united in love and obedience,
and bring us all at last to our home in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
God in Trinity,
eternal unity of perfect love:
gather the nations to be one family,
and draw us into your holy life
through the birth of Emmanuel,
our Lord Jesus Christ.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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