Oh No, I Forgot My ChildI had a Mary and Joseph moment recently. I don’t say this in a bragging way. I say this in all humility. My recent Mary and Joseph moment was similar to the biggest mistake Mary and Joseph ever made.
Before I tell you about my big mistake, let me first tell you how I got to the place of recently sprinting through a restaurant. About three weeks ago, I drove my wife, Julie, our three older kids, Journey, Faith and Becket, and our new baby boy, Scott, to Fallen Timbers Mall. I dropped Julie and Journey off at a store and proceeded to park the car, lock it and go with Faith and Becket into Red Robin to order dinner for our family. About 10 minutes later, I see Julie and Journey walk into the restaurant and the realization and feeling hit me all at once like a ton of bricks “oh no, I forgot my child.” Of course, this is the sanitized, church version of the language that actually went through my head. I then immediately started sprinting through the restaurant, out the door and to the car, only to find my baby boy, Scott, looking perfectly at home still sleeping peacefully in his fleece-lined car seat. A feeling of “thank God, he’s here and he’s okay” came over me. Thank God, I have a child that doesn’t require his Dad to be mistake-free before coming to find him. Thank God Mary and Joseph have their child, Jesus who didn’t require them to be mistake-free before coming to find him. Brothers and sisters in Christ, thank God we have Jesus who doesn’t require us to be mistake-free before coming to find him in prayer, in church and in the sacraments.
We don’t have to be living mistake-free lives before we come to find merciful Jesus. You see, a holy family is made up of human beings who realize when they’ve made a mistake in taking a step away from Jesus and they then turn around to take a step closer to Jesus and to one another. When the opposite of this happens, when we are separated from Jesus and our family, this is when we usually make our big mistakes, isn’t it? This is what likely what happened in the story we heard in today’s Gospel reading. On their pilgrimages to and from Jerusalem, Mary and Joseph like most of the Jewish people at the time would’ve likely traveled in two separate groups, one group of women and one group of men. The children could go with either the group of women or with the group of men. This then explains how Mary and Joseph went a day’s journey before the families regrouped to camp together for the night only to discover that the child, Jesus, was missing. Then, the frantic three days of searching began, until Mary and Joseph found 12-year-old Jesus looking perfectly at home in God the Father’s house in the temple in Jerusalem.
When Mary and Joseph arrive back in the temple and find Jesus, we get to hear the first documented words Jesus spoke. Let’s listen again to this dialogue between Mary and Jesus in the temple. Mary says, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And in response, we hear these first documented words of Jesus: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?” These words from the New Testament were originally written in the Greek language and Jesus words here can also be translated into English as “I must be about my Father’s work.” You see, Jesus is just doing what Jesus does, drawing people to himself, to God. That is what he came to earth to do. That is his mission in life. So it’s clear what Jesus does, but what about us other humans, what do we do? Well, we, much like Mary and Joseph, either move a little closer to Jesus or a little further away from Jesus every day. The daily decisions we make either move us toward or away from Jesus. During this transition from one year to another is a great time to take stock of our spiritual lives. This is as good of time as any to see where our spiritual lives are at and wherever our spiritual lives are at, to resolve to take one step closer to Jesus in the new year.
Maybe the place where we find spiritual lives at is in a neglected place where we haven’t prayed as much as we should have over the last 12 months or maybe we haven’t gone to church or received God’s graces by receiving the sacraments as much as we should have either. These are all daily decision we make to either move toward Jesus or away from Jesus. Nothing is neutral to the soul in these matters. We each make decisions every day about coming closer to Jesus when we decide whether or not to pray, when we decide whether or not to come to church and when we decide whether or not to receive a sacrament. Well, wherever we are at in our spiritual lives at the culmination of these last 12 months, as we begin this new year, let us resolve to pray, to go to church and to receive the sacraments more than we did in the previous year. This is how we take a step closer toward Jesus and one another and in the process become a holier spiritual family.
By the way, before you sprint out of church to call Children Services on the Deacon, please show me some mercy and let me first baptize my son, so he too can be welcomed into God’s holy family.