The child Jesus grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the
favour of God was upon him. Luke 2.40
So very much is contained in
that last sentence of today’s Gospel, the 40th verse of Luke’s
second chapter.
When God became man it didn’t
mean human perfection landing just like that. Rather there is a growth into
maturity as there is for every one of us, a physical, mental and even – we are
talking of God in human flesh - a spiritual
maturing.
The child Jesus grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the
favour of God was upon him.
Jesus grew and matured as all
of us grow and mature within a family, the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and
Joseph. Christians differ about whether there were other family members. There
are references to his brothers and sisters but in the terminology of the day
these could have been cousins. I stick with the age old tradition of the
eastern and western church, some Protestants apart, that Mary was ever a
virgin. Set apart for her divine motherhood with Joseph her most chaste spouse
the Lord’s Mother is evidently alone on Good Friday when Our Lord tends for her
by entrusting her to his beloved disciple, John. We also presume from that
incident as well the death of St Joseph in Jesus’ lifetime.
Back to the Gospel story we
shall read again at Candlemas this is about the only story about Jesus between
his birth and the commencement of his
saving mission around his 30th year. Traditionally that is said to
have lasted 33 years which is the number of rings we make on the church bell
before services.
Jesus Christ, true God and
true Man, grew, became strong and filled
with wisdom within the Holy Family. The first words he uttered to his
heavenly Father would have been caught from the devotion of his holy Mother who
was his teacher with St Joseph. We imagine this extraordinary threesome,
immortalised in the art of the nativity, growing up together, not just their
prayer but their humour. Reading Our Lord’s teaching we can’t but imagine the
Holy Family as, yes, a school but also one of sound recreation and good humour.
We too get formed as human
beings within families though nowadays they take different shapes and sizes.
Families are built from sexual intercourse which is a union of life giving love
in two senses: the life-giving to husband and wife of genital union and its
overflowing in procreation. In Christian teaching the unitive and procreative
aspects are inseparable overall. This explains Christian opposition to
artificial sexual unions beyond friendship and creating new life outside the
warm sexual union of male and female in lifelong commitment . The Church of
England allows artificial means of birth control only as the servant of the
unitive and procreative aspects of marriage, neither of which should be denied
overall in the exercise of the union of life-giving love which is sexual
intercourse.
Teaching marriage and family
from the example of the Holy Family is a bit of a challenge since, as we say every
Sunday in the Creed, there’s no sexual union there but conception by the Holy
Spirit excluding Joseph. In so many other ways, though, the Holy Family is our
teacher. Jesus’ mental development linked to conversation with his mother and Joseph,
along, as we see later in this chapter of St Luke, with the teachers and holy
men found in Temple and synagogue. These he astonished through his grasp of
spiritual matters as he listened to them
and asked them questions.
Lastly the Holy Family is an
economic unit, so to speak, a school of work, which the Gospels touch on
several times. They mention Our Lord as the carpenter’s son presumably formed
up within that trade. Many of us in Church this morning owe both our vocations
as Christians and the business we follow or followed partly to the inspiration
of our parents. I think I took more after my mother, a teacher, than my father,
a bank manager, but I would not be who I am without Elsie and Greg as no doubt
each of you wouldn’t be who you are without your
parents. I hope with me you give thanks and pray for them be they in this
world or the next.
The child Jesus grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the
favour of God was upon him.
Jesus never left the
fellowship of the Holy Family and nor do we. Mary and Joseph feature in every
Eucharistic prayer I offer and thinking of my death I think of their welcome.
In the Hail Mary used by many Anglicans, the words are on the rack at the back
of Church, we ask her prayers now and at
the hour of our death.
As Jesus matured so do we,
with, in and through him and within the company of Mary, Joseph and all the
saints. He was as the Carol says born to
raise the sons of earth. The Son of God became Son of Man in company with a
human family so that the children of men might become the children of God in
company with that holy family and all good folk made perfect.
With humility before Jesus
true God and true Man and confidence in his divine power we are formed through
our prayer, our families and our work until
in Paul’s words from Ephesians 4:13 all
of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to
maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.
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