Your Family: How It Works
Call to Worship
L: We are grateful today for families of all types:
P: For single parents juggling jobs and after-school activities;
L: For grandparents raising their children’s children;
P: For nuclear families and families-in-law;
L: For our church family;
P: For aunts and uncles, and the way they enrich our lives;
L: For stepchildren and step-siblings and step-parents;
P: For adoptive and foster families;
L: For non-traditional families
P: And for traditional ones.
L: Thank you, Lord, for the gift of family.
Hymn # 776 Let Us Break Bread Together
Children’s Time interviews about what is the most important thing for a mother to remember, or work in a Q and A response time. Have them talk about what they like in a house, and what makes them feel comfortable, safe, loved and happy. Discuss the many things that their mothers do to make their home a good place. Ask them if there are any places, besides their own houses, where they feel “at home.” Find out why. Then tell them that Jesus, when he was a 12-year-old, discovered that he felt at home in a most surprising place: the temple in Jerusalem. Question them on why Jesus would feel at home in a big stone building filled with teachers and other adults. Let them know that Jesus’ parents, Mary and Joseph, wondered the very same thing, which is why Jesus said to them, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49). Stress that Jesus felt at home in the temple because it was his Father’s house — it was God’s house. Point out that the church is also God’s house, and ask the children if they feel at home in it. Find out if there are things in church that make them feel comfortable, safe, loved and happy. Let them know that they are all at home here, in the Father’s house, along with all the other members of God’s big family.
Communion reading # 773
GREETINGS
PRAISE SONGS # 788 There’s a Quiet Understanding
# 10 Glorify Thy Name
# 796 The Lord Is In His Holy Temple
Prayer Lord’s prayer
praise
troops
ill
mourn
new pastor
SPECIAL MUSIC Donna Paynter
Scripture Reading Psalm 23 unison
Offering
Hymn Happy the Home When God Is There # 389
Scripture text Luke 2:41-52
Sermon Your Family: How It Works
It’s Mother’s Day, and the story of Jesus in the temple gives us a glimpse into the chaotic family life of Mary, Joseph and the child they accidentally leave behind. While Mary is understandably concerned about her family, Jesus is more concerned about how the family of God works.
The list is long, and always growing. At the top, in capital letters, are two words: MUST REMEMBER.
It’s a deluge of self-imposed demands: Write thank-you letters ... Buy new ballet leotard for daughter Emily (blue, not pink) ... Return call from sister ... Ask cool friend what is gansta rap. No cool friends. Make cool friend .... Baby sitter Saturday/Wednesday, pay newspaper bill/read back issues of newspapers, call nanny temp agency ... Trim son’s nails ... Dentist appointment ... Return Snow White video to library ... Be nicer, more patient person with daughter, so she doesn’t grow up to be a needy psychopath.
This is just one of the “must remember” lists compiled by Kate Reddy, the working mother at the heart of Allison Pearson’s best-selling novel I Don’t Know How She Does It (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002). Mothers around the world can certainly relate to her endless lists, compiled while walking through life in what she describes as a “lead suit of sleeplessness.” And on this Mother’s Day in particular, we can all be thankful for the many ways that time-and-sleep-starved mothers everywhere keep numerous balls in the air while being pulled in a thousand different directions.
“I have to try to remember,” Kate confesses. “Someone has to.” Her husband isn’t much help, because if she asks him to hold more than three things in his head at once, you can see smoke start to come out of his ears - the circuits all blow. Women are meant to be great at multitasking, says Kate. Most men are not.
When a friend named Jill dies of cancer, she leaves her husband a sheaf of paper containing 20 pages of close-typed script. It bears the title Your Family: How It Works!
“Everything’s in there,” Jill’s husband says to Kate, shaking his head in wonder. “She even tells me where to find the bloody Christmas decorations. You’d be amazed how much there is to remember, Kate.” But she isn’t surprised at all. What mother would be?
As a mom, the Mary of our text is not much different. She, too, has a long list in her head as she and the family take Highway 101 back to Nazareth from Jerusalem. With the festival of the Passover now over, her mind races ahead to washing..cleaning..trash disposal..gifts..social events..decorating..sewing..mending..cooking..negotiating relationships..caring for children ////Wait a minute: caring for children?///Where’s Jesus?
Mary doesn’t know it yet, but son Jesus is home alone in Jerusalem. The family is now a day away from Jerusalem, and no wonder Mary panics when she cannot find Jesus among the friends and relatives. She and Joseph had assumed he was in the group, but when he doesn’t turn up they race back to the city, their hearts pounding like jackhammers.
Mary imagines herself being hauled before “The Court of Motherhood.” That’s a court that Kate Reddy dreams she must face when she is feeling particularly guilty about her multitasking life.
For Mary feelings of shame sweep over her as she thinks about forgetting Jesus. How could she have failed to check on him before leaving the city? She knows that Jesus is a special-needs child. She knows that she is, as theologians would later call her, the theotokos, the Mother of God. And now God is, missing! How big is that! We think that we have crises. She’s lost God! She has no idea where God is and it is her motherly duty to find him. How could she not know where her 12-year-old son is? As Kate Reddy admits, it’s the kind of thing mothers know. Mothers are supposed to know that kind of thing./// The gavel of judgment comes down on her head.
It takes Mary and Joseph three days to find their son, and when they do he is in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Mary is overwhelmed by a mixture of astonishment, relief and anger, and she says to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.”
To which Jesus says, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:46-49).
At first glance, Mary’s words make more sense than the response made by Jesus. We can understand why she snaps at a boy who wanders off from the family, causing them intense anguish. We can relate to her frustration with a kid who sits around the temple for three days, acting as though nothing is wrong, while she and Joseph are overwhelmed by feelings of helplessness, anxiety, and fear. Well, Mary isn’t thinking “Lord and Savior” at this particular point. In today’s passage, Jesus is not in the temple - he’s in the doghouse and she’s got him by the ear, herding him back to the ox cart.
But that’s not the end of the story. The real value of today’s passage is found in the words of Jesus, not Mary. Jesus’ response is: “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be en tois tou patros mou?” (v. 49). we translate this phrase “in my Father’s house.” However, because the Greek expression is vague, it can also be translated “involved in my Father’s affairs,” or even “among those people belonging to my Father.” What favors the “In my Father’s house” translation is the picture of Jesus’ parents looking where to find him. Their “search” started among relatives and friends (v. 44), then moved to Jerusalem (v. 45), and finally to the temple (v. 46).// “Why were you searching for me?” asks Jesus. “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” This is a reminder that the true family of Jesus is bigger than the nuclear grouping made up of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and siblings. The most important family for all of us to consider is the far-reaching family of God.
This is Your Family. Your True Family. But How Does It Work?
Jesus reminds us that his “Father’s house” is our one true home. It’s a place of listening and learning, teaching and questioning, growing and developing and deepening our relationship with God and with one another. This house is more than a temple, more than a congregation, more than a denomination — it’s any place, really, any place in the world where we make a profound and personal connection with our Creator, and where we grow in faith and love.
This is not to say that a mother’s house is unimportant. Far from it. There are lessons in goodness and mercy and faithfulness that are best learned in close-knit families, but these learnings should not be trapped forever within the home. Everything Mary did for her child Jesus helped to prepare him for his work in the world, and it wouldn’t have been right for her to prevent him from going out to serve his heavenly Father.
True, she wasn’t ready for him to leave the family quite so early. Age 12 is rather young. But she had to let him go. /// A mother’s house can be solid preparation for life in the Father’s house. Jesus knew this, which is why he felt so comfortable among the teachers of the temple, and why he appeared to be so surprised when his parents came looking for him. “Why were you searching for me?” he asked them. Didn’t you know that this is what you’ve been preparing me to do?
Mothers and fathers today should keep this in mind as they raise their children to adulthood. The lessons they teach should not be designed to insulate their children from the world...or to keep them intensely focused on the affairs of the family...or to make it hard for them to break away from mom and dad. Instead, the work of the nuclear family should prepare children for service to the worldwide family of God.
But there’s another lesson from the story of Jesus in his Father’s house: Listen! ... Listen to the children! Jesus says to his parents, “I must be in my Father’s house,” and then his mother treasures all these things in her heart (v. 51). Mary begins to see the plan that God has for Jesus, and her openness to this plan enables Jesus to increase in wisdom, and to become the savior God wants him to be.
We parents cannot figure out the meaning of daily life on our own. It is important to resist the temptation to try to gain control over every moment of every day. If we become too obsessed with managing ourselves and our children, we will squeeze the vitality out of this wondrous life we have been given. So let go. Have faith. Loosen up. Trust God. And listen to the children.
In an e-mail to a friend, Kate Reddy adds, “Think I have forgotten how to waste time, and I need the kids to remind me how to do it.” So remember: Focus on God’s family, not just your own. Let go. Have faith. Loosen up. Trust God. Relax with God. Listen to the children. This is God’s Family, and How It Works. Source: Pearson, Allison. I Don’t Know How She Does It. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
HYMN # 523 Trust and Obey
Benediction