Christmas 1 - 2024

(1Samuel 2.18-20, 26; Psalm 148; Colossians 3.12-17; Luke 2.41-52)

May the word of Christ dwell in us richly, teaching and admonishing us in all wisdom, to the glory of God. Amen.

I hope you have enjoyed your Christmas festivities, and managed both some feasting and relaxing in the last few days. On Christmas Day, we were celebrating the Word become flesh: now, on this First Sunday after Christmas, we are a little fewer in number, and in our gospel reading the babe in the manger has been left behind, the child grown swiftly into an inquisitive and precocious 12 year old.

A twelve year old in a strange city, lost by his parents, yet serenely quizzing the teachers of religion in the temple. It’s a story to send shivers down the spine of most parents. We have seemingly left behind the eternal mystery and grace of God – In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God - and we now encounter a very human, if precocious, Jesus. How do we hold these two together: the Christ, the eternal Word existing beyond time, both source and final purpose; and the human Jesus, that 12 year old in the temple, giving his parents the slip because he has more important matters to attend to? The contrast points up the ancient dilemma of Christianity, how Jesus can be both God and human. That is the central paradox, of course, of Christmas itself – a paradox that cannot be collapsed without losing the essence, the central proclamation, of Christianity. To say that it can’t be collapsed is not to say, however, that it can’t be examined, questioned, or understanding sought. Jesus in the temple, asking the teachers questions, certainly would have done, and so should we.

The temptation seen often enough in Christianity is to split Jesus in two: to give him a human body and the mind of God: ‘veiled in flesh, the Godhead see’, as ‘Hark the Herald Angels sing’ puts it. But this is not only contradicted by our gospel story this morning, where Luke tells of a child undergoing the process of growing in wisdom, but such a notion becomes impossible to reconcile with what we know about human personality and biology: our minds are rooted in the reality of our bodies; our minds cannot just be split off – the two are thoroughly intertwined. Christ’s humanity is not a veneer applied to his divinity.

Given the difficulty it is tempting to simply concentrate on and speak about the humanity of Jesus, make Jesus a human example for us to emulate and follow, however impossible that might seem. But if we fail to speak of how we encounter the divine in Jesus, we lose both a way to speak of the incarnation, the coming of God in Jesus, and then the ability to speak of the presence of God in the world more generally. If we can’t speak about how God is in Jesus, how can we speak of God present anywhere?

I think the basic problem is that we tend to see humanity and divinity as utterly contrasted and distinct, like two snooker balls unable to occupy the same spot simultaneously: if this bit of Christ is human it cannot be divine and vice versa. But that is nonsense: in Luke’s gospel, the baby of the manger has grown, in body, mind and spirit, as children do, through inquisitiveness, exploration and playfulness - ‘And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour.’ All of us are profoundly shaped in those childhood years that Jesus is in the midst of in our Gospel reading; by the questions we ask then, the answers we receive, the world we inhabit. ‘After 3 days, his parents found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.’

Here is God, in this child on the edge of his teenage years: in this seeking after wisdom – what else should we expect when the Word becomes flesh? For God is not a substance to be located in time and space, to be confined, trapped, in a human body. If Jesus was a divine mind in a human body then he would not need to ask questions, he would know all the answers already. Rather, in this child Jesus, God is the seeking, the growing, even the transcending of family ties that both nurture and threaten to stifle the boy Jesus as he grows. God is seen in that child’s faithfulness to his own desire for knowledge, a faithfulness seen in his running away and finding the teachers he needs. In this story Luke is showing that the pattern of Christ’s life is already given: not God acting within the limits imposed by a human body, but a human life transfigured, and transformed by a fidelity to God and God’s purposes: ‘Did you not know,’ says Jesus to his exasperated parents, ‘that I must be in my Father’s house?’

To speak of Jesus as both God and human need not involve a juggling act: keeping both his divinity and his humanity in the air, without confusing the two. His divinity is not to be contrasted to his humanity; rather his humanity, our humanity, is restored and fulfilled by the his obedience to the divine, enabling that divine presence and action we glimpse as central to his life. In his growing wisdom and compassion, in his preaching and his service of suffering love, we see God and encounter God. In Christ we find the divine focused and lived out. But in his humanity, Jesus is no different from us. He has no head start, no extra bit of divine stuff.

To say that Jesus is fully human is to say that human life is lived out fully in and by him. And that fully human life is an expression of the divine at work in him. And in that realisation, we find the invitation to follow him, to participate in that same obedience to the movement of the Spirit that we glimpse in him. The Spirit that we come to know in ourselves, and in our neighbours and the world around us. Jesus’ fully human, fully divine life, invites us to participate in the journey of transfiguration and transformation of our human nature that we see in him, to become a little more fully human ourselves. As the collect for Christmas puts it:

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.
Amen.