Sermon Sunday after Christmas – 29 December 2024 – Luke 2:41-52, 1 Samuel 2.18–20, 26.

It does feel a little bit strange to be flashing forward to Jesus being twelve years old within days of Christmas. We will be back with the three kings next week, but maybe this expresses an all too human attitude that we just can’t wait to see what happens next. We want to know more about this child.

A child announced by angels and a star and recognised as the Son of God by shepherd and kings, and earlier in Luke 2 the old Simeon and Anna: What is going to happen next? What does it actually look like if God comes down to earth and lives a human life, going through all the stages of life that we experience? 

When I went to one of our local shops on Boxing Day I noticed this excitement is widespread, as the Easter eggs were already out!  People just simply are really impatient to hear the rest of the story of that special child born at Christmas. They are rushing to the next bit of the story.

Today’s Gospel tells us one of the very few things we know about Jesus between his birth and the start of his ministry. We would love to know more. But as I have said before, in ancient biographies like the Gospels they spent very little time on first teeth, childhood friends or heroes, and school reports. It moves on very quickly to the big stuff.

Christ, the Wisdom of God And Luke completely frames this episode of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple as being about Jesus’ growth in wisdom.

We’ll spend a few moments thinking about Jesus as the Wisdom of God in human form and how we might get His wisdom ourselves.

Just before our reading, in Luke 2:40, he had said that the ‘child grow and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favour of God was upon him.’

At the end of the episode Luke tells us that, ‘Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour’ (Luke 2:52). And then of course there is the bit in the middle where Jesus is speaking to the wise men of his time, and they are all amazed at his understanding and answers.

It is not surprising Jesus would be wise, as Paul would later call Jesus the Wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24). Jesus is God on earth, and is in that way also the Wisdom of God lived out in a human being. Jesus shows us what all the wisdom that God gave in the Bible, his Word, actually looks like in a human life.

But wisdom, and especially in those days, was not just about trivia knowledge or being a really clever kid. This is what I keep telling myself when I turn out to be absolutely terrible at yet another pub quiz or trivia game. Because, Wisdom is something quite different then knowing facts. Wisdom is about knowing how to use facts in your life in the best way.

One definition I found said wisdom is ‘the ability to use your knowledge and experience to make good decisions and judgements’. Wisdom is the ability to know what to do next.

And true wisdom starts from the recognition that God our maker and saviour is at the centre of our world, rather than ourselves.

Jesus always lived with His Father at the centre, in his identity as Son of God, and always made the right decision and judgements. He was not only wise, he was Wisdom itself in a human person.

But how might we get this Wisdom? 1. Well, we look to the example of Jesus, who by his teaching and by his behaviour shows us in every stage of our lives what it means to live a truly good life. So it is important to see that at age 12, in which Jesus lives a life under the submission to his parents but under the supreme obedience of God.

And later on we see in how Jesus interacts with other people, how he deals with fame. How he has compassion and helps those suffering. How he takes time for everyone, including children and those deemed unworthy by others. But also, how he responds to being betrayed and abandoned by his closest friends. And how he deals with the really difficult things each human being has to face, suffering and death. Jesus shows us what a wise and good life looks like, as he always keeps on pointing to God the Father in all he says and all he does, and has that relationship with his Father as the source and basis of everything. As we see in our reading, did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house and about my Father’s business? (Luke 2: 49)

Christ is the model for our life at every stage, he was, as the second century bishop Irenaeus once said, a baby for babies, a child for children, a youth for youths and an adult for adults. Jesus points the way to us in every stage of human life.

2. But Jesus is more than an inspiring teacher and supreme moral example. Secondly, he offers to help us as well. Let’s look at a prayer of Paul for the early Christians in Ephesus:

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better (Ephesians 1:17).

Through the Holy Spirit, here called the Spirit of Wisdom, we can receive wisdom when we need it, and we can come to know the God better who is the source of all wisdom. The Holy Spirit will enlighten us and always point us to Jesus.

3. And there is a third way we can find that wisdom. And this is in other people.

In the Ancient world, when looking for a wise teacher, you would not only look at what they said, or their resume, and what kind of fancy university they went to, you would also look at how they lived.

Because again, wisdom is not just about the transferring of information or data, or even Bible knowledge. Wisdom is about knowing what the right thing is to do and also doing it. Not only talking about it.

It is the lives of those around us here in church, those who have been doing the Christian life for a long time, that may show us what it looks like to follow Christ, to look like Christ in every stage of human life, and in every misfortune, challenge, or blessing that comes on our path.

This is why Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians, imitate me as I imitate Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). Few of us will have the confidence to say what Paul says – imitate me as I imitate Christ – but it is a calling for all of us to imitate Jesus and to be ourselves models to others. To show people in our words and in our actions what Jesus looks like. What wisdom looks like lived out in a human life.

This is how we can show the prayer so many of us have song in the last few weeks, ‘be born in us today’. This is what it means for Jesus to be born and to live in us today. In the Christlikeness of our own lives we can show what it means for Jesus to live a life in Cranleigh in 2024 and onwards in 2025.

If we listen to and look to Jesus, if we listen and look to other Christians, if we ask and receive the grace and help of the Holy Spirit, we ourselves become little Jesuses. Pointing with our lives and words back to the one and only Jesus, showing in our lives what he looks like and what wisdom looks like.

So let’s once again pray that prayer of Paul, slightly adapted:

Glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so we may know you better.

Amen.