The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



The Second Sunday after Christmas, Year A, January 2, 2011, Church of St Joseph of Arimathea Hendersonville

“And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour” (Lk. 2:52).

The New Year makes us mindful of the progress of time, with a nod towards both past and future. We get a chance to think back about the events of the last year, but also to consider what lies before us in the year to come. We sing “Auld Lang Syne” (“should old acquaintance be forgot”), with its backward glance; but we also make resolutions for the New Year, which lets us look forward to what’s ahead. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol captures this sense of transition with its Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come. We tear off another page on the calendar, or even put up a new one (if we haven’t waited for the sales), and we are conscious in a different way that change is afoot.

The Church Calendar reinforces this perception. The secular New Year takes place within the Christmas Festival, on the eighth day of twelve, and this feast with its strong evocation of family and the past takes us back in time. But the logic of the Christian Calendar always moves us forward toward Easter; even in the Christmas Season we’re mindful that with the birth of the Savior we have simply begun a forward progression that will take us all the way to the climax of the story, Jesus’ death and resurrection which still lies ahead for us in the telling.

Our Gospel gives us a unique glimpse into that forward progression, with its rare story of Jesus between his birth and circumcision and the beginning of his public ministry. These are what are sometimes called “the hidden years” of his life, when he grew to maturity but before he began to preach and heal. So the twelve year old Jesus goes with his family to Jerusalem, but then makes his own way to the Temple, to his Father’s house. The visit prefigures the work that Jesus is called to do, to be about his Father’s business. He’s in the midst of the teachers, listening and questioning. Mary and Joseph don’t understand, but how could they? What was to come was hidden from them, though as the Gospel writer Luke shows us Jesus himself was conscious of his calling.

Luke covers all the rest of this hidden period with just a few words. First, he tells us that Jesus “increased” or “progressed”, the only time this word appears in any of the Gospels. In other words, it’s a time of transition for Jesus himself, and we can see the Son of God moving through time as we human beings do, from his earthly origin to the culmination of his life in time and history. This Jesus, fully divine and fully human, knows what it’s like to tear off another page of the calendar and to peer into the future.

Then there are three words which describe the transition of these hidden years. First, “wisdom”: something the ancient Hebrews valued highly, a practical notion in its origins, the ability to get things done, to live (practically speaking) in accordance with God’s will. So Jesus progresses in this wisdom, foreshadowed by his encounter with the teachers in the Temple. Second, Jesus grows physically in stature and in the progress of years; in other words, he matures as any human being does, comes to be what he was not before as a human being. He was a boy, but he became a man. Third, “favor”, with God and human beings. “Favor” is “grace”, which locates the giver of the gift as God; but it’s a grace and favor that is evident to those around him, manifest progressively in his human life.

In this time of transition, at the beginning of the New Year as we look both backwards and forwards, we ought to learn from the Master. The significance of our lives may be hidden from us, but those lives can still be examined fo0r signs of growth and developing discipleship. St Peter tells us that we need “to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18), so we should count on growing: in wisdom, in maturity, in grace and favor. Each of us is called to conform to the example of Jesus Christ. Simply coming to this altar, to share this meal with the Lord, is a means by which we grow and progress in the way of grace. It’s “a means of grace”, after all, a sharing in the life of Christ. As we move ahead in this New Year, we will come to share more fully in his dying and rising again, through God’s grace, so that his life which conquers death may be visible in us.

- The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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