First Sunday after Christmas Day

The very recently added feast of the Holy Family is intended to display Jesus’ family as a model for Christian families. But what we find in the scriptures are not warm paeans to the institution of the nuclear family, but rather stories of children separated from their parents. These episodes show how the human family has meaning and purpose only when it is offered up to serve God’s greater mission. Hannah’s gift of her firstborn Samuel to the Lord causes him “to grow in stature and favor both with the Lord and with men” and brings her more children. In the same way, modern parents—though beset by the pressures to mold their children into high performing “machines”—must not understand themselves as the sole custodians of their children’s upbringing. Instead, they ought to follow Hannah’s example through prayer, devoting their children to the Lord and trusting him with their children’s futures rather than their own capacities as capable parents. We see the same dynamic heightened in the gospel passage. Jesus’ answer to his parents’ understandable concern at his absence: “did you not know that I had to be in my Father’s house?” indicates that God’s mission supersedes even the natural bonds of his earthly family. This is a good opportunity for the preacher to remind that all those who walk in faith reside in the house of the Father and compose God’s true family (cf. Mark 3:33-35; John 1:13) which brings celibates into the center of the Holy Family.

Another option: The Gospel story of Jesus in the Temple is an important Christological passage for the tradition of the church and a good opportunity for the preacher to address an often-burning question for believers: what did Jesus know as he grew up and what was he capable of as divine and human? First, Jesus’ parents find him in the temple three days after his disappearance foreshadows the resurrection, setting the episode in the context of Jesus’ mission. The passage discloses how though Jesus is conscious of his identity and mission he still had to progress in that mission by normal human means. Hence, we see him “listening and asking questions” of the rabbis. Though his identity as the Son of God seems to have made him a quick study, as we see in the teachers’ astonishment at his “answers and understanding,” he still learns as an ordinary human youth. The church’s consensus understanding of Jesus’ supernatural abilities was that they always served his mission and purpose on earth, and never allowed him to “shortcut” ordinary human travails–hence the Infancy Gospel of Thomas which shows Jesus making flippant use of his divine powers was rejected as a gnostic fabrication. This understanding is supported by Jesus’ refusal of the Devil’s temptation to relieve himself of his human constraints in the temptation in the wilderness and on the occasions where Jesus refuses or “could not” do any miraculous signs due to the lack of faith (Mk. 6:5; Matt. 13:58) and also in the Book of Hebrews’ affirmation that he was “tempted in every way as we are” (4:15). The issue was not the strength of Jesus’ power but that his power on earth had an orientation toward the accomplishment of his mission at the Resurrection–indeed the theologians thought of his earthly ministry “flowed backwards” as it were, from the Resurrection. Therefore, Jesus does no marvelous work that does not serve that mission.