Lessons and Carols Service
First Reading: Isaiah 60:1-6 (The Epiphany Prophecy)
Carol: The First Noel, vs. 1,3, and 5
Second Reading: Matthew 2:1-12 (The Visit of the Wise Men)
Carol: We Three Kings of Orient Are
Third Reading: Luke 2:22-40 (The Presentation in the Temple)
Carol: I Wonder as I Wander
Fourth Reading: Colossians 3:12-17 (The New Life in Christ)
Carol: Infant Holy, Infant Lowly
Fifth Reading: Luke 2:41-53 (The Boy Jesus At Jerusalem)
Carol: Hark the Herald Angels Sing
In the front of the sanctuary of the chapel at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia there is a commanding stained glass window depicting the scene from our last reading today. In the foreground is a young Jesus, conversing with several authoritative adults. In the background are Mary and Joseph, worried expressions on their faces, rushing through the door from their three day search for the boy. It is an interesting choice of scene for an educational environment, and many a professor has preached on the various layers of meaning that this window has for our community.
Stained glass windows have long been used as teaching devices in the Church. The educational tradition surrounding these windows is believed to have begun as a tool to educate a mostly illiterate population. While no longer serving this goal, church windows still depict everything from Biblical scenes to abstract moral concepts to historical moments, scenes important for the worshipping community to pass on to future generations.
The cathedral at Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, which contains nearly sixty-five hundred square feet of stained class, portrays over a thousand figures from the Bible. The nearby Chartres Cathedral, with 21,000 square feet of glass, contains images from the lives of the saints, as well as large windows illustrating such scenes as Noah and the flood, the Life of Christ, and the passion. Just down the road at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, stained glass windows immortalize various and diverse events from the life of Mary the Mother of Jesus and the last judgment to Maryland state heritage, the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the lives of two Civil War generals, Robert E Lee and James “Stonewall“ Jackson, to humanity’s landing on the moon complete with an actual piece of moon rock.
Here at St John’s we have our own scene-filled windows. Not only aesthetically pleasing, their images, from the Christmas story to Luther translating the Bible to the building of the first American Lutheran church in 1646, educate parishioners and visitors alike of the events that are important to this congregation. These are snapshots from scripture and history that tell of the journey that has led to this place.
And that is what we have here in our readings today. Snapshots of Jesus’ early life. And this is pretty much all we have, this conglomeration of events from different Gospels that is put together to form our story.
It begins before His birth with the prophecy found in Isaiah. Like a sonogram picture, this snapshot is the promise of things to come, and, like some sonograms, it’s a little blurry, indistinct, and can be difficult to comprehend.
In some ways, Isaiah’s prophecy sounds a lot like the modern view of the Christmas season: “your children shall come from far away… the abundance of the seas shall be brought to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you.” Is Christmas not often celebrated today with families coming together and gifts being brought from around the world? But if we look closer, the deeper Christmas message is shouting itself from these words as well. The message of the coming of the light and the glory of the Lord. The message of the promise of light shining through the darkness, the gifts of gold and frankincense, all proclaiming of the praises of the Lord.
And the searching, the Christmas searching for the Christ child. How many generations have been hearing these words of Isaiah, hearing the promise in this snapshot, and searching, and hoping? And how do we today, hearing these words and this promise, search and hope for His return?
[PAUSE]
But let us turn to our next picture. The wise men. Here we have the traditional snapshot of the visitors that come to see the new baby bringing gifts and praises.
These visitors, however, are not your typical group of friends and family that may gather around the latest familial addition. These are scholars-- strangers from far away, carrying the prophesied gifts of gold and frankincense, searching for the king. The king who has been foretold of as a shepherding ruler, from a little town called Bethlehem, much like King David, the celebrated shepherd monarch of Israel. So they looked for him, following his star, to honor him.
And does this not sound so similar to our own searching? Our own quest for the “overwhelming joy” of finding the Christ Child, our own faith journeys, our own inquiries of others on how to find the way? Our own efforts to please the king and to praise him?
[PAUSE]
Our third picture: Jesus being presented in the Temple. Here we hear not only of an important religious milestone in young Jesus’ life, but of two devoted believers, who had been waiting for the Messiah. First, Simeon, a man who had been promised to see the Christ before his death. Second, Anna, herself a prophet, who praises God and spreads the word about Jesus to fellow seekers. The pronouncements here are prophecies of a similar strain to those in our earlier Isaiah reading. Except that now these prophecies have a being, a person, this young child.
Anna and Simeon are both typically portrayed as being elderly, although in our text only Anna is given a specific age. These two waited lifetimes to see the Savior. Lifetimes. In today’s rushed society, with commercial breaks every fifteen minutes encouraging shorter and shorter attention spans, in these days how long do we wait? We have been given a promise no less sincere, no less inspired, no less revelatory than Simeon’s. How long will we search?
[PAUSE]
Which brings us to our final picture. An annual family trip to Jerusalem, and a literal, physical search for a boy gone missing. The snapshot we are given is brief, and does little to describe the fervor with which his parents must have been searching. For three days they searched. Three days. And when they found him with the temple teachers, listening with understanding, not just answering questions, but asking them as well, when they found him their astonishment was echoed by his own: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
Church father and writer Origen of Alexandria reflects on this scene with the following:
We must truly be able to say: We have been looking for you anxiously; if we can say this then he will reply to our wearing and anxious soul in the words: did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
So. Do we search anxiously, or do we allow each Christmas to pass, with celebration and joy, but no search, no quest for the Messiah, no anxiety. Christmas season comes each year, December the twenty-fifth will be there, right between the twenty-fourth and the twenty-sixth as it always is. So what do we search for, and how? And how does Jesus respond to our astonishment at discovery?
You may have noticed that our last two snapshots ended with similar phrases: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” These may be all we have, but they are short stories, brief scenes from Jesus’ early life, and they don’t tell the whole story. They try, by filling in the time with a few phrases about growing and becoming strong, finding favor with God and being obedient to his parents. Eventually the words stop, though. But the story goes on.
The story goes on as our searching goes on. The stories don’t end with the end of our reading; no snapshot captures the whole picture. Ever notice that on Easter morning we say “Christ is risen”? Not “Christ was risen,” or “Christ was raised,” but “Christ is risen.” The story, the search goes on because we search for what we already have, what we continue to have, yet we cannot see it. We struggle to “lift up our eyes and look around” as Isaiah encourages us to do. But though we feel we are in darkness, Isaiah promises that “the Lord will arise upon [us] and his glory will appear over [us].”
As Isaiah’s hearers have been searching for the Messiah, as the wise men journeyed to the king, as Anna and Simeon waited lifetimes to see the promised one, and as Mary and Joseph scoured the city for their lost child, so do we search and journey and wait for the Christ, who is indeed in his Father’s house, whose story cannot be confined to the edges of a stained glass window or a selection of words on a page.
The story, the search, doesn’t end here, it didn’t end this past Friday night, it doesn’t end on Good Friday, it doesn’t end on Easter morning or on Pentecost. The story continues. Through the conversion of Paul on the window here in the front, the conversion of Constantine one down, throughout the Reformation events portrayed in the windows on the other side. The story continues. Through the invention of the Gutenberg Bible by the side door, through the building of the first American Lutheran Church across the aisle, through the formation of St John’s Lutheran church in 1920, second window from the back, through you and through me, through Christmas year after year, through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and through, as Paul writes in our reading from Colossians today, through teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom… through all this, and through all else, the search goes on, the story continues. Amen.
