Sermon for The First Sunday After The Epiphany
“After three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.”
From Bethlehem to Jerusalem, from kings to kids. In a culture that is ruled by kids, perhaps we would do well to listen to the Kid, the Holy Kid. “Did you not know that I must be about my father’s business?” Jesus asks.
It is an extraordinary and compelling scene. And it is unique. It is the only story of the boyhood of Jesus in the Christian Scriptures of the New Testament. And read on the First Sunday after Epiphany which falls this year on the Octave Day of the Epiphany, it reminds us of an essential feature of religion that our world and culture and church has largely forgotten, namely, that religion is philosophy.
I love the story of the Magi-Kings. I am always struck by what they do when they arrive at Bethlehem. They kneel and worship. Philosophy is worship. That is, I think, the deep meaning of the love of wisdom. And it has to do with the whole of our being. It has to do with our commitment to Truth. Which is why this Gospel story of Christ being found in the temple at the age of twelve is so compelling and significant. He is found with the doctors of the Law, both hearing them and asking them questions. “And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.” In the Christian understanding, Jesus is student and teacher, both fully human and fully divine. That is the Epiphany lesson. Here we see something which belongs to the larger dimension of redemption, the opening out of the true potentialities of our humanity. It has to do with our being with God in the things of God that are given to be thought about and understood. It is not that we possess the Truth but that the Truth possesses us.
