Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

It seems that we spend months and weeks preparing for Christmas and then in a blink of an eye, Christmas is over.  Turn on the radio, and all the Christmas carols are gone. Look out on the street, and you just might see an abandoned Christmas tree.  Perhaps only in the shopping malls is the spirit of Christmas still active. After all the two busiest shopping days of the year are Black Friday and the Day after Christmas.  If that is your experience, there is good news today.  In the church, it is still Christmas. Christmas is a season that lasts for twelve days from December 25th to January 5.^th   It is a time to meditate on the faithful throughout the ages who have called the infant Jesus their Savior.  Interestingly, tomorrow, the 6^th day of Christmas was designated centuries ago as the day to remember the Holy Family. Unfortunately, as society began to drift away from this 12-day celebration, so did our focus on the Holy Family.  In the 1893, Pope Leo XIII introduced an annual celebration of the Holy Family following a French-Canadian pattern of commemoration on the first Sunday after Epiphany.  In 1969, the commemoration was shifted to the First Sunday after Christmas. And since Lutherans are not against the family, after all we can complain like our Catholic neighbors when our children don’t visit. And we grimace just as strongly when they stay too long, so we have followed suit and chosen to honor this day for the Holy Family as well.

St. Luke’s gospel contains the only story we have of Jesus’ childhood and youth. It is perhaps the only story in the Bible where we are reminded that the “Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes” did indeed cause a few tears and gray hairs.  Although, I am sure that St. Luke has provided us with the edited version of the true conversation between mother and son. What Jewish mother, finding her missing child after three days, would simply be amazed?  Can you imagine your mother saying in polite English, “Child, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.”  I don’t think so.  It certainly wouldn’t be the response in our home where Jesus would have either been put into a time out for the next 18 years or grounded.  It doesn’t surprise me at all that when Jesus went back to Nazareth, he “was obedient to them.” This doesn’t mean that Mary and Joseph were unloving or uncaring.  Obedience is an important loving characteristic of all families, and so is respect, and those are the qualities that the Holy Family embodied and that I would like to share with you today.

Let me begin with that quality of obedience. All families understand the need for obedience. Mary, Joseph and Jesus all demonstrated obedience. Joseph was obedient when the angel told him to take Mary as his wife and to name the child Jesus. He obeyed when he was told by an angel to take his family and flee to Egypt, and later he obeyed when he was told to return again. Joseph obeyed in every instance, and he did so immediately and without complaint.  Mary was obedient when the angel Gabriel appeared and announced, “You shall bear a son,” and she obediently replied, “May it be done to me according to your word.”  Virtuous husbands and wives, mothers and fathers are obedient to God’s ways, not out of fear, but out of love and honor.  They understand and appreciate that God sees things they cannot see, and God knows things, they simply cannot understand. Families who long for fullness and joy in their life together should ask what expects out of their marriage and set obedience as an important, holy quality for their home.   Even Jesus was obedient. In fact, obedience is the only characteristic used to describe Jesus when he was twelve years old: He “was obedient to them.”

Obedience, however, is an extremely difficult challenge for everyone at every age. We want things our own way, and we just refuse to believe that God sees and knows more about our life and our future than we do. Is it any wonder that the Fourth Commandment, “Honor your father and your mother” is often the most difficult commandment to keep.  Obedience is the greatest challenge of childhood, adolescence and adulthood,  but as Jesus demonstrated, it provides the path to holiness and a bountiful life. Mothers and fathers have an obligation of obedience to one another, and to insist on what is good for their children and the family. When families demonstrate holy obedience, they honor God, and they honor one another.

Now, as important as obedience may be for the human family, it must go hand in hand with respect. Our family relationships change as we age, and so do our titles. Few of my friends in school, referred to their parents formally as mother or father.  More often than not, they were known simply as mom and dad.  Since we adopted our sons from Russia when they were four and six, my wife and I were initially referred to by them as mama and papa.  Though my wife had many other cute terms of endearment from Mommy to Mamouska. My names tended to be less flattering.  Pop to popster, to padre, and the least affectionate, the old man.  This is, however, slightly better than a friend who was  known to his son’s friends as the “tall, bald, cash machine.”

We were living in Slovakia when our oldest son Vitali turned 18, so we decided to search the internet to watch an episode from an old television series called Family Ties, featuring the young actor Michael J. Fox.  In this particular episode the son in the family Alex P. Keaton was preparing to celebrate his 18th birthday.  His plans were to cross the state border and go to a bar with his friends.  Alex’s mother, however, had quieter plans: A family birthday party with cake and ice cream.  The two had a fight, and so, to defy his mother, Alex left the house and drove away with his friends.  After all, he was an adult, he was 18 years old.  To Alex’s surprise, his mother drove the 100 miles to the bar in the neighboring state to find him and to bring him home.  She was furious and humiliated. This tension leads to the final and poignant exchange between the mother and son after they have returned home.  Alex asks, “Why did you do it?  You had time to kill,” and his mother answers, “Because you hurt me.”  Alex admits cautiously that he may not have been very sensitive, and says, “You’re my mother.  I don’t think about you as a person. You know what I mean.”  She then answers, “Well, surprise, Alex.  I am a real person.  Flesh and blood.  With real feelings.”

How often is it true in our own families, that we struggle all because we treat mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers as titles rather than people with real live feelings?  The Feast of the Holy Family is to celebrate Mary and Joseph and Jesus as models of faith, to be sure, but it is also to remind us that that we are all men and women with real human feelings that can be injured and hurt.  The Feast of the Holy Family, therefore, teaches us the importance of the human family in God’s mission in the world. We are called to live in the world with a sense of love, compassion, obedience and respect.

Over the past 25 + years of living as a father to two sons, I have experienced both the highs and lows of parenting. I have learned that parents’ names change, and I have learned that parents can frequently be totally confused by their children’s behavior.  And frankly, children can equally be confused by their parents’ behavior.  So truthfully, I find comfort in this story of Jesus being forgotten by his parents in Jerusalem. After all, if even the hand-picked members of the holy family could be confused, why shouldn’t we?

There was, however, one difference in their response.  Mary and Joseph practiced loving obedience and respect.  They practiced the holiness of love that we all aspire to. In spite of what happened, Mary and Joseph did not burst into a rage nor did they shame their son with words.  They seemed rather to follow the example that Jesus himself had set when he was lost in his own thoughts of being in his father’s House.  He listened and questioned.  That is the true gift of family.  For when we listen to each other as real live people, whether it is a struggling adolescent, a confused spouse or an aging parent, we can be like Mary, who would treasure all of these things in her heart. May you experience that wonder with your own family this Christmas season.  Amen.

May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Amen.