Searching for Jesus

 Wednesday 12-30-20

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Have you ever noticed that the rest of the world seems to forget about Christmas by about… 5 pm Christmas Day? All the decorations come down – and depressingly, the Valentine’s day candy is already out in the stores! Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the sheep, and even baby Jesus in the manger go back in the box to wait for next year… why we twiddle our thumbs and wonder how to pass this weird time between Christmas and New Year’s.

I mean, what IS time right now anyway? Jesus has gone from being a baby to 12 years old in a matter of days! Not quite a child but not yet grown up – and definitely too young to be wandering off by himself. Can you imagine what Mary and Joseph must have been feeling when they realized that they had left their son behind in Jerusalem? This is before text messaging, GPS, or the Amber Alert. To them, Jesus was truly lost, maybe even forever. 

Jerusalem is a huge city to get lost in – Mary and Joseph spent three whole days searching for him, probably panicking the whole time. When they found him in the temple, can you image the relief that flooded through them as they realized that he was safe? Joy and anger mixed together filled Mary as she admonished her son – “How dare you do that to us?!? We were so worried!” 

But Jesus’ answer blew them all away. “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know that I would be in my Father’s house?” 

Driving up and down the freeway back and forth between Pennsylvania and Virginia these last few months, one billboard in particular caught my eye – It says “Concerned? JESUS (in all caps) can be trusted.” This makes me want to ask – can he though? He sneaks away from his parents as a tween and he grows up to cause trouble as an adult. And, it seems as though we constantly have to “find” him! Has anyone ever asked you if you’ve “found Jesus?” This makes searching for Jesus seem like a world-wide game of “Where’s Waldo.” It doesn’t seem fair - Can Jesus be trusted when he seems to constantly wander off, and is always in need of being “found”?

Even worse, it seems like when we need Jesus the most, when we desperately need comfort and hope, that’s when he seems the farthest away. Where IS Jesus during a year like 2020, not to mention during all the regular times our hearts get broken, such as the death of a loved one or news of an illness or layoff or other trouble? Where IS Jesus when life gets tough?

A ball of light will drop and the world calls it the New Year. We make resolutions and later break them. We make plans and have visions of the future that don’t always turn out as we expect them to. As my favorite evening prayer puts it – we are called to ventures we don’t know the ending to, paths yet to be trod, and we don’t know where we’re going.

But no matter where the dawning of 2021 finds you, whether on the main road you imagined, off the beaten path, seemingly lost on a detour, stuck in a rut or in the ditch, dawn will come and the light of risen Christ will shine upon you.

At Christmas we celebrate the arrival of Jesus, the of hope in our lives. He isn’t hiding, like in a game of hide-and-seek, behind the couch with the dust bunnies. He didn’t jump out the tomb that resurrection morning, never to be seen again. He wants us to find him. That is the exact reason why Jesus clothed himself in love so that we would recognize him, by becoming a human being – a tiny helpless baby – to live a life of love, finally ending in a loving act of sacrifice. 

How better to show us God’s love than to become one of us and to tell us in the flesh, to be born “in the usual way”? How better to show us that we are children of God than to meet us face to face, in all our smiles and tears, in our joys and sadness, in our hopes and fears. There was no better way to wrap us up in love than to come as a present, wrapped like one of us.  This love has been in front of us the whole time, wrapped in the form of a baby, almost completely unnoticed.

This gift of love that he has given us, in coming as one of us, surprised humanity so much that we didn’t see it for what it was. God gave to us everything– life and love and freedom and hope and peace - before we even knew that we needed it.

While we are searching so hard something to give us peace and hope in a troubled world, Jesus find us and holds us tight. We too become all wrapped up in the amazing and all-encompassing love of God, not just during the Christmas season, but on every day of our lives. So then let everything we do, be it singing carols or getting ready for a new year, be done in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus, who finds us when WE are lost.  Amen.