Emmanuel, God Finding Us

 12-26-21

Grace to you and peace to God our creator and from our Lord and savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen. 

Have you ever noticed that the rest of the world seems to forget about Christmas by about… 6 pm yesterday? How many of your neighbors are taking down their decorations today? How many trees have you already seen at the curb this morning? And depressingly, the Valentine’s day candy AND EASTER candy are already out in the stores! 

It’s December 26th, and we want to put Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the sheep, and even baby Jesus in the manger back in the box to wait for next year. The ironic thing is though, the wise men technically haven’t even arrived yet - THEY don’t show up until Epiphany - NEXT Sunday!

I mean, what IS time right now anyway? Jesus has gone from being a baby to 12 years old in a matter of hours! Not quite a child but not yet grown up – and definitely too young to be wandering off by himself (though definitely old enough to be vaccinated). 

Can you imagine what Mary and Joseph must have been feeling when they realized that they had left their son behind in Jerusalem? Jerusalem is a huge city to get lost in – Mary and Joseph spent three whole days searching for him, probably panicking the whole time. Remember, this is before text messaging, GPS, or the Amber Alert. To them, Jesus was truly lost, maybe even forever. 

When they found him in the temple, imagine the relief that flooded through them as they realized that he was safe. Joy - and some exasperation 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. No apology or guilt from him. Instead he asked “Why were you searching for me?” “Didn’t you know that I would be in my Father’s [house]?” Who would have thought that our tween Lord and Savior would sass off to his parents. 

And this is only a foretaste of the feast to come - at 12 he sneaks away from his parents. As an adult, he continues to cause trouble.  He evades being categorized. He talks in circles. He’s hard to pin down. It seems as though we constantly have to “find” him - like when impeccably dressed proselytizers knock on your door and ask you “Have you found Jesus?” as if Jesus is Waldo. 

This begs the question - Can Jesus be trusted when he wanders off, and always seems to be 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 WAS Jesus during a year like 2020 and 2021, especially when the turn of this year looks pretty dicy, not to mention during all the regular times our hearts get broken? Where IS Jesus when life gets tough? 

Jesus doesn’t alway do what we expect him to do, and stay where we expect him to stay. And that actually can be a good thing. He was born a king on Christmas, but he did not grow up to be the king that others expected him to be. Instead of wearing fine robes and dining in palaces, he broke bread with poor people and hung out with fishermen, tax collectors, and women. Instead of wielding a sword, he used his words to teach and to heal and bring peace. Instead of being venerated as king of his people, he was honored and recognized by wise men from another country. 

At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the hope arriving 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 first Easter morning and ride into the sunset, 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 one of us. 

How better to show us God’s love than to become one of us and to tell us face to face? How better to show us that we are children of God than to FIND US where we are at, 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 by everyone except for Mary, Joseph, some angels and some shepherds. 

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 Jesus before we even knew that we needed him, and Jesus keeps showing up and surprising us, and not just at Christmas either. 

Last year during Vacation Bible School, do you remember that one of the songs was about Christmas? That’s right - in the middle of the heat and the onslaught of the cicadas (remember those?) all the kids were singing about Jesus as a little baby. They sang “It can feel like Christmas in the springtime or the fall. It can feel like Christmas through the hottest months of all…. Emmanuel, God is with us all year long.”  At the time, I though there was no way that these kids would be into this song in June… but I was wrong! They were really into it, and requested that song again and again. 

The second verse of that VBS song starts “I don’t need presents, I don’t even need a tree. Remembering that Jesus came is all it takes for me.” That’s easy to say in the heat of June, but it’s also true in December - While we are searching for hope amid the leftovers and the crumpled wrapping paper and the drying out tree  Jesus finds us and holds us tight. 

We are found, and 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. Emmanuel, God is with us all year long, even on December 26th. Emmanuel, we don’t have to go looking for him. Emmanuel, who finds US when WE are lost. Thanks be to God. Amen.