Redeemer Lutheran Church

Dear friends in Christ Jesus,

What was life like for you when you were 12 years old? Was your time spent playing hockey or baseball or some other sport? Were you enrolled in music lessons or swimming lessons or loaded down with homework assignments? Did you spend much time in church? Did your parents drag you there every Sunday? Did you ever go to church WITHOUT your parents?

When I read this story about Jesus as a 12-year-old boy in the temple, I’m confronted with a profound mystery. Something I just can’t understand. Here we have the God/man, or in this case the God/boy Jesus Christ, sitting and chatting with the leaders of the temple, asking them questions. And I ask myself, “In this encounter, what are we seeing here? Are we seeing the Almighty God giving the religious experts some kind of divine pop quiz, firing questions at them to see if they’ve got their theology right?”

Or are we looking at a 12-year-old boy seeking answers to the deep questions of life? Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? What is my purpose? Where am I going? Those were the kind of questions I had when I was 12 years old. Maybe deep down beneath all the activities that kept you occupied as a 12 year old, you had some of those questions too.

Because Jesus was truly human – a true boy – maybe he had these same questions. And maybe that’s why he’s there that day, all alone, without his parents, asking profound questions and seeking profound answers.

The crises we have in life always seem to lead us back to those basic questions. It may be the crisis brought on by puberty – when we’re suddenly and powerfully moving from childhood into adulthood. Or it may be a crisis of a failed relationship, a broken marriage, a lost love, a betrayal of trust. It may be a crisis brought by the death of a beloved wife or husband, or a child. It may be the sudden loss of your employment or the prospect of facing retirement with insufficient funds. All kinds of situations in life can cause us to re-examine our basic beliefs about life. Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?

This morning our 12-year-old Lord Jesus helps us answer that first and most important question: Who are we and where did we come from?

The world is quick to affirm and our students are boldly taught in school that we all evolved, beginning from a “big bang” and a primordial soup of chemicals. Is that where we came from? Where do we define and affirm our origin? Where do we discover answers to our identity and purpose in life? Is it in the pages of a science book? Is it in the classroom? Is it from the History Channel or from the collective wisdom gleaned from the pages of facebook? No! It’s right here. In our Father’s house! Mary and Joseph didn’t need to waste their time scouring the video arcades and midway attractions of Jerusalem in search of their Son. He was right there where he belonged — in His Father’s house, listening and asking questions.

Here is where we find and affirm our identity too! In our Father’s house. It’s right here every time we participate in the Divine Service – here, in the first three actions of the liturgy — in our preparation for worship.

It’s there in the first action, the Invocation where we remind ourselves of who we are. Recalling our baptism, we can make the sign of the cross and declare that we are indeed children of the Triune God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The pastor proclaims it and you affirm that it is true with your strong acclamation of Amen! We belong to God. He created us. He knit us together in our mother’s wombs. He has numbered all our days, as the Psalmist says. And not only did He create us, He recreated us in Holy Baptism where He put His Name upon us, adopted and claimed us as His own dear children, added us to His family of faith, and bestowed upon us an inheritance that will never fade, spoil or decay, eternal in the heavens. In the invocation we know and affirm exactly who we are, where we came from, and where we are going! So don’t be timid with your “Amen.” Let your “Amen” ring forth proudly and boldly. God is your Father. You are in His house where you belong! Here you find your identity.

But you come here every Sunday morning after having struggled with your identity all week long. The Devil has been working hard to get you to abandon your identity, to deny your birthright, to forsake your inheritance. “Are you really the Son of God?” he asked Jesus in the wilderness. Then turn these stones to bread, grab all the riches and pleasures the world has to offer, expect God to heal your every disease and make your life easy and carefree. And when it doesn’t happen according to your expectations, well can you really trust God after all? What kind of father would let you down like that? You struggle with that every week.

And you struggle with what the world is teaching you – to accept its standards of morality, to forsake God’s commandments and do what pleases you. And you fight against your own sinful flesh – the temptations to live life your way, according to your desires and will instead of the will of your Father. It’s a deadly battle, this struggle to remain true to your identity as a child of God in the midst of the challenges of life all around you. You struggle and you fail. You know you fail, and so do I.

That’s where the second action of the liturgy speaks to us – or rather, where we speak the truth to God. “I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto you all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended you, and justly deserve your temporal and eternal punishment…” This is who we are – children of God who have failed in so many ways to live the lives He wants us to live. And we respond to that failure, not by denying it, not by making excuses for it, not by trying to justify it, but by confessing it! And we implore His mercy, for the sake of Jesus: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

Then comes that wonderful third action of the liturgy – the proclamation of God’s forgiveness, where from the voice of God’s representative, with God’s own authority, we are pronounced forgiven, restored, reconciled. Those are more than just words. Those are words that carry the full authority of God’s plan of salvation completed in His own Son. For the sake of Jesus’ perfect life of obedience and for the sake of His innocent suffering and death and glorious resurrection the Father now wraps His forgiving arms around us and pulls us back to His bosom where we’re safe and secure.

So, who are we? We are God’s own beloved children, struggling and failing time and time again, but then returning to Him in repentance and receiving His forgiveness and strength for the future. This is what we affirm over and over again, here, in our Father’s house.

My dear friends, come here often. This is where you belong. This is your Father’s house. This is where you discover and affirm your identity. Don’t let others, don’t let the devil, the world or your sinful flesh, try to define you. They will do their best to discourage you, to pull you away, to create doubt. But you belong to God and you belong here, in your Father’s house, asking questions, seeking answers, and always receiving the knowledge, strength, assurance and love that your heavenly Father wants you to have.

Whatever knowledge he may have had as a human boy, Jesus was certain of one thing. God was his dear Father who had a purpose for his life. My friends, you can be sure of the same – God is your Father who has a purpose for your life — for you have been redeemed and all your sins have been forgiven. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.