When I was twelve years old, I attended middle school in a newly-built building which had very few interior walls.  This was the cool-and-groovy 1970’s, mind you, and rather than homerooms we had “families” and rather than classrooms, we had “areas” and the inner architecture of the building reflected this hip, new educational philosophy. If we weren’t sitting on fluorescent-colored bean-bag chairs on long shag carpet, we were sitting at round tables with other members of our “family” — aka classmates. In the sprawling wide-open classroom areas, there were only colorful 4-foot dividers which distinguished one “area” from another, and one “family” grouping from another. Gone were individual desks and enclosed classrooms, until (thank the good Lord) we commenced to high school where the educational world of rooms and classes and desks resumed.  It was a zany time and a grand experiment in education. And I understand that long since, walls have been constructed and class-rooms and desks are back. The old vogue didn’t last long.

In this new-fangled system and format, we also had report cards which gave us number grades instead of letter grades. Instead of A,B,C,D, & the dreaded F, we got 3s, 2s, and 1s. 3 was “outstanding”, 2 was “meets expected performance”, and 1 was “let’s help him/her improve” — really & truly! — which sounded a whole lot better than a “below-average” letter grade D, or a failing letter grade F. By the time I got to 4th quarter sophomore geometry — believe me — I would much rather have taken the “let’s help him improve” number grade 1 rather than my verrry-below-average D-minus. (As I’ve told you many times before, I was never very good in math, which is why I became a pastor!)

As we return to church today just three short days after Christmas, our scriptures no longer reflect the prophecies foretelling the birth of a wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, or prince of peace. Nor do we have narratives of a newborn babe lying in a manger, surrounded by livestock, shepherds, and aerial angelic ensembles. So if that’s what you want this morning, at this time I invite you to tune me out and lose yourself in the crèche here and wait-out the next 5 minutes or so. Today, if you’re still with me, of all things: we have the telling story of the very exasperated parents of a headstrong pre-teen adolescent (who ever has heard of such a thing?!) — a precocious prepubescent boy who acts like he doesn’t know who his “family” is, doesn’t seem to care where he should be, or when, nor what “area” he should report to, nor doesn’t seem to mind that his behavior has resulted in frantic & freaked-out parents who have spent 3 days looking all over for him… but who surely would have received a number grade of 3 (”outstanding”) from his temple teachers, while his parents most certainly would have docked that number to a 1 or a 1-minus- (”let’s REALLY help him improve”) especially in the subjects of geography (knowing where you are), language (knowing who you’re talking to), and mathematics (counting… the cost of sassing back to your parents).

Welcome to a day in the life of the holy family.

Martin Luther puts it this way of Jesus’ humanity, from his Table Talks, “The mystery of the humanity of Christ, that he sunk himself into our flesh, is beyond all human understanding.”

Today, if you needed a bit of a reality check to shock you back into fully embracing Jesus’ humanity, here you go: think of a willful, extremely-individuating 7th grader (not exactly a pleasant time in human development) — and there you have it: Jesus as a middle schooler — one of two gospel glimpses of Jesus’ family life between his birth and his baptism.

Somehow, in the spirit of “it takes a village to raise a child,” Jesus has gotten lost in the shuffle of the extended family pilgrimage to the Passover festival in Jerusalem. And so a day’s journey into the caravan back home to Nazareth, Mary & Joseph discover Jesus has not been playing and staying with the cousins as expected but rather is, in fact, still back in Jerusalem hanging out in the temple with the teachers — eagerly listening to them lecture and raising his hand a lot, asking questions and answering theirs and making insightful observations. But this they discover only after a one-day trek back to Jerusalem followed by a three-day panic-stricken search.

And then, when his parents finally do find him according to St. Luke they are astonished when they see him with the teachers. For three days they had scoured the city looking for their 12-year-old in places where 12-year-olds play and obviously the temple didn’t exactly fit that description. So once they get past their astonishment at finding Jesus sitting among the teachers in the temple, Mary pretty much lets the kid have it with both barrels: “Child, why have you treated us like this? (which is biblical poetry for “You little brat, what exactly do you think you’re doing?”). Mary continues, “Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” It had been four days since Jesus got separated from his parents. With Joseph and Mary, you have to wonder what was going through the kid’s head. Was there any separation anxiety whatsoever? Would he be upset with them for leaving town without him? Where did he eat and sleep for 4 days? Did he worry about upsetting and worrying his parents sick?

This is where the mystery Luther refers to kicks in. “The mystery of the humanity of Christ, that he sunk himself into our flesh, is beyond all human understanding.” A twelve-year-old, indeed. But in response to his mother’s anxious words, his seeming-unflappable Zen-like response: “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

St Luke immediately says his father and mother didn’t understand what he just said to them, but it’s the father-small-f versus the Father-capital-F thing Jesus is getting at. Somehow, this middle-school-aged kid is aware that the frantic father in search of him has found him in his actual Father’s house. It’s all beginning to unfold, as mysterious as it all is, but also with all the attendant messiness and awkwardness of a self-absorbed pre-teen. All St. Luke can conclude is that Jesus complied with their request to go back to his other father’s house in Nazareth and resume being the son of Joseph — and of Mary — for the next 18 years.

And apparently the 1 Jesus got from his parents for misbehaving in Jerusalem — “let’s help him improve” — worked. “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years,” Luke reports, “and in divine and human favor.” Yes, there was room for some improvement — even for our Lord. Becoming our Lord, growing in his identity — who he was and Whose He Was — was a process.

Today we gather to baptize E.J. — Edmund Junior Elias — baby son of Caroline and Edmund Sr. , who too will need to grow in the identity he receives today in Holy Baptism. Like Jesus, it will take him some time to increase in wisdom and in years. We too are on the journey to becoming the fullness of who we are, and today the life of Jesus shows us that it’s not a cake walk. There are awkward moments, and there will be tensions when who we are becoming in the godly life (our life with God) won’t sit so well with others. But St Paul lays it out rather well in the 2nd reading: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”

Today, even as E.J. as clothed in Christ and blanketed in God’s grace, so we too are given the reminder that the promise is ours as well: we are holy and beloved. Like Jesus, it’s going to take us a while to live into that role and to fully claim that identity. Meanwhile, we may exasperate our loved ones, frustrating our fathers and maddening our mothers.

Today, let the Babe of Bethlehem who became the awkward kid from Nazareth assure you: he’s been there. He will find you wherever you’ve wandered, and in him the promise is certain: you too will grow — by God — and you will grow in wisdom and in years, and you will grow in divine and human favor. It’s the mystery of Jesus’ incarnation, and it’s the ongoing mystery of yours. Amen.