Sermon Title: "Teaching in the Temple, and at Church"
Date: June 8, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Luke 2:41-52

While four gospels record the events during Jesus’ three year ministry, isn’t it amazing how little we know of his upbringing?  Only two—Matthew and Luke—record any story of his birth.  And Luke alone has the only story of his childhood years.  Chapter two covers everything from the familiar story of his birth retold each Christmas Eve, to his circumcision at eight days, to today’s story of an incident when he was twelve years old.  Chapter three begins more than a dozen years later with John the Baptist and by verse 21, the adult Jesus has been baptized.

It was quite by divine inspiration, as Laura Tschudin and I stood around my desk Tuesday morning discussing Promotion Sunday, that I realized the story of Jesus learning in the temple would be the perfect lesson for this day.  Just as Jesus learned there, so too do we attempt to teach the same tenets of the faith here at our church.

One of the developmental tasks of childhood, teenage, and young adulthood is discovering and affirming one’s identity.  What defines any of our identities—family ties, religious experience, a sense of vocation, a personal creed, or one’s dreams and ideals?  Jesus found his identity by affirming his relationship to God.

Just as a child at Disneyland might become mesmerized by the sight of a Mickey Mouse balloon floating off into the sky or a particular ride, and possibly become separated from his parents, it sounds as if Jesus had a similar experience.  He stayed behind in Jerusalem, and his parents, in all the hub-bub of the group traveling back to Nazareth, did not notice that he was missing for a while.  “After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”  When his anguished parents finally find him, and his mother says, “Your father and I have been searching for you with great anxiety,” Jesus’ response is, “Why were you searching for me?  Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

Did you catch the clever play on the word “father”?  Mary says lower-case “Your father and I have been searching…”  Jesus replies upper case “I must be in my Father’s house.”  This selection alone pushes Jesus’ recognition of his identity as God’s Son back prior to his baptism.  Jesus was fully human, yet fully cognizant that God was his Father.

We believe that while we are fully human, we are all God’s children as well.  And that has certainly been the mission of this church over its 83 year history.  The present offices were the first Sunday School rooms before more of the building was constructed.  The 1940s saw a one story Christian Education wing built, and before the decade was over, a second story was added, complete with a youth chapel we continue to use.  This church has had directors and ministers of Christian education since the 1940s.  And I have defined Christian education as one of the three most important aspects of our shared ministry, alongside worship and mission projects.

Every time a child sits in worship and listens to the scripture lesson, or recites the Lord’s Prayer, or fills out a children’s bulletin which is themed to the scripture lesson, or leaves this sanctuary to go to Sunday School, they are doing exactly the same thing the twelve-year-old Jesus was doing in the temple so long ago:  “…they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.  And all were amazed at his understanding and his answers.”

Were you here two weeks ago, when I talked with the children on the steps about the communion service we were all going to have together last Sunday?  I asked who could tell me what communion was.  Five year old Marquez, who I had never seen before, spoke up and said, “It’s when we eat the bread that’s Jesus’ body and drink the cup that’s his blood.”  I tell you, I was astonished and amazed.  A child, on his first Sunday here, was comfortable enough to speak up.  And he obviously knew his material.  He had listened somewhere in church before.

That’s what we try to do.  We try to build on the experiences learned year-by-year.  It is difficult for a teenager who has not attended worship or Sunday School regularly to participate in my confirmation classes.  I go into them presuming they have some background.  They are supposed to know what the Trinity is, what religion Jesus was, how many disciples he had, some of the lessons he taught, and how he died.

All of us who know any of those things can thank Sunday School teachers from our own past whose names we are not likely to remember.  But what we learned in church we know, just as Jesus learned in his home, and demonstrated in the temple.  We try to recreate that experience every week here.