FINDING CHRIST AGAIN
Gospel Text: Luke 2:41-52
First Sunday after Christmas, 2015
Introduction.
We’re in that “new beginnings” time of year. Christmas Day is past, and the new year is coming. Of course, for us Christmas itself was a great beginning -- we celebrated the beginning of the Gospel, the gift of Christ to the world. It is true that Advent is our “new year,” the season when the church turns its calendar.
In light of all that, what better time to stop and reflect on one’s faith-life. What about my Christian commitment? Do I have any resolutions that need to be made?
Maybe I find myself in something of a spiritual slump. If so, it’s a great time to turn things around, and start moving forward again. But even if not in a slump, we all have areas that need improvement, where we need to grow up some more, or where we need to pick up the pace in our Christian walk.
On the other hand, neither of these might be you. Maybe you find yourself in something worse than a slump. Maybe you feel a bit like you’re out of the game altogether. Maybe the Christ, who was once so much a part of your life, no longer seems to be there.
If that’s the case, our text this morning has something to say especially for you. Because here is the story of Mary and Joseph, who had Christ in their life, then lost him, then found him again.
This morning we are going to follow Mary and Joseph’s story, and think about how we too might lose sight of Christ, but then at last come to find him again. For the shape of their story can fit the shape of ours as well.
So the title of the sermon is “Finding Christ Again.” We will look at three stages in the journey back to Christ. First, there is the one where we realize that Christ is missing. Second, there is the one where we go looking for him. And then at last, there is the one where we find him again.
I.
But let’s start by noticing one thing that we might easily overlook in the story. For a good while, Christ was indeed missing, but Mary and Joseph didn’t notice it. So it will be for us. If Christ goes missing from our lives, there will have been a time before that, when we neglected to be sure he was there.
Not to criticize Mary and Joseph too much, because no parents are perfect -- not even the holy ones. But Mary and Joseph evidently got so concerned with the journey back home that they failed to pay attention to Jesus, to be sure he was with them as they went.
We can understand this. We too can get so busy with our earthly concerns, and with driving toward some earthly purpose, that we leave Christ behind.
We can get caught up in the values of our culture. Affluence, Appearance, and Achievement are what our culture values. But these are not the values of the kingdom. So when we buy into these values, and devote our time and energy to them, we necessarily leave Christ behind.
Another aspect of our culture that can hurt us is its endless capacity for distraction. It clamors for our minds in so many ways. Technology has brought its blessings, but it has also delivered the possibility for an unlimited drain on our attention.
So living in the culture that we do, it is easy for disciples to get caught up in it all, and forget to ask, where is Christ in all of this? Then we can get distracted by other things, and before we realize it, we have left Christ behind.
II.
If that happens, it is important to be like Mary and Joseph, and finally come to realize that Christ is really missing.
We see that Mary and Joseph had a moment of quiet at the end of the day’s journey, when it occurred to them to think about Jesus, and wonder where he was. They took stock of the situation, and realized that he was not there.
It is impossible to overstress the importance of these moments of quiet, of taking stock of our spiritual inventory. And whatever we find, it’s important to be awake to it. We must be fully honest with ourselves about the state of our faith.
We might find that our earthly existence has become centered on something less than Christ. Perhaps some worldly desire that will die with us when we leave this earth, has taken an obsessive hold on us.
Or we might find that some anxious fear is driving us. The “joy and peace in believing,” of which the scriptures speak, is gone. Instead of love leading us, fear is driving us.
Or we might find that we harbor doubts. Now honest doubts will be part of every disciple’s growth process. In fact, we find it in the earliest disciples. It is remarkable that even when they stood and beheld the resurrected Christ with their own eyes, the scriptures say that “some doubted.”
For us, doubt can take many forms. It may be doubt about God, or it may be doubt about ourselves. But doubt is a dark place. It is a place to travel through toward something better. It is no place to live. We have to find a way through our doubts. But the first step is being honest with ourselves about them.
The point is, it is important to stop from time to time, and look at where Christ is in our lives. What if Mary and Joseph had kept so focused on getting back to Nazareth that day after day they never looked for Jesus? They might have reached Nazareth before finding out. The difficulty in finding him again would have been that much greater.
So what is the very first step to finding Christ again? The first step is being completely honest with ourselves. We stop first, and take stock. We have to admit to ourselves that he is missing. And the best time to do that is today, not tomorrow.
III.
But what if we find him missing? What next? Here is the turning point for us. It is very simple, but very critical. Here is where we get concerned. We break into a kind of dissatisfaction. We develop what the scriptures call a “godly sorrow”. In short, we become genuinely concerned, because Christ is not in our life as he once was.
It is impossible to imagine otherwise in Mary and Joseph’s case. What if they took stock, found Jesus missing, and didn’t care? Of course they cared, because that spark of love for Christ had not died. They were simply distracted from it.
Now I would like to make a bold statement. I believe the same is true for any disciple of Christ who once had him as their Lord, and once loved him. That spark of love still burns there. It might be somewhat dormant. It might be hidden away under the ashes. But it is still there.
We spoke a moment ago about being honest with ourselves. Well, there are two sides to this honesty. On the one hand, we are honest that Christ is missing from our lives. But on the other hand, we are honest with our feelings about that. We accept whatever sadness or even anxiety that comes with that realization.
In other words, we are honest about the love for him that remains, even if it’s only a spark. Remember, it only takes a spark to start a fire again. Any forest ranger will tell you that. A blazing fire can come from the tiniest spark.
So what are the first steps to finding Christ again? They are the steps of an honest and good heart. We must be honest that Christ is missing. But we must be honest too that we still love him, and that there is at least a part of us that wants him back in our lives.
IV.
So let’s say that this is where we are. We are like Mary and Joseph -- we have found Christ missing, and we are truly concerned. Let’s say we do want him back in our lives. What then?
One of the things that makes this story so memorable and delightful, is the picture of Mary and Joseph searching for Jesus. We see them moving through the night, anxiously searching everywhere along the road. We see them looking all through Jerusalem. After three days of sleepless and sorrowful effort, they find him at last. And they realize that he stayed behind on purpose, which makes them very upset. But his answer to them is priceless: “You didn’t need to worry, or work so hard to find me. Where else would I be, but right here in my father’s house?”
It is as if Christ is saying, “I understand your concern, but you went about this the wrong way, and made it much harder than it needed to be.”
This raises the question of whether there is a right way and wrong way to find Christ again. Is it possible to be looking for him, and not find him, because we’re looking in all the wrong places? Yes it is. If fact, there are false tracks and dead-ends that we might take.
One of these dead ends is something we can call “journeying in the dark.” In our story, Mary and Joseph left immediately and back-tracked all night on the road, looking for Jesus all the while. But Christ was not to be found on this dark road.
It is true that if Christ is missing from our lives, we will not find him until we get out of the dark. We have to stop living in dark places, and dwelling on dark things. We cannot expect to find Christ, if our spirits have settled in those negative places where he does not go.
For example, he is not found where we worry and fret over the evil in the world. Remember that our prayer to God is, “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” When we pray that prayer, we confess that God’s will is NOT always done on earth. There is a side of earthly existence where God should not be looked for, for he cannot be found. So we cannot expect to find Christ there either, certainly not in those regions of our heart that dwell on such things.
Another place he cannot be found is on the dark road of anger and self-pity, because of what others have done to you, or what life itself has put in your path.
This is not to say at all that Christ cannot be found in our sufferings. Indeed, he is the suffering one himself, and understands all our sorrows. But if Christ is to be found in our sufferings, it is because he participates with us in them, and gives a meaning to them that lifts us beyond them. He shows us the path through and beyond the pain. So to follow him, as the Psalm says, we move through the dark valleys of life, with our Shepherd leading us. If we settle down in those dark places, nursing in our anger or wallowing in our self-pity, we will not find him.
The point is, if Christ is missing from our lives, we can find him again. But we must stop looking for him in the wrong places. We have to get out of these dark, negative places and look for him elsewhere.
V.
So then, just how will we find him again? The lesson we learn from our text, is that finding him again is much easier than we think.
The key is found in the words Jesus spoke to Mary and Joseph. When Mary said, “We have been looking everywhere for you”, she meant it. They had spent three days and nights worried sick, searching for him. Now, if you’ve ever had a child go missing -- for example, a teenager -- you can appreciate Mary’s feelings at the moment.
But notice Jesus’ response to her: “Why were you looking for me?” he says. “Why all this anxious and constant searching everywhere?” After all, he says, “Where else would I be, but here, where my Father is.”
In other words, he says, the Temple of God, his Father’s house, was the place to find him. Where else would he be?
I want to affirm that, for us too, finding Christ again will not be a matter of anxious seeking and ponderous effort. The spirit of striving effort and hard-working achievement is the spirit of our culture, but it is not how we find Christ. For Jesus is not hiding from us. He is there in the Temple of God. For where you find God, there you find Christ. And where you find Christ, there you find God. This is the great truth of our faith.
Now the temple where Mary and Joseph found Jesus is no more. It lies in ruins. But you and I still have a temple that we can enter and find Christ. In fact, there are three spiritual temples we can enter, where we can find Christ again by encountering God, and find God again by encountering Christ.
A.
The first is the temple of nature. When Jesus taught us to pray, he said to pray to “our Father, who art in heaven.” In this way he taught us that God can be approached everywhere. Wherever the heavens are spread open to us, there he can be found. There is a beautiful Psalm that speaks of this, of how God’s presence is everywhere in the open world.
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
And we think too of the Psalm that says, “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” Everywhere we turn in nature and experience its beauty, and how meaningful it all is, we see the glory of God shining through it. God shines through it, like light through a stained-glass window.
And it is more than a glory that makes us tremble with its power. It is the glory of love. For here, too, we experience the love and grace of God. We experience the raw grace of mere existence.
So even here we find Christ. For wherever we experience God as grace and love, we experience God as Christ brings him to us. The heart that is grateful for the simple blessings of existence, will be the heart that is finding Christ again.
B.
So one temple where we find Christ is the temple of nature. A second one is closely related, for it too is God’s creation. We find him too in the temple of our own hearts. For here, in our spirits, the living God has chosen to dwell.
The New Testament teaches us that our bodies are the temples of that Holy Spirit, which we have been given from God. It is this Spirit, Paul says, by which God has poured out his love into our hearts. And he calls it the Spirit of Christ, for because of this Spirit, Christ himself dwells within us.
We must conclude then, that Christ is not so hard to find again. He is as close to us as we are to ourselves. He is here in our own hearts. All we need to do is to turn and see him.
Christ can be found again, if we turn and look in those light-filled and positive places in our own souls --
He can be found again
at those places in our heart where we see the Father and know his presence;
at those places where we find God to be our ultimate, our center;
He can be found again
at those places in our heart where we accept the Gospel fully and without reservation -- where we allow God to accept us, in spite of our failures and sins;
He can be found again
at those places in our heart where the fruits of the Spirit are struggling to be borne, wherever faith, hope and love find a place; wherever we find joy and peace and patience;
and wherever his way of living is conscious to us.
In all these places we encounter Christ in our own hearts. And we find it to be true that the Spirit of Christ still lives there. Even in the midst of our sorrows and struggles, and in spite of our doubts and failures and sins, there are places inside where he still is.
So here is a temple too, where Christ can be found, in the temple of our own hearts.
C.
But there is a third temple of which the scriptures speak, where we can go to find Christ again. And that is the temple of the church. By the church we do not mean a building or an institution. We mean the people of God in Christ that lives in the world and is working out a special history in the world.
The scriptures call the church the temple of God, built on Christ as its foundation. It is a true temple, for in this community of faith, the living God has chosen to dwell. If we are disciples, we understand this. For all of us can say that here is where we came to know God through Christ, and came to know Christ through God.
Now all these places that we have identified as temples are temples on the earth. And so they are not without their negative elements, and even aspects that are contrary to the will of God. This is true certainly of the temple of our own hearts. And it is true as well of this third temple, the church. But in spite of the human failings that we find in it, somehow we find Christ there as well.
Here we have the scriptures to teach us about God, the people of God, and the Christ of God.
Here we have a house of praise, where we can worship and pray and experience God together.
Here we have baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the preaching of the Gospel.
And here too we have one another to love and serve. For remember what Christ said: When we do service to the least of these our brothers and sisters, we do service to him.
We learn from this a most important way to find Christ again. We find him in our fellow disciples. For that matter, we find him in anyone whom we have learned to love truly. In those people whom God has put before us to love and be loved by, we encounter Christ again and again.
So the good news of our text this morning is that Christ can be found again. Set your heart at peace, and look for him in the temple of the living God wherever you find it -- whether the temple of nature, the temple of your heart, or the temple of God’s people, the church.
Conclusion.
So as we close, let’s stop with Mary and Joseph at the end of that first day’s journey. Let’s take a moment to take stock of things and ask: Is something missing? Is it time for me to find Christ again?
If Christ has gone missing in your life, may God grant that you find him again. For he is not in hiding. He is there. He still loves you and he still seeks you. You need only turn your heart, and there he’ll be.
May God make it be so for all of us. Amen.
Communion Meditation.
If we want to talk about finding Christ again, we have to think of the Lord’s Table. However spiritually low we might feel, or however absent God might seem from our lives, here is a moment when we can hear the gospel again. Here Christ accepts us around his table as his disciples, not because of our achievements or successes, but simply because he loves us and wants us to follow him.
As we eat the Lord’s Supper this morning, we bind ourselves with the past. We place ourselves with those first disciples who walked with him and ate with him during his earthly ministry. We also bind ourselves to that special past in our individual stories, when we first began to follow Christ. But above all we bind ourselves with the present, for he is our living Lord, and it is now that he invites us to eat at his table, and urges us to accept his sacrifice for our sins.
May we do so now. All who consider themselves the disciples of Christ are invited now to eat at the Lord’s table.
Benediction
“I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, God may grant that you be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.“
Amen
