Christmas 1: “Growing in Wisdom and Grace”

12/31/06

Luke 2.41-52; Colossians 3.12-17

Today our gospel lesson is the beautiful story of the boy Jesus in the Temple—a story precious to us because it is the only glimpse we get of Jesus from the time of his birth to the time, thirty years later, that he began his ministry. In the early centuries of the church, there were several writers who made up elaborate stories of what Jesus was like as a little boy. These are stories of fantastic—and often somewhat mischievous—miracles, tales of Jesus amazing his little friends with his super powers. But of course they are just fables that come out of the imagination of well-meaning and pious people. The gospels that became part of the church’s Book are much more sober, and they don’t feel the need to fill in the gaps of Jesus’ childhood. It is enough to hear this one story—and then to hear Luke’s simple summary, that Jesus “increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” That’s how our translation has put it, though the Greek here really does not separate out that last phrase. A better translation might be something like this: “Jesus increased in wisdom, age, and grace—in the eyes both of God and of other people.”

That phrase has always intrigued me. We know that Jesus was a human being, just like us. My sense is that this simple verse describes what an ordinary human being’s life ought to be like: that day by day, year by year, we ought to be growing in wisdom, age, and grace.

Now I do pretty well with the part about growing in age, and I suppose you do as well. I do seem to get older each year, and if my mind and spirit don’t notice it, my body is always willing to chime in and say, “Yep, you’re older, all right!”

But as for growing in wisdom and grace, that’s a different matter. We would like to think we grow in that way, of course; but probably we don’t grow as much as we might like. And perhaps that is something we think about particularly at this time of year, as the calendar changes yet again and we almost instinctively think back on the past year and ahead to the future, wondering what it will bring to the world and to us.

Or maybe the real question is, what will we bring to the world this year? Will we bring any more wisdom, or any more grace? Or are we stuck where we are, sitting in neutral, not getting anywhere in our own growth in wisdom and grace? And if that’s it, then how do we follow our Lord in his example of growing, not just in age, but in wisdom and grace?

Our readings for today also include a few verses from Colossians 3—one of my own favorite passages, and one that Lois and I chose to be read at our wedding so many years ago now. In a way it seems an odd choice for the Christmas season, and yet perhaps not so odd after all, because it ties in so beautifully with what it would mean for us to grow in wisdom and grace. And so Paul provides for us some good reflection on this eve of a new year of grace, the year of our Lord 2007.

Paul begins by saying to us that we are God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved. That’s always the starting point for us. We often feel like failures in our spiritual life, and maybe in other ways, too. We get discouraged and sometimes feel like giving up. But in all our self-reflection, you see, we must start here: we are God’s chosen ones. We are holy and beloved. That’s the message that came to us in Bethlehem, and that came to us in our baptism, and comes to us week by week at the Lord’s table: we are loved! We are chosen! And nothing changes that—not our failures, not our mistakes, our sins, nothing. We belong to God.

And because we belong to God, he provides us a remarkable wardrobe of graces and gifts: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another, love, peace, gratitude—the graces and gifts pour out like a flowing fountain! What if we took those things for our New Year’s resolutions? What if we took them as a kind of standard against which to check our growth in wisdom and grace?

Could we, for example, work in our own lives on compassion? The word literally means to “feel with another”—in other words, to pay attention not just to our own feelings, but to the feelings of others. Now I suppose most of us are fairly compassionate in the big picture. We see someone in desperate need, either locally or on the other side of the world, and we want to help. But if we are growing in wisdom and grace, we will also grow in compassion in lots of other situations.

Let me give you a small example. I am not a particularly patient driver. I get frustrated when I’m behind someone who doesn’t seem to know what they are doing. So I know that’s a place in my life where my compassion could stand some expansion. What I am trying to do—not always successfully, but I am trying—is to think about other driver’s with compassion. Perhaps that driver who is going way too slowly is a brand new driver, who is still a bit nervous on the road, or a very elderly person who know his reaction times have slowed. Perhaps that driver is new in town, and hasn’t figured out where things are. There are many reasons someone may not be driving up to my impatient standards. And what I have to do, in that situation, is to remind myself of that—to take a deep breath, to think not about my own frustration but about what might happening with that other person. You can no doubt think of the situations in your own life where your compassion could stand to grow a bit.

And then could we try a little kindness? We’ve been talking in our family over the past weeks about how much the kindness of others has meant to us. Kindness is such a simple thing, isn’t it? And yet what a wonderful gift it is. A kind word, a kind deed, and with so little investment on your part you can make such a wonderful difference in someone’s day, maybe in someone’s life. Kindness, truth be told, is a wonderful barometer of how a person has grown in wisdom and grace.

Humility—well there’s a difficult one! Maybe the best way to put it, the most general way to put it, is that it means not always having to be right, or having to have things your own way. It’s another sign of wisdom and grace, isn’t it?—this recognition that even though the world might be better organized if you were in charge, the truth is that things will work out just fine if you let someone else take the lead this time. We don’t always have to have things our way!—at least not if we are growing in wisdom and grace.

“Meekness”—that’s often a troubling word, because it has a sort of Caspar Milktoast quality to it in English. In Biblical language, though, it really means something like finding the perfect combination of gentleness and firmness. Aristotle defined this as the balance between too much and too little anger, so that one is able to be angry at the right time and for the right reasons, but one is able to refrain from anger at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons. It is a word, really, about self-control—or, should we say, about being controlled by the Holy Spirit, so that we respond appropriately in every situation.

Then comes patience. Most of us want to be more patient, and we want it right now! But it doesn’t come right now. It comes only with practice, and perhaps with frequent meditation on how patient God is with us.

Then there is forbearance and forgiveness, those essential qualities of the Christian life. If one could grow in compassion, kindness, humility and the rest, forbearance and forgiveness would become easy, wouldn’t they? I wonder if Paul may be suggesting that when we look at how we forgive one another, how we bear with one another, then we are seeing in the practical arena of daily relationships something of how we are doing with patience, meekness, compassion and the rest. Perhaps he is saying that all these virtues and graces and wonderful in the abstract, but only when we consider how we deal with real people in real life do we have a sense of whether we are growing in wisdom and grace.

Of course he summarizes it all by urging us to clothe ourselves with love—the supreme Christian virtue, and the one that embodies all the rest. Love, yes, and then peace, and then gratitude—all of them qualities which adorn the life of one growing in wisdom and grace.

Perhaps the last verse is the most instructive: “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.” “In the name of Jesus.” On the church’s calendar tomorrow, January 1, is known as the festival of the Name of Jesus. It is a sort of acknowledgement at the beginning of a new year that all life takes place “in the name of Jesus”—that in fact each year of grace is a year given to us, a year lived by us, “in the name of Jesus.” There could be no better New Year’s resolution than to strive to do nothing, to say nothing, that cannot be done or said in his Name. Of course we will not succeed, and we will have to fall continually on the mercy and lovingkindness of God as we come short of that goal every day. But that must not keep us from trying again, trying in this new year of grace, this year of our Lord 2007, trying in our own lives to increase—not just in age, but in wisdom and in grace.