Holy Family

1 samuel 1:20-22,24-28; Ps 84 Blessed are they who dwell in your house;  1John 3:1-2,21-24;  Luke 2:41-52

There is a sixth grader at school that wears a hoody often when it is cool outside.  The hoody he wears as the following words written on it, "believe the hype."

Believe the hype.  I asked him one day whether he understood what that meant.  He shook  his head and mentioned that he didn't know exactly what it represented.

So I gave a quick tutorial of "hype."

Hype is associated with an extravagant or even exaggerated sense of publicity or attention given to something or someone.  We see this a lot when a prospect is chosen number one in their prospective  fields of expertise such as football and or basketball.

There is a lot of hype that circulates these players with a sense of great expectation.  The talent and skill set points toward something huge on the horizon.

People get excited and a lot of commotion ensues.

RGIII in Washington as the new Redskins quarterback created a lot of hype.  Johnny Manziel, the aggie quarterback, created a buzz and stir and especially with the Hiesman trophy in his clutch, a lot of hype is generated.

There was certainly a lot of hype built up around the coming of the Messiah.  There was a lot of publicity and stir centered around this CHild who was to be named Emmanuel, God-with-us, God saves.

With a name like that, we should expect great things.  The stir and commotion was building.

Let's face it is pretty darn hard to compete with the hype of Jesus.  Just to note few things.

His mother was a virgin who conceived by the Holy Spirit and whose news of such an event was brought forth by the Angel Gabriel.

Not only that but Joseph gets news of this reality by an angel as well speaking to him in his dreams.

This isn't normal folks.

Then we get the long journey to Bethlehem, where MAry heavy with child is riding on a donkey, all the while Joseph is pondering where he might find a place for them to stay.

What they get is a stable where the feed trough becomes the crib.

Then we get the angels bursting on the scene causing a stir amongst the shepherding folks with the good news of glad tidings about a savior being born.   Then the heavenly Choirs joins in and singing Glory to God in the highest...

Again, this isn't normal.  Talk about publicity surrounding this event of the birth of this child.

Then  the Magi show up with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh while following this star that seems to hover over the place where this child sleeps.

Again, talk about hype.  Talk about extravagant and exaggerated commotion.

Herod who gets wind of the developments sends out his posse to rid the land of such a nuisance like the child.

Then Family of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus pack up and get on the move to Egypt to protect their life and escape harms charge.

The hype is swirling around.

After all this hype, what do we get,  Nothing! We get nothing for the next 12 years of Jesus' life.
The hidden life of Joseph, Mary and Jesus just simple unfolds with no fuss.

It is just an ordinary developing family that keeps God at the center of their life together as the gospel points out, "each year Jesus' parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of passover, and when he was twelve they went up according to festival custom."

God is given first place this family.  Jesus lives in the ordinary and everyday unfolding of life.

Perhaps that is the point.  Perhaps this is what means to be a holy family, letting Jesus enter the hidden recesses of our family and allowing him space to live there.

Then at twelve we get this reality as the gospel reveals.

Mary and Joseph began to search for Jesus.  For three days they search.  Imagine what was going through their heads: was he kidnapped, was he a terrible accident, was he hurt or worse, was he put in slavery.

I could only imagine the aguish Mary and Joseph experienced.

It is easy to sense the tension and irritation in Mary's voice as she speaks those words, "Son, why have you done this to us?  Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety."

Think about that anxiety.

Anxiety is  about fear, apprehension, worry. It comes about with a sense of loss of control.

Remember Mary and Joseph and Jesus go up to Jerusalem to celebrate the passover. The passover is on of the tree principle feast in which the Jewish identity as the chosen people is embrace and rediscovered.

The reason behind the feast of the passover is for the people to remember the mighty acts of God.  They gather to recall how God took care of them and led them from slavery; how they crossed the red sea unharmed and how for forty years God fed them with manna and journeyed with them with a pillar of fire at night and cloud during the day.  They relived the experience of God leading them to the promise land.  They were to rediscover the reason for their hope and the foundation of trust in their life: God was with them.  God was at the center of the unfolding of their human lives and history.

The feast is about trust.

After the celebration of trust and reliving God's embrace in their lives, we get MAry and Joseph filled with anxiety and fear and apprehension.

How so like us in our lives.  It is easy to speak about trust on a general scheme of things but much harder when trust demands a personal response in our life, in our family?

Where are we with our personal trust of God leading and guiding us in our families?  How often do we take matters in to our own hands and bring about our own undoing?

We see this all the time in regards to married persons and so called "birth control."  Fear and apprehension dictate rather than trust in God's loving embrace.


Then we get to the punch line of today's gospel.  Jesus responds, "why were you looking for me?  Did you not know that I must be in my Father' s house.


I would have gotten the snot knocked out of me if I would have done that to my family.  But Jesus' words are important.

He reminds us all of the centrality of God's will in our life.  Ultimately, trusting God is a personal reality not just a generals consensus.

Jesus was not born into the world to be Mary and Joseph's child.  He was born to do the Father's will.

As it is for JEsus so it is for all of us, all of our children.  Children are not given to parents so they can be their possessions.  Children are given to parents so they can grow understand God's will in their life.

How parents need to discover this time and time again.  How parents need to understand their role as parents isn to foster in their children a deep desire for and a willingness to pursue happiness which only comes in living for the will of God in their life.

This is what it means to be a holy family in the first place.

Their circumstances are not unlike the circumstances of every and any family.  They encountered the same challenges and heart aches and mystery as our families encounter.  They do the same thing our families do, but they do it differently.  Here in lies the crux of the holy side of things: they learn to keep God at the center both generally speaking and personally living.