Sinners (Luke 2)

With that as the title, who is going to read this post?

I wouldn’t.

But I read in Luke 3 that “The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ.”

And what came right before that? A whole long discussion of John telling people that they need to repent from their sins. And after this kind of criticism, this negative thinking, the people wonder if John is the one who is coming to save them?

How can preaching about sin be positive? When the change in behavior is so positive. John says, if you have plenty, share it rather than hording it. If you have the right to gather taxes, don’t abuse the right. Don’t abuse the authority you have.

The message of repentance is always an about face. Stop doing what’s bad. Start doing what’s good. And good news is worth expecting.

missing children (Luke 2)

We’ve had moments when we have wondered where our children are. We spent what seemed like hours searching for our son at a theme park once. But three days? I’m guessing that we would be pretty frantic if we couldn’t find either of our children for three days.

We would look everywhere. We would ask everyone we could find if they had seen someone about this tall, with this color eyes, wearing that tunic I made…

The people most desperate to find Jesus, the people willing to give up just about anything to figure out where he was were…Mary and Joseph.

They had been up to Jerusalem as a family, taking Jesus when he was about 12. It was about the time when he would go from being a child of his parents to being a child of the law, accountable for his own behavior before the law.  When his parents left, they thought he was with other relatives, perhaps with his cousin John. A day into the trip back to Nazareth, it was clear that he wasn’t near.

And then, they started their desperate search.

Of course they found him, reasoning in the temple with the (rest of the) rabbis.  And he told them he was involved in the family business. Since Joseph was a carpenter, not a rabbi, it was pretty clear that Jesus was talking about his Real Father.

But that desperation. I can’t get past that desperation. What would it be like to be that devoted to finding Jesus?

I wonder.