The reading today from Luke 2 is yet again another really packed one. And not to skip along past the Christmas story—but well, let’s skip along. Why? I could surely write loads on the theological meaning of Christ’s birth. Of the historical importance of details Luke includes, etc. But for me, upon this reading, I find me mind captured by two other parts of Luke 2 that bring to mind my nearly eight-month old daughter.
My husband and I always hoped to have children. We were married August 30, 2008, which was MAYBE a year and a half after we’d first met. We wanted to wait a little bit before having children, but even early on we started talking about children. It was a bit surprising to me to find that apparently guys don’t pick out their children’s names as little boys. I mean, most GIRLS I know have at least thought about it. I had certainly done that. And I had always wanted to name a daughter Rebekah. I found myself, however, now married to a man whose sister’s name was Rebecca—and a husband who much preferred his sister’s spelling than the one I’d had in mind. So it was just as well that we looked elsewhere. It all happened on a car ride to VA to sister my husband’s sister. Driving along back roads (we’d gotten, well, a bit off track) we discussed naming guidelines (Bible name, family name), family naming traditions, ease of names going well with our last name (no easy feat) and settled upon one name for a boy and one name for a girl (we’ll have to go back to the drawing board if our next child is a girl!). There it was, then, several months before we ever got pregnant, that we had our daughter’s name picked out.
We had chosen Anna Marie. Marie is a generations-old family name on my side, and also relates to my mother—in-law’s name (Mary). Most of all, it was my given middle name, which I dropped when I got married and took my maiden name (as former parishioner Helen Seek said, “For professional reasons”). Anna is the name of my husband’s maternal grandmother, as well as a name on my side (my maternal grandmother’s name is Anne Marie).
Anna, is also, of course, the name of a woman we meet in our passage today. We are told ABOUT Anna, even though we are not told her actual words. It seems to me that Anna is portrayed as someone who was able to see what God was doing. And I can’t think of a better legacy for my own daughter than that. How much indeed does the world need help seeing God at work!
The second part that catches my eye now as a mother is the last section, about Jesus at the temple. I love Mary’s line, when they find Jesus, "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety." She is a much calmer person than I would be. But then, she IS a saint, right? I like Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of that line a lot too: "Young man, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been half out of our minds looking for you."
As I read that, and as I wonder what Anna’s life hold, I can’t help but wonder if (and I hope it’s not so much IF but WHEN) she’ll find that obeying her parents or following our advice is at odds with God’s will in her life. I’d like to think she would never have to make such a choice, but I think we all, or most of us at least, eventually find ourselves at that point where we realize that our parents are not perfect. And even if they are trying their very best, they have, as sinful creatures themselves, let even their advice to and care for us be tainted by their own will.
My only hope for when that happens (and I hope at least that it doesn’t happen too often) that Anna will indeed be able to follow God’s leading even when it is hard for us. Now, I hope God will help us out a bit and not let this all happen till, say, she’s out of her preteen years at least. But then, Mary and Joseph were special, so perhaps that why they got it so early in their son’s life.
The good news is that after this whole experience, Jesus seems to have followed them home where he lived out his childhood as a dutiful son. In the end then, they probably got off pretty easy. But this was as much, I suspect a pivotal experience for Mary and Joseph as it was for Jesus. Their son, they were reminded, was not their own. But God’s. Was, in fact, God. The rest of us may not (and in fact, do not) find ourselves as parents of God’s only child. But we do find ourselves as parents of children who are gifted to us by God. Who do not, in fact, BELONG to us. This is something I understand to be powerfully demonstrated when a child is baptized. I believe one of the things that is happening is that the parents are testifying to their own realization that they are caretakers, not possessors, of their child.
This is, then, then same message we see when Mary and Jesus take their son to the temple earlier in the gospel. As it reads, “22 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord"), 24 and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons."
And, I think we also see it in the very story of Jesus’ birth. This reality that this child, not unlike all children, is to some extent more than just the possession of a family. I mean, I cannot imagine random shepherds showing up days or even hours after my child’s birth. Mary would likely have been still very much in recovery herself. Trying to get the whole breastfeeding thing worked out. Tired. Not to mention she and Joseph were in a strange place, and there is no indication they were surrounded by family to help.
It is there we meet this child. Who is so much more than just the child of a man and a woman. So much more meaning and purpose in the world. My daughter Anna is not God’s begotten child. But she is nonetheless so much more than merely a possession of Chris and me. With far more meaning and purpose in the world than to do our will. May she indeed help people see God at work and do God’s will in all things.
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