I set a personal record this past Tue for most bulletins put together in one morning. The old record was three, but I managed, between 8 and 10 am, to put together four different ones: one funeral, two Christmas Eve, and this one for today. The hardest thing, five days before today, is coming up with a sermon title when all you have is an announced lectionary text, but no idea what direction the text might take you. It’s sort of like going skiing and hopping on a chair lift that has been stripped of all of the familiar color codes that would tell you if are going to be dumped out on a green slope (for easy), a blue (for intermediate) or a black (for advanced) or even a double black diamond (and you know you should only get on this last one if 1) you are absolutely insane or 2) if you are trying to impress either your girlfriend or your teen-aged children, not necessarily in that order.

I had a friend who once was an associate minister in a large Lutheran church in Florida. I couldn’t believe it: he only had to preach about once every six weeks, but he was such a procrastinator that he could never decide until Saturday night what he was going to say. And so, each time when it was his turn and he had to turn in the bulletin information on Friday, he would give to the church secretary the same sermon title: “Stuff About God.” I guess that is why he ended up doing camping ministry in the mountains of western North Carolina!

I chose “That Was Random!” for my title because I figured it would leave me the most options. I am always fascinated by the use of language, particularly the neologisms that creep into ordinary conversation. Take the word “cool,” for instance, a word that used to refer to the temperature outside, but then became a word meaning “that’s ok” or “that sounds good to me,” but a word that I once heard only on the lips of adolescents and college kids, but now the phrase “that’s cool” can be heard on the lips of granny and grandpa alike.
I had never heard or used the phrase, “that was random!” growing up. In fact, I never heard it till I had teen-aged children of my own. But I have learned that it is a succinct way of saying to someone else, “you know, what you just said had no point;” or, “why don’t you start paying attention.” I predict, before long, that you too will be using that phrase anytime someone says something that doesn’t make any sense. In fact, it might even become handy as you exit the church on any given Sunday!

Of course, popular taste in current fashion has done the same thing. Adults often imitate, not only the neologisms of the young, but their tastes in fashion as well, from hairstyles to T-shirts and blue jeans to video games and movies to our culture’s sports mania and other assorted obsessions. The key to successful marketing – the advertising executives no doubt will tell you – is, of course, getting the young not only to buy your product, but to believe that they cannot live without it. Once that happens, the herd mentality takes over, and then the peer group thing kicks in, including perhaps even some of the adults, all then following in a state of almost blind imitation.

Well, what’s wrong with this picture? It has to be one of the great role reversals in all of human history. That the adults have stopped acting like the adults, and have become like the children; being pals with one’s child has taken precedence over being a parent; being playful over being paternal; saying, “anything’s alright with me so long as it makes you happy,” instead of “here are the limits.”

I clipped a guest editorial from the Knoxville paper that they had picked up from the Los Angeles Times, entitled College Students Still Need Adult Supervision. A professor at LSU argues in this article for the reinstitution of in loco parentis, the Latin phrase for “in place of the parents.” He writes: “When you see sports riots on college campuses or hear about out of control sex parties in dorms or drinking binges at fraternity houses, recall that the young people in question have no one to tell them to cut it out. .. . The right of 18 years olds to vote, should not have been paired with the right to drink yourself into a coma. It’s time to bring loco back. . . . Interestingly, among the last bastions of in loco parentis are some of the nations historically black colleges and universities. I have black students who transferred or have siblings who attended such institutions. They tell me that teachers there still feel the duty (and are given the license) to tell students to shape up and act properly. Most of my students, the professor concludes, are wonderful, law-abiding and decent; otherwise, I wouldn’t be a teacher. But they are also still growing up, and they need strong adult supervision to nurture them.”

Perhaps one of the unforeseen casualties of the freedoms won during the 1960s has been exactly the setting aside or at least the attenuation of boundaries and rules, whose loss now seems so lamentable and so potentially damaging to the moral development of young and old alike.

Instead of more unified social assumptions about what’s right or what’s wrong, the rules, if they exist at all, seem to be rather more random, both in theory and in their application.

Well, speaking of neologisms, now I need to “segway” into the text for today.

Meaning no disrespect to the gospel writer, Luke, but when you look at the total scheme of the life of Jesus and the way that life is remembered and told, it does seem rather random that Luke includes this one snapshot from a time when Jesus was aged 12. No other gospel writer includes anything about Jesus between the time of his infancy and the inauguration of his public ministry when John baptized the adult Jesus. Perhaps by then, at the baptism, if tradition holds true, Jesus was in his early thirties, although we really don’t know for sure. What happened during those intervening18 years? Did he stay at home? Did he hire out his carpentry skills in Nazareth or elsewhere? Did he travel?

And speaking of random, I can’t think of another narrative like this one from the end of Luke chapter 2 in all of the New Testament: the story of a 12 year old boy and a time of conflict with his parents. To use descriptive language from our own time that is a bit anachronistic, but helpful nonetheless, Jesus was a boy on the cusp of becoming an adolescent, a time of self-discovery, separation, and a growing sense of independence and curiosity about his future.

The story tells us that Jesus lost himself from his parents as they made their way back home with that crowd of pilgrims after the family had participated in the feast of Passover. It was intentional. Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem unbeknownst to them. What he did with all that time on his hands, we’ll never know for sure. But it has always been hard for me to imagine that he spent all of that time, 3 days and 3 nights, in the temple (but, of course, maybe he did!). Perhaps he was also learning how to take care of himself in Jerusalem, in an environment without parents or kin around to supervise his every step or tend his every need.

The worried parents, Joseph and Mary rush back to Jerusalem to find him again. Three anxiety-filled days for them, no doubt.

Most biblical scholars will tell you that this conversation Jesus had with the temple teachers was a foreshadowing of the divine nature and mission of our Lord. One scholar, for instance, says that this Passover visit illustrates that Jesus was on the threshold of adult life and links his interest in the temple with his consciousness of a filial relationship to God, so that ultimately the story serves to throw light on the character of Jesus as the Son of God.
In this rendering, the precocious Jesus has somehow managed to fend for himself in Jerusalem and he has so amazed the teachers that they haven’t even bothered to query him about his family or why he was alone in the big city.

When reading this text this way, we tend to focus on the Jesus who stood up to his parents and with a metaphorical shake of the finger, informed them that he had to be about his real father’s business. Jesus, at age 12, is a man, a man before and a man ahead of his time.

But, I wonder, if I can be just a little bit random here, if we shouldn’t give Mary and Joseph just a little more credit than they usually get. Her reproach to Jesus seems quite justified: “Child, child, why have you treated us this way?

Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.”

Every parent has been there. A parent’s greatest worries and fears cannot have changed that much since the first century. Mary and Joseph thought the same thoughts we would think if we had been there. Their sense of relief in finding him inevitably gives way to anger, or at least puzzlement over why their son made the specific choice that he made. The verse that usually gets all the attention is the mild rebuke this 12 year old delivers to this parents: “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” And I can almost hear the body language. Uhh! Duhh! Thus, it almost seems that Jesus belittles Mary and Joseph since they still don’t get it. And really, it was a typical adolescent’s response to parents who come across as over-protective or “clueless” -- a word that I bet a teenager had to use first!

But I, as a parent, take some comfort that in the end, Jesus did what they wanted him to do, which was to go back to Nazareth, and the scriptures say that he “was obedient to them.” Possibly even for another 18 years or so.

One of the neat things about this story and the culture of that day was the sense of kinship and neighborly network that caused Mary and Joseph to relax and feel assured that Jesus was being watched over during their journey back to Nazareth after the Passover celebration. They felt confident that Jesus was under the watchful eye of someone else. “It takes a village” would seem to apply not only to our times but the times of Jesus, and even to the raising of Jesus himself.

I know that this story is usually, and for good reason, read as an account of the unfolding recognition of the divine nature of Jesus. But I wonder if we shouldn’t also read it as a rite of passage story, the son showing his independence from his parents, but the parents holding their ground and ultimately putting him in his place, which was to be back home with them in Nazareth.

One wonders if Jesus would, indeed, have increased in wisdom and in years and in divine and human favor if his parents had not seen fit to draw a line and say, “son, you’re coming home with us.”

I was reading recently a eulogy to Fred Rogers, of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood fame, the Presbyterian minister from Pittsburgh who created his own TV show in 1966 and ran continuously until filming stopped in 2000. In his own almost quirky way, he modeled what it meant to be a quiet, steady friend and even parental-figure to a generation of children otherwise potentially raised on the culture of MTV. The eulogist writes about Mr. Rogers: “The disciplined, courteous, loving attention which he gave to each person, as a marvel of supreme worth, was what made Fred Rogers a source of endless comfort for his young viewers. You are special, he sang to them, and you can never go down the drain.” And then this eulogist adds her own commentary: “Keeping children safe is our inescapable obligation and the measure of our adulthood. You and I may differ about what must be done to keep the world safe from moral chaos, tyranny and terror. We may not be pacifist vegetarian teetotalers like Fred Rogers, but if we can learn from him about the life-giving power of self-emptying attention, then there will always be reason for hope. (Christian Century, April 19, 2003, 35)

Whether or not we have children of our own, children in our midst and children in our wider culture must be our first concern. Are they being raised with love and affection? Are they receiving a good education? Are they being exposed to good role models? How do we account for the serious problems many of them are facing, such as abuse, depression, teenage pregnancy, and poverty? What kind of moral values will they have?

The parenting model of Joseph and Mary is not really all that random after at all. They took what God gave them, did the best they could, relied on their village to help, but always found a way to find Jesus wherever he was and to teach him the virtues of respect and obedience to a reality higher than himself.

It was then that Jesus could increase in wisdom – and increase not just in their eyes.

That Greek word for the English word “increase” can also be translated as “progress” or “advance,” and in the original it carries the sense of chopping away or overcoming obstacles, much like a pilgrim or explorer making his or her way through the wilderness undergrowth towards a new and promised reality.

I have to believe that Joseph and Mary helped Jesus to make progress, and that they found a way to equip him to be able to chop through all of the obstacles that would come his way.

And, like many other parents, then and now, maybe they didn’t even really know what it was they were doing – they just did it as best they could.

I want to close with a little story, entitled “Do You Know Where Your Children Are?” written by the chaplain at Duke University.

Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

“There’s a man calling who is really upset”, my secretary said.

“I figured as much,” I said. “Was it my sermon comparing George Bush to King Eglon the Fat, or the one in which I argued that Shirley MacLaine resembles the Witch of Endor?”

“No, we still haven’t had any responses to any of your sermons,” the secretary responded. “This man’s mad over something you have done to his daughter.”

“What? Put him on and don’t eavesdrop,” I said.

“I hold you personally responsible,” he began in a most exasperated and agitated tone.

“For what?” I asked.

“My daughter. We sent her there to get a good education. She is supposed to go to medical school. She is to be a third-generation nephrologist. Now she has got some fool idea in her head about Haiti, and I hold you personally responsible,” He said.

“Please,” I said, “could we try to be rational?”

He told me who he was, who his daughter was. I knew her, but not that well. She ushered nearly every Sunday in the chapel. She had also been active in various campus causes and had been one of the organizers of the spring Mission Workteam the year before. How could anybody be upset about a daughter like her?

“Like I said,” he said, “she was supposed to go to medical school. Her grades are good enough. Now this.”

“Now what?” I asked.

“Don’t act dumb, even if you are a preacher!” He shouted into the telephone. “You know very well. Now she has this fool idea about going to Haiti for three years with that church mission program and teaching kids there. She’s supposed to be a nephrologist, not a missionary for heaven’s sake!”

“No pun intended,” I said.

“None of this would have happened if it had not been for you. She has become attached to you, liked your sermons. You have taken advantage of her when she was at an impressionable age. That’s how she got so worked up over this fool idea about going to be a missionary.”

“Now just a minute. Didn’t you take her to be baptized?” I asked.

“Well, yes, but we are Presbyterians,” he said.

“And didn’t you take her to Sunday school when she was little? You can’t deny that. She told me herself that you used to take her to Sunday school,” I said triumphantly.

“Sure we did. But we never intended for it to do any damage,” he said.

“Well, there you have it,” I said. “She was messed up before we ever got her. Baptized, Sunday-schooled, called. Don’t blame this thing on me. You were the one who started it. You should have thought about what you were doing when you had her baptized.”

“But we are only Presbyterians,” he said, his once belligerent voice changing to a whimper.

“Doesn’t make any difference. The damage was done before she ever set foot in our chapel. Congratulations, Mr. Jones, you just helped God make a missionary.”

“We just wanted for her to be a good person. We never wanted anything like this.”

“Sorry. You’re really talking to the wrong person,” I said, trying to be as patient as possible. “We only work with what we get. If you want to complain, you’ll have to find her third-grade Sunday school teacher. The thing is quite out of our hands. Have a nice day.”

It’s eleven o’clock on Sunday morning. Do you know where your children are?