Sermon – First Sunday after Epiphany 2023

Let the words of my mouth & the meditaion of all our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, our Strength & our Redeemer. Amen.

And the child grew, & waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: & the grace of God was upon him…

And Jesus increased in wisdom & stature, & in favour with God & man. S.Luke.ij.40 & 52.

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These two verses flank our gospel lesson. And they are interesting verses because they are the only ones that speak of Jesus growing up. But what troubles some Christians about these verses is that they teach he grew not only physically but also in wisdom & spirit, and that his favour with God & man increased.

How can it be that Jesus (whom we confess to be God) grew in wisdom? How can it be that he grew spiritually? Or in favour with God & men?

Others, opposing the idea that Jesus is the eternal God, will even point to these verses and say, “See! Jesus wasn’t God from the beginning! He had to grow in wisdom! He is just an enlightened teacher!” We know that not to be the case, not least of which, because we have other passages of Scripture that teach Jesus is the eternal Son of God.

But what do we do with these verses? How do we deal with this claim that Christ grew in wisdom & spirit?

We don’t have to deal with them; we just have to accept them.

You should never be afraid of your Bible. Sometimes we come across a passage we don’t much like because we think it threatens our beliefs. Luther, for a time, didn’t like the Epistle of James. Anti-Calvinists hate all the passages that speak of God’s predestination & election.

Let me encourage you – if there is a passage of Scripture that you avoid because you think it threatens your understanding of things, stop avoiding it. Dive deep into it. Don’t be afraid of your Bible. What are you afraid of? Learning the truth? If we believe something that’s not true, we should want to change that. And we know that Scripture is the uniquely reliable and only sufficient means of gaining knowledge of God.

So, as I said, we don’t have to deal with this passage, but accept it. God’s word tells us that Jesus grew in wisdom, and we accept that.

But you might ask, Does this not threaten his divinity?

No. Not at all. Remember, Christ is both God and Man. 100% Man & 100% God. He is one person with two natures. And we do not confound those two natures - we do not mix them together. That is a heresy called the Monophysite heresy – which says the divine and human natures became one. We reject that heresy because once you say the divine and human natures are mixed together, you no longer have either a divine or a human nature – you have this third thing which is neither.

Jesus is truly God and truly Man – “very God & very Man” as we say in the creed. Very – vera – veritas. It means “truly”.

So, of course, being a man, he grew in wisdom – just as any healthy human child. (Growth is attributed to his human nature, but not his divine nature. Divinity, being ontologically perfect, does not change or grow.) ___________________________

You know, our Lord said, Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe, which is true, but sometimes I think there were challenges of faith faced by those who knew Jesus during his life here which we don’t have to face today.

Jesus was a real human. Pinocchio wanted to be a real boy. Jesus was a real boy, and a real man. Mary birthed him. She nursed him. She changed his diapers. She and Joseph taught Jesus his numbers and colours and the letters of the alphabet, and all of the things we teach children.

Now, yes, it was obvious something was different about Jesus. He was a perfect child. He was untouched by sin. As a 12 year old boy he could engage in a theological discussion with the top religious thinkers of that day, and we read that they were “astonished” by him. Can you imagine a gathering of all the greatest theologians and then throwing some random 12 year old in there with them? People could tell something was different about him, but it seems they rarely made the connection during his earthly life that he was God.

And I think this challenge was especially difficult for those closest to him. Even with all the miracles and the gravity of his teaching, it’s like they didn’t quite get it. We see this over and over again, not only with the Apostles’ lack of faith, but even his own family. Not only in this passage here where his parents are like “Jesus, what were you doing at the temple?” And he answers, “You should’ve known where I would be.” But at another point (in Matthew 12), Jesus is teaching when Mary and his brothers come to the house ask him to stop teaching and come out to talk to them. And when the person at the door tells him, “Hey, Jesus, your mom and brothers want you to come outside. They want to talk to you about something,” he points to those sitting there listening to his teaching, and says “These are my mother and brothers and sister – those who do the will of my Father”. Growing up with Jesus, or spending day in and day out with him, it must have been a struggle to see he was God.

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I wonder if the shepherds were underwhelmed when they saw Jesus. Just think - They had seen space-time, reality as we know it, rip open – the veil of this present cosmos was momentarily pulled back for them, and they viewed from that higher reality the whole host of heaven singing in worship to the Son of God. Imagine the whole sky, as far as you can see, pulled away, and your whole vision filled with angelic beings singing to God. You are absolutely terrified and in awe.

And then you go and see this very human child lying in a food trough, beside is poor parents. Scripture tells us there was nothing remarkable about his looks – that he had no beauty or air of majesty about him that would attract us to him. Just an average looking fellow. So these shepherds saw an average looking baby – not even a particularly attractive baby. Just an average baby. He wasn’t levitating, and blessing people in a posh, royal accent. No. He might have been sleeping or crying – or evacuating his bowels as babies are notorious for doing at inopportune times.

Sometimes we think - “Oh, it was easy for them to believe because there were right there.” No. In some ways that made it more difficult – to believe this man – this very average man – is also God.

That requires a step of faith.

We sang “O holy night” at our Wednesday service – sometimes, I don’t sing, because the words hit me in such a way that if I sang them out loud I would start crying – this 2nd stanza -

The king of king lay thus in lowly manger In all our trials, born to be our friend. He knows our need, to our weakness, no stranger Behold! Your King! Before him lowly bend….. Behold! Your King…your God….

Put yourself in the shoes of those shepherds for a moment – imagine seeing this baby. Put yourself in the shoes of those who encountered Jesus during his earthly life. Yes, he’s a very good kid. He’s a very nice and very smart man. We look with the eyes of flesh, we just see a baby. And that’s true. He really is a baby. He really is a human. But would we make the leap – would we see not only his humanity with the eyes of flesh, but with eyes of faith, would we see that this man is God? This weak man, who suffers, who is tempted, who is at times hungry & thirsty & cold & tired & so often sad. This weak, needy man is also God Almighty.

That idea that God stooped to become a man, it’s almost too much to – it is too much to even think upon. It’s too precious a mystery that a perfect God took upon himself our less than perfect nature. (The imperfect ontological nature of a creature. His moral nature was uncompromised, unfallen.)

This is what Epiphany season is about. Epiphany – God, at last, fully revealed to us, and that in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ – and this realization that, yes, this human person is also God.

Why it is necessary he be a man? It is just some weird doctrine the church invented. Some claim that. (There is a conspiracy theory popularized by the novelist Dan Brown that the early Christians did not believe Jesus was God and that the Roman Emperor Constantine invented this doctrine of his divinity. )

But no. It was necessary that he become man. It was necessary that the Creator become the creature so that by union with him creation might be redeemed through him to God. It was necessary for our salvation that Christ become a man. There was no other way.

Imperfection cannot stand before a Perfect God. The Psalmist tells us that just as wax set before a fire, the wicked melt away before the presence of God. (Ps 68) If we were to take a bit of burnt toast and cast it into the Sun, there is a better chance of that toast coming out the other side wholly intact than an imperfect creature surviving an encounter with a Perfect God. It is impossible that a man can face God and live. He is too Holy. He is too Righteous. When we face him, we would melt away.

And that is why Christ became a man. He was born of a virgin; he did not have the fallen nature from the original sin of Adam. But he was the New Adam. And he lived a perfect, sinless life. He alone is the only man that is worthy of approaching God, the only man who can stand before God and live because he alone is the only man ever who was perfectly righteous. That is why it is necessary he became a man – to make it possible for man to stand before God.

Our response to this – What is our proper response to this?

To present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God….And be not conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds ….

Now, being saved is not a transaction – We don’t give God our life because we think it will earn us salvation. There’s nothing we can give to God for which he owes us salvation. We give our lives to Christ because he is Life. We give our lives to him because he is our only hope of Life! Every other option is Death.

This is not a burdensome sacrifice. This is a joyful sacrifice and one of thanksgiving. Because our mind has been renewed, the mind that sees the truth that Christ alone is Life and all else is Death – that renewed mind transforms our whole lives. Whereas before we thought the things of this world gave us life – we now see that Christ gives Life and once we see that we cannot help but live by it.

And we are over joyed because we have found Life. By grace we have found the only Life. While before we foolishly chased after the things of this dead & dying world, thinking we will gain life by them, now, by grace, we see the truth of things. We see that God is Life, and we cling to him who became a man to redeem men, to redeem all those united unto him, back to God.

Let us pray

Holy Father, who didst send thy Son to live among the Sons of men as one of us, grant to us that we, dying to the old man, and being born again by thy Spirit, a new man, may be united to thy Son through whom alone mankind finds salvation. This we ask in his blessed Name, Jesus Christ. Amen.