We’re been hearing about God’s promises during Advent
    Belonging (God forms a “people”)
    Forgiveness (unconditional love)
    Presence (perhaps the “best of all”—Emmanuel means “God with us”)
Reading Colossians: a new perspective on just socks and underwear for Christmas, this is a list of Christian virtues in a metaphor of clothing to “put on”
Reading Luke (uncanny resemble to Samuel’s story)
    Previous temple scene: dedication (prophecies of Anna and Simeon)
    Parallels to Samuel’s story

There came a time during my parents’ nest emptying when my mother entrusted me with my baby book. A baby book was a mother’s treasure, commemorating the first year in congratulatory cards, statistics about growth and notes about those momentous firsts. Mom didn’t let those treasures go lightly. There are scholars who think today’s story of the precocious boy in the temple was Mary’s baby book for her oldest son. It’s more than that, though. Church tradition calls this Sunday “Holy Family Sunday,” because the texts always feature some aspect of the character of this little family of three. With the sharp verbal exchanges, it seems that tension might have been part of the character of the holy family. Who would save that in a baby book?

The saying goes that parents give their children two things: roots and wings. It’s a concise way of putting it, but sobering, pointing out that raising kids involves the hard work of more than just living with them, but sometimes it seems that letting them go is even harder. When kids are little you can hardly wait for the next stage—for the first words, the first steps, the first day of school, the first chapter book they read, the first time they drive. It’s an exciting list, but it’s also bittersweet, because each first moves the child a little further away. The first steps they take totter toward you, but sooner than you wish, the firsts feel more like giant leaps away from you. Are they ready? Did you prepare them enough? Can they handle it? Maybe that’s the appeal of baby books. They help parents remember what they did to prepare this child for life on their own. Maybe that is what Mary ponders in her heart at each step of Jesus’ life and ministry.

Roots and wings, dagnabit. The roots are hard work, and the wings bring tension. My mother always said that God made teenagers so that parents would be glad that they left home. As a teen, I didn’t get that, but I sure did my son’s last year in high school. Fortunately, one of my co-workers could interpret him for me. What I took to be simple sullenness, lack of cooperation, and hostility, my co-worker saw as a boy’s need to stretch his wings, tempered by his fear about the next big step—leaving home.

Maybe that’s not exactly what is going on between Mary and her boy in today’s story, but Luke felt this , of all the stories of Jesus’ childhood, was the one story worth including. Roots and wings. A childhood deeply soaked in Jewish tradition, a faith nurtured in both family and faith community. The child is dedicated at eight days, his mother is purified in the temple, he travels with them on the annual Passover pilgrimage. These religious gestures required big financial and personal sacrifices from the family, but they are the basis on which Jesus builds his ministry. Roots. My former pastor offered this advice to parents of teens resisting church. “Don’t give up the fight,” he said. “One of the side virtues of making sure your kids get to Sunday School and church week after week, making sure their faith is educated and nurtured, is that they at least have something to rebel against .” That made sense to me. I’ve never really understood parents who justify lack of church attendance by saying, “We’re going to let our children choose their own faith when they grow up.” If there are no roots, the end result is a child who has no tools with which to decide. It’s like saying, “We’re going to let the kids choose their own manners.” One set of my nieces/nephews has never written a thank you note, because their parents never required it. The other nieces and nephews started sending notes as soon as they could hold a crayon, with the result that they continue sending us notes and letters as adults living in their own apartments. Wings with roots.

That’s what was going on with Jesus, staying behind in the temple—wings with roots. The worried sick parents find him after three days of missing him, and mom is the one who chews him out. Mary does the “your father and I!” and Jesus does the “Well, duh!” all of which is Biblish for Jesus claiming his faith as his own. “My Father’s business” he says. Not the carpentry kind. The faith and religion kind. Wings can come with tension.

What can we learn from this story? It is our faithfulness that starts and sustains the faithfulness of our children. I speak not just of parents and grandparents. Families are absolutely critical for faith nurture, but if Mary and Joseph are any indicators, the faith community is also part of nurturing the faith of children. So our faith—all of us as a congregation—is an essential part of the faith of coming generations. Kids imitate us, which I’m sure you have been embarrassed to discover more than once. We don’t get to choose what kids will imitate, but we do get to choose what we will do in order to provide them with the raw materials for imitation. Kids will rebel. It’s how people in our culture get wings, I’m afraid. But if we give the coming generations faith as children, they will have something against which to rebel. And something to return to. Our job—this is so hard, and I speak as one who suffers this personally—our job is to trust God. If we have given our children roots, and since wings are part of God’s plan, we must trust that God will be the safety net when the children begin to fly. As God called us and chose us, God will also call and choose—and hang onto —our children. I heard that a person doesn’t really leaven home until they can go away and come back, and still leave on their own terms.

In case you didn’t notice in today’s story, the faith nurture of future generations is a two-way relationship. Jesus was interacting in the temple, asking questions and offering insights. Our children have gifts to offer us. Last Sunday, our littler kids came to the church to act out the Christmas story eight or nine times. Each child had a chance to play each of the parts. There were wonderfully poignant times, wonderfully wise and astounding times, as each child brought his or her own self to the story. What a great gift our Sunday School is giving kids, teaching them how to put themselves in Bible stories. It’s a skill we can all stand to learn, a basic Biblical study tool. Like Mary, we can treasure in our hearts the gifts of our children, but we can also embrace our own need for continued faith growth. Mary and Joseph didn’t just teach their boy about his faith in the privacy of their home. They got the kid into the religious community. We are the nurturing faith community for a whole lot of kids. If we want our kids to know that we take them and their faith seriously, we need to do that by modeling it toward each other. There are some important ways we do this. As we make room for each other’s curiosity, we also provide a safe place to ask questions and express doubts and concerns. This is the kind of place where faith is nurtured, whether as grown ups or as children. Grown ups and children both grow when a congregation encourages the gifts and skills of others, when we set people aside for service through ordination. Who we are is shaped by our worship, and when many people participate and lead in that worship, we reflect a growing people. An essential part of our faith is helping others, not just people within our congregation. We call that mission, and we model it for our kids whether we live it out in jars of peanut butter, the ministry of driving or the unheralded gifts of soup and muffins. When we give the gift of presence we give the gift of faith.

In the same that you try on the new clothes you got for Christmas, we “try on” God’s promises when we nurture and grow our faith—in family or in community or on our own. These promises are for you . Put them on. See how they fit.

Prayer after sermon (from Miryam , “Magnificat of Now”)
Holy is the work now beginning.
Blessed is the first step.
Blessed are those who, prepared,
     have the courage to begin.
Blessed are you, Yahweh, the enabler of deeds
    great and simple for these people today.
The fruit of this work offers nourishment to generation after generation for those who     harvest it.
You show us the potency of people with a clear commitment;
    you scatter the energies of those who vacillate. . . .
You provide answers for those who question;
    to those who know the answers, you are silent.
You are here now, the Available One,
    for the work of these times, . . .
    mindful of the continuing newness of each one of us,
    we come with open minds
    to accomplish the work of this day.