Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We began the Feast of the Nativity, and it will continue until the Feast of the Epiphany, always on January 6. On that evening we will gather in the nave to close one celebration and open another. The lessons today shine a light on children and our perception of them.

Lutheran theologian and church historian, Martin Marty, lectured here two years ago on “The Mystery of the Child.” Marty made clear that our Western ways of treating children are inadequate. We tend to treat our children as problems to be solved. But Marty reminds us that children are not a problem to be solved. They are a mystery to behold.

If we do not understand our children as a mystery, we may treat them entirely as objects to be controlled. The danger in this one-sided treatment is that we can never know something or someone if all we want to do is control them. Parents beware! Partners beware! Friends beware! Spouses beware.

Mystery is something that cannot be known unless one is involved in it. If you turn children into objective problems for analysis, the mystery evaporates. Being with children, however, places one in a relationship that includes the edges of their being and knowing, which in turn arouses the anxiety these limits stimulate in one’s own life. . . Marty argues that to truly know children is to know that they can die, and that they are vulnerable to good and bad accidents, and that they will not stay put, no matter how urgently adults need permanent solutions to their boundless energy and growth. (Jerome Berryman 2009, p. 187)

To care for our children would seem to require a balance between the need to control children and the need to recognize and acknowledge every child as the mystery we are.

The story of Jesus in the Temple unbeknownst to his parents captures something of this balancing act between mystery and control. Jesus is twelve years old. The Holy Family is on their annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast. The clan leaves Jerusalem. Mary and Joseph think that Jesus is with the relatives. Just as we would panic, they panic when they realize Jesus is not to be found. Mary and Joseph have lost their son. They have lost all control of their child.

They rush back to Jerusalem where after a three-day search they find the lad in conversation with the teachers in the temple. One senses the tension between control and mystery in the story. While Jesus is impressing the teachers, Mary chides the boy

“Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety." (Luke 2:48)

But Jesus responds to the injured parents with the revelation of who he truly is.

He said to them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor. (Luke 49-52)

Dear congregation, every time we bring our children to the baptismal font we come to a reality check. Thereby we recognize the truth of existence. We are not simply a problem to be solved, but we are a mystery to be known.

The sacrament of Holy Baptism seems to know this about us human beings. In the catholic tradition of which we are a part, we baptize our children as a sign of the pure grace of God. Martin Luther argued against the Anabaptists who wanted to baptize adults only who could prove that they understood the faith on an adult level. Luther taught that the water of baptism is the most radical act of grace.

Baptism communicates our absolute dependence upon God. The baptism of an infant declares to the world that this life is from God and belongs ultimately to God, not because of anything that the child has done to earn such a relationship. The parents’ love for a child is tempered by God’s love for the child. Yes, we are to raise our children and to exercise control, but we are to recognize in the child what we should recognize in our own selves. We belong to God and are free to grow in faith, love and obedience to God’s will.

The child in baptism becomes the model for us adults. Jesus later will declare to the disciples who want to dismiss the children,

"Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." (Luke 18:16-17)

Thus we continue to ponder the mystery of the Nativity in our observance of the twelve days of Christmas while some have already thrown out their Christmas trees. As we contemplate the birth and
childhood of Jesus, we realize that we also are gifts from God. Sometimes we need to be controlled, but more often we need an insight that we, too, are a mystery.

And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.