Epiphany 3C RCL

24 January 2010

The Rev’d Lloyd Prator

New York City

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up.

When I was seventeen, I left home. I never lived there again. Even though the university was only about 70 miles away, I never went home for a weekend. Sometimes at Christmas, parts of the summer, but even in the summer, I was not with my family very much; I was working. Part of that was that I had to raise several thousand dollars each summer in order to pay for going to a private university, but part of it was something deeper.

Part of growing up is separating oneself from one’s nurture. The Christian faith, and our ancestors in Judaism, recognize the importance of honoring, respecting, and caring for ones parents. In the Ten Commandments, we are told to care for and respect our parents. When Jesus was preparing to die, he took the opportunity to arrange for his mother to be cared for.

And this is a good caution. The commandment about caring for ones parents is the only one which goes out of the way to promise benefits in kind for observing the law. We are told to honor our parents that our days may be long in the land. You want a long life, be nice to your parents. Doesn’t take much effort to interpret that commandment. If your children see you honoring your parents, they may be more inclined to care for you when you are old and helpless.

So, good to honor mom and dad.

But, then again, Luke provides us not only the story about Jesus leaving his parents and sticking around the temple when he was twelve, but he also gives us the story about the way in which Jesus did not get along when he tried to go home.

When Jesus came to his hometown, it was obvious that he had changed. Something was different from this boy who had grown up in Nazareth. Now, he was ready to take his role in the temple and read from the law. And he did. And they weren’t pleased. Jesus spoke of the inclusiveness of the relationship between God and his people. He reminded them that God favored even the gentiles. He had changed, and they no longer liked him or found it amusing to point out that here he was the carpenter’s son all grown up and talking like a man.

There may come a time when you decide to go home. Maybe it will be physically returning to a place where you grew up. Maybe it will be emotionally by being in touch with your parents or other relatives. Perhaps it will be a return to home associated with meeting the love of your life, or getting a divorce, or changing a career. Many things can bring us back where we started.

For me, it was taking a vacation and having a few extra days. So I spent them in the little town near San Francisco where I grew up. In some ways, it was pleasant. My favorite restaurant was still there. It was still good! The old movie theatre in town had been restored and reopened as a performing arts center. It was fun to see an old movie there. It was interesting to see neighborhoods filled wit children, both black and white. In my childhood, blacks were not allowed to live in that town--and this was California in the fifties!! Some parts were not so good: My old neighborhood looked seedy and poorly maintained. My old house was unrecognizable, it has changed so much. Newer buildings that had already grown seedy and disreputable now replaced a lot of the interesting old architecture in the older part of town. But it was good to be there and I was glad I went. Not sure I will ever go back—but, you never know.

Going home, being back where you grew up, remembering your parents—all of this can be very interesting. I am glad that Jesus had a little bit of a rough time going home. I certainly did. And I know a lot of other folks who have had the same thing happen to them. I know lots of people who need to put their childhood behind them because it was unhappy, abusive, scarred with alcohol or drugs or sexual trauma. There may be a lot of ways of acknowledging our heritage—sometimes by appreciating it, sometimes by just giving a sigh of relief that we endured and survived it.

No matter whether you look back upon parents and childhood with delight or agony, Jesus has a few things to say to you. By the life he lived, he reminds us that we are still called to honor our parents. We may do this by emulating them, or by making it clear that we do everything different from the way they did. We all have memories of our childhood and our heritage, and we may delight in them, or they may make us determined always to make life better for others than the kind we had to endure.

We may love it, we may hate it. We may delight in it and try to recapture pieces of it all our lives. Or we may put a continent in between it, and us and do something entirely different. No matter which applies for us, Jesus has been just where we are, and that is the mystery of the incarnation, God living among us and knowing just how it is.