FROM THE PULPIT: YOU CAN'T EVEN BECOME A SAINT IN YOUR HOME

In our Scripture lesson today, we see something that typically happens in every home teenage rebellion. What are parents to do?

There was a young boy who had come from his Sunday School class.

He was of the Catholic faith and he had just learned about a saint whose name was Saint Simeon Stylites.

He was called the "pillar saint" because he would sit on a pillar in order to get closer to God. He increased the size of the pillar periodically until it got to a height of 40 cubits (rather tall in other words).

The young boy thought that he would do the same thing and so he got a stool, put it on the kitchen table and perched himself perilously on the stool as he was making his way to sainthood.

His mother came in, told him to get off of that stool right now and to never do that again.

The young boy got down off of the stool, and in a very irritated fashion stormed out of the kitchen when he was heard to say, "You can't even become a saint in your own home!"

I imagine for Jesus it was hard to be the Son of God in his own home. Jesus is 12 in our Scripture reading and we find that the family is having some typical family stress: a rebellious near teen.

The boy Jesus takes it upon himself, apparently without his parents permission, to go out on his own for three days.

No cell phones to call with, no e-mail, no fax machines to fax with and so he is unable to communicate his whereabouts to his parents.

The sympathies of our scripture are with Jesus. Jesus was in a house of God, a good thing by anyone's standard. But Jesus rationalizes his errant behavior to his parents by doing something very typically manipulative and very much like a teen or a near teen might do: He asks? "Why were you searching for me?

Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"

Dear Jesus, we all get the message. God the Father is the real parent. But it appears to me that young Jesus blows off his earthly parents anxieties, as though they mean nothing.

I would think that he might be just a little disappointed if they did not search for him. Why would any parent search for their child who is lost? Why indeed!

I remember an incident with my daughter. She was three years old and I took her with me to the hardware store to buy something, I forget what now. Perhaps being a bit over protective I tied a balloon to her wrist so that I wouldn't lose her.

I went into the hardware store with her, started looking for whatever and I had let go of her wrist just briefly. I was so involved with what I was doing that after I decided what I was going to buy, I made the purchase, went out to my car, started it, took hold of the gear lever ready to go and froze. And I do mean froze.

I left my daughter back in the hardware store! I couldn't get the car door open fast enough.

I rushed into the store, got my daughter and left feeling embarassed. I was so thankful that I got my daughter back. For one very brief moment, I knew the anxiety of having a lost child. I also felt the joy of finding my child.

As children of God, I wonder how God feels about His lost children? Do you think that God feels anxiety about His children when they are lost.

I wonder about God's feelings when his children are found? I wonder if He feels the same happiness that we do? I suspect, like any parent, He feels exactly as we do. However, Jesus was already home. We are only temporary guardians of our children. The real parent is God.

Just as Joseph and Mary could not keep Jesus from God the Father, we cannot nor should we keep our children from God either.

But a child's declaration of independence is bothersome. It bothered me. We have always told our children what to do but now he or she is kicking out the traces and defying us. Our child is young, inexperienced and will get lost in the moral middle ground which is so much a part of life today. What can you do to retrieve your child from the lostness that they so often feel? How can you guide your child when they are no longer willing to accept your advice? Not easy questions for any parent.

I think this is where God comes into the picture. If you can transfer the authority which you have always exercised from outside your child's life to the authority which God can exercise from within your childs life, then you might have your answer.

If you can help your child to see that God in Christ represents an ideal of absolute honesty and absolute purity and absolute kindness and unfailing forgiveness and that in accepting Christ he or she is pledging themselves to obedience to this ideal, then you can let your child go in the quiet confidence that they are in good hands.

Perhaps this was what Mary was thinking when she "treasured all these things in her heart." She was letting go, but she also knew into whose hands her son was going. To whose care could be better to let our children go than to the house of God? Bring your child to church and see what I mean.

Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick said these words: In the home where I grew up I was taught to obey something inside me, so that when I left home I took it with me." I hope that something inside our children has its basis in God and not the alternative. And blessed is the adolescent who grows up in such a home that teaches them about Jesus Christ. Amen.