We celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family immediately after Christmas. This seems entirely natural to us, but this feast is a very recent innovation! It was only introduced in 1921, and moved to its current position in the calendar in 1969. A recognition of the importance of the family, at least as we understand it now, is a modern perspective.
This year the story we hear comes from Luke’s gospel and tells how the family fulfilled their obligation under Jewish law for the birth of a first child. But beyond that it tells of the reception of the child by holy people in the Temple in Jerusalem.
By contrast, Matthew, in his nativity narrative, tells a story of how the newborn child was recognized by “wise men from the East”. He wants to show how Jesus was significant in the widest world imaginable at that time, with exotic visitors with an almost magical character from almost unknown lands. Luke on the other hand wants to position Jesus fully within his Jewish culture and context.
For Luke, Jesus’ whole life story revolves around the Temple. He starts his gospel with Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, in the Temple; immediately after his birth Jesus is in the Temple (as we hear today); Jesus returns to the Temple as a teenager; and the final stage of his life plays out around the Temple, starting with its cleansing. So, although Luke was writing for a Roman and Greek audience, rather than a specifically Jewish one, he still wanted to emphasize the continuity that Jesus had with his Jewish tradition. This respect for Judaism was tragically lost very quickly in Christian tradition.
In the context of today’s feast, we might consider the reactions to the child reported by Luke, particularly from Simeon. Simeon speaks in very similar terms about the significance of Jesus and his birth as we heard in Mary’s prophecy when visited by the angel. So it’s strange that she is reported as being “amazed by what was said about him”. Why would she be amazed, having previously had the same revelation herself?
I suggest the reason for the surprise is not at the content of what Simeon says but at the fact that he would know this. For Mary and Joseph they would naturally assume that what they had understood was private to them – how could anyone else know anything about this child born just a few days before.
The parents had yet to absorb that they were part of a much larger story that God was playing out in many ways, and there was nothing private to their family about this. This message is reinforced in the following story that Luke tells about Jesus as an older child debating with the scholars in the Temple – which his parents had a hard time getting their heads around.
Now I am quite sure that Luke had not the slightest idea of providing parenting advice in these early scenes of his gospel, but that’s not to say there is none to be found there. God finds all sorts of ways to speak to us, even independently of the intent of his evangelists. So in the spirit of a Feast celebrating a family, what might we find here?
Maybe we can identify with the recognition that others may see things in our children that we don’t see ourselves. Maybe we can acknowledge that as parents it is hard to accept the autonomy of our children – an autonomy that starts at birth. Maybe we struggle to accept that they make choices that will cause us great pain, despite the love that binds us. It’s hard to imagine a greater love than that which linked Jesus with his mother Mary – but the life and death that were God’s plan for His son would be any mother’s nightmare, as Simeon saw.
So we do the best for our children as Mary and Joseph did, but all God’s children have their own path to follow in his world, and God gets to choose what that is. Let us be humble when we are surprised by our children, as Mary and Joseph were.