Christmas 2  StJ Chatham

January 5, 2025

Text – St. Luke 2:41-52

“His Father’s Business”

In Dicken’s Christmas Carol, the very first spirit to make an appearance to Old Ebenezer is the chained and disembodied presence of Scrooge’s former business partner, Jacob Marley.  As Jacob explains his fate since his demise seven years previous, Ebenezer tries to buck up the ghost with remembrances of Jacob’s business acumen. “Jacob, you were no slouch when it came to business.”  Marley howls and clangs his chains together and makes the condemning statement, “Mankind was my business!”  But, of course, now it was too late for Marley to make good on that truth.  Yet, maybe, a change could be affected in ol’ Scrooge.  And you know the rest of the story…

The words, “mankind was my business” make up a haunting and widely critical phrase that describes rebellious and fallen mankind!  We know that the Lord has commanded us that we ought to love our neighbors as ourselves.  But we are not doing God’s bidding if we wish the sick, the hungry, and the naked, “God’s speed,” and send them on their way without doing anything about their physical need.  The Lord will not have Christians to settle into thinking that He has provided our plenty just so we could enjoy our own life even more.

Yet, there are those who volunteered their skills, their wealth, and long, grueling hours so that their fellow pilgrims might have it a little easier. We have passed through a time and opportunity for godly charity and its benefits to be shared among the wanting. We do it because our heavenly Father set the standard in the giving of His Son!  Our motivation is the fact that He who was rich, for our sakes, became poor.

Lest we get big heads about any good deed, the Lord has made it clear that such deeds should not give us reason for boasting.  He still wishes that in our almsgiving our left hand should not know what the right one is doing.  After all is said and done, we have only done our duty!  We are confined in our contemplations about our endeavors for the benefit of mankind by the Scriptures that make it clear that such works do not contribute to our being or becoming more upstanding in the sight of our eternal Judge, nor do they help in gaining us access to His throne or to the gift of eternal life.

Mankind is our business, but the business of mankind does not save us which nothing we do can ever accomplish.  Our charity does not redeem us.  Men, in seeing our good works, should glorify our Father in heaven, but none of us will ever save ourselves by our ventures done for the sake of others. They just can’t reach the high and holy standard of perfection.  Often times, even, God must cleanse – by the blood of Jesus – our false and wrong-headed motivations and personal glory-seeking attached to the charitable endeavors of us, the fallen.

The Scriptures make it clear that mankind is our business, but the sinful flesh will assent that mankind, in the person of SELF, is a true and worthy business endeavor.  Yet, guess what?  In no greater sense, to our heavenly Father, mankind was His business from the first moment we went wrong and even before that.  So, the Father’s business, and the business of His Son, is mankind, you and me.

This is interesting in the light that as a simple business venture God the Creator could have cut His losses early.  But this He did not do!  He could have demanded that every defective and corrupt human being, who had committed any sin, should be thrown into the prison of darkness and death and stay there until justice had been served, and the sentence had been met, and the debt had been paid, but that wouldn’t have reduced our time in hell by a single day. He could have done things this way and He would have remained just and true.  However, He found a better way!

Instead, justice would be served by God’s own Son going to His Father’s House and immersing Himself in His Father’s business of saving men who were like sheep without a shepherd to be pitied.  The Son would free us from self-promotion and from self-deception. The Son would reveal the heart of His Father and bestow on us grace and truth in abundance and for our salvation.

Christmastide is not yet done on the church’s calendar.  We’ve gotten through eleven of the twelve days so designated.  In the Christan narrative the wisemen have not yet beheld the Savior of the world. Yet, now, the Gospel presents us with the only other event of Jesus’ youth recorded for us other than His birth. Suddenly, Dr. Luke flings us into the feast of Passover when Jesus is twelve years old.  We have eighteen years, yet, before Jesus embarks on His public ministry.  Still, we have a brief revelation of events to come.  The future sacrificial and pure Passover Lamb has come to the holy city. The happenings of the feast itself the good Doctor doesn’t seem interested in recording.  His focus is on this twelve-year-old boy.

This is the age of beginning manhood.  Jesus basically becomes a son of the covenant in the temple among the prominent teachers of Israel.  In this context of teaching and being taught, Jesus states that He is busy doing His Father’s work.  This stuff is the material of His Father’s business.  This is what He would be doing later as He would one day return to Jerusalem and effect God’s peace with man by His blood.

Mary and Joseph were perplexed.  They had not expected that Jesus would be staying behind in the holy city after the feast.  They thought, as one would expect of a twelve-year-old, that He was busy playing with friends and relatives on the trail back to Nazareth.  Mary and Joseph, for a whole day, had not worried about Him. When they couldn’t find Him then they headed a whole day’s journey back to Jerusalem.  Any of you parents would be frantic, too!  Although those may have been simpler times, things like kidnapping, murder, and slavery sales were commonplace.

But where do they find their son?  How relieved we would be if we knew that our children were not straying far from the house of God.  We know that safety can be found there.  But, in the temple, there is Jesus!  His parents are amazed.  His mother expresses her exasperation.  Jesus just calmly tells them He is busy!  He is doing exactly what He had come to do!

They don’t understand but then again this isn’t the first time they didn’t completely understand the intent behind the actions surrounding the life of this boy.  Angels foretell His coming.  Angels announce His birth.  World events are divinely nudged along so that God’s promises would come true which had been spoken in times past by His prophets.  Joseph didn’t understand why Mary was pregnant, but when He is told that he must take care of this mother and her Child, he does it!  A star in the sky leads wisemen to the home of this holy family. They have to flee to Egypt!  Later, they take up residence in Nazareth.  God smiles on these events and blesses every action that they take – for the sake of His Son and for the sake of the world He had come to save.  Mary has been pondering, for quite some time, these strange things that were told to her and which unfold before her.  She is pondering these things again after this twelve-year-old first-born is restored to her.  And she’s got pondering to do during the last three years of His life, and especially during that last week in Jerusalem.

The Father’s business is worthy of much pondering.  Much like the mother of our Lord, we must ponder it too! What the Scriptures are saying to us in the events that surround the life of our Lord is that everything He does, He does because it is His Father’s will.  Everything He does, He does it as a manifestation of the Father’s eternal love for the creatures He made.  What Jesus does, in His quiet obedience to His earthy parents, is to keep the Fourth Commandment for those who have an awfully hard time dealing with and living under authority.  He does what the letter of the Law demands, and He does it for us – for our benefit.

In addition, in the temple He gives His future antagonists a good first-hand look at Him so that when He makes His public debut that they might not miss the dawning of the Messianic kingdom He had come to establish. He learns, as would any twelve-year-old, but also teaches.  He opens up and expounds upon the Scriptures so that their eyes might be opened. Everyone must have a chance to hear and take to heart the message of the Father’s business.

Yet, to the respectable, to the less than honorable, to the despicable, to the downright criminal, Jesus had come to accomplish His Father’s plan and do His Father’s work.  The work of the church today must reflect this same duty done by this twelve-year-old Lamb of God.  Teaching is the Father’s business, and it is ours too!  We are not talking about teaching, just any subject matter, so that man’s mind might be somehow improved.  We are talking about teaching that alone can raise us above our circumstances and raise us above the world’s thinking.  It is teaching that points us to the triune God, Jesus the God revealer, who shows us the unseen Father, and who sends us the Comforter.

The Father’s business is the word and work of Jesus whereby we are raised above the stench and filth of our sin.  The teachings of Jesus show us a far better way – the only way to the presence of the Father and heavenly mansions prepared for us.  The teachings of Jesus do not, like every false religion, point us back toward ourselves, our own power, our own abilities, our own works, and our own personal piety.  These are the filthy rags spoken of by Isaiah, and the refuse mentioned by St. Paul. What is ours is of no value to God who is complete in Himself.  What is ours is of no use to bring about the sparing of our lives.  Jesus doesn’t spend anytime stroking our egos.  He kills them!  We need what we can get from the earthly proprietor of the Father’s business, and that is nothing other than pure grace and undeserved love.

The Father’s business is the preparation of the world for the receiving of His Son as its Savior and ours.  His business is the preparation of heart to receive its King!  He has come to make us a fit dwelling place for the Lord of Glory!  The Father’s business is the saving of many souls.  He has been involved in this work for a very long time.  The Bible is full of the history of God’s saving intervention in a world of darkness filled to overflowing with inhabitants which are spiritually blind, dead, and His enemies.  He has built an ark to save us from the flood of destruction that our sins would most certainly bring down on us.  He has sent a deliverer who has freed us from our bondage, and who will lead us into the Promised land.  He has made a King and kingdom which will never end, and He has freely made us citizens of that kingdom.  He has gone so far as to adopt us into the royal family who formerly were nothing but rebels.  He has called us out of captivity, and He would bring us to Himself to remain forever.

Jesus went about His Father’s business from His first breath in that manger, through His last breath on the cross.  He was doing His Father’s bidding every step of the way and could not be turned away no matter the personal cost.  That path culminated in His Son’s resurrection and our victory through Him.  Even now, the Church, in Jesus’ stead, is still engaged in the Father’s business through the faithful teaching of His Word, through the proclaiming of the saving Gospel, through the words of pardon spoken to you, through the waters of Baptism, and in the feast of His body and blood.  The Father’s business is the saving of souls, and you again participate in His work for your own comfort and joy.  The Father’s business is you getting to where He wants you to be! Forever with Him!  Forever in bliss!  Forever at the feast gathered underneath the Tree of Life!  Forever alive with our Risen Savior and Lord, together with the Father and the Spirit, in that holy fellowship that will never end!

Amen.