Dear St. Paul’s Family,
Leave it up to family to keep you humble.
I am sending this message to you from Florida, where I am spending the week with the Florida Conference Board of Ordained Ministry to interview candidates for ministry. Prior to beginning our work, I spent some time celebrating my fortieth birthday with my parents, my two brothers, and their families.
It did not take long into our dinner before my loving younger brothers turned the meal from “celebrate” Magrey into “roast” Magrey. Forget respecting your elders. Throw pastoral deference out the window. And that pedestal on which some of you may place me? It’s more like a dunk tank to the two of them. They were quick to offer their most embarrassing memories they had of me:
“Remember the time we played baseball in the front yard and you bruised your ribs crashing into our neighbor’s bushes?” one of them said.
“How about the time you hit your head so hard on the metal frame of the sliding glass door that we saw electrical sparks fly off your head?” the other one chimed in gleefully.
“Do you remember that time you thought you were a ninja and you kicked a gigantic crack in the wall?” Their laughter had hit high gear.
And as it turned out, my brothers were not the only ones who jumped into the fun.
“Remember when you were little and couldn’t pronounce your name?” My mom loves to tell this story. “We’d say, ‘What’s your name?’ And you’d say, ‘Mah-GAH-bah-gah.’”
“And you were so afraid of the dark. One night, when we turned off the lights for you to go to sleep, you screamed in panic, ‘I CAN’T SEE MY FACE!’”
“And then there was the time you took swimming lessons, and you were so afraid of the water that you threw up on the side of the pool!”
“Oh, and remember the time you ran away from home?”
Okay, let me explain that one.
I was about three years old when I visited my parents’ family in the Philippines. Over the few months of my extended visit, I had gotten to know several of my younger, school-aged cousins. Every morning, they walked to school, leaving me behind until their return in the afternoon. Naturally, the concept of school was quite foreign to a kid my age, and I wondered what they did during the day when they were gone. So, one day, curiosity got the best of me. I got up early one morning and, unbeknownst to my parents, walked right out the front door, joined up with my cousins, and followed them to the Silonay Elementary School.
My parents, realizing I was nowhere in the house to be found, began to panic. Eventually, one of my mother’s sisters found me at the school and brought me home. “Guess who I found at the school,” she told my mother. “And he’s still wearing his pajamas. And, look. There’s a giant rip in the seat of his pants.” There’s no reason to admit to you that last part of the story, except it was true, and it adds to the comedic embarrassment of the whole fiasco. Overnight, I had simultaneously become a runaway, a fashion icon, and a streaker, all at the age of three.
THIS SUNDAY: JESUS THE RUNAWAY
There’s more about the story that I don’t recall, like what my parents said to me when they found me. And I certainly don’t remember what I told them. But as I prepare for this Sunday’s sermon, I kind of wish I had been able to quote for them this passage from Luke 2:49:
“Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know that it was necessary for me to be in my Father’s house?”
On second thought, maybe only Jesus could get away with talking to his parents like that.
We are in the midst of a new sermon series called “The Boy Who Would Be King,” chronicling the childhood stories of Jesus in Luke’s gospel. There’s very little that we know about his life between ages one to thirty, so any story about Jesus as a youth must be there for a reason. Of the four gospels, Luke is the only one to tell us stories about Jesus as a boy and his developing understanding of who he was. In John’s gospel, Jesus is clearly aware of his divinity from the very beginning of time. In Mark, and to a certain degree Matthew, the divinity of Jesus does not come into clear focus until the moment of his baptism. But in Luke, these tender years of Jesus’ adolescence were incredibly important, as he “grew up and became strong….and God’s favor was on him.”
Why study Luke’s portrayal of Jesus’ early years? It’s simple: they echo our own spiritual journeys. We, too, are called to a steady, developing maturity in our faith. We need to “grow up,” and “become strong,” and “be filled with God’s wisdom.” And, there are some watershed moments in our lives when we have to leave the cozy confines of the life we have been living and spend time in diligent, rigorous spiritual pursuits. In short, it is necessary for us to spend time in our Father’s house.
I hope you’ll join us this Sunday as we dig deeper into this unusual story, and discover together what it means to “mature in wisdom and years,” and to have God’s favor upon us.
Grace and Peace,
Magrey
The Rev. Magrey R. deVega
St. Paul's United Methodist Church
531 W. Main St.
Cherokee, IA 51012
Ph: 712-225-3955
Email: mdevega@sp-umc.org
Luke 2:41-52
41 Each year his parents went to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival.
42 When he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to their custom.
43 After the festival was over, they were returning home, but the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents didn’t know it.
44 Supposing that he was among their band of travelers, they journeyed on for a full day while looking for him among their family and friends.
45 When they didn’t find Jesus, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him.
46 After three days they found him in the temple. He was sitting among the teachers, listening to them and putting questions to them.
47 Everyone who heard him was amazed by his understanding and his answers.
48 When his parents saw him, they were shocked. His mother said, “ Child, why have you treated us like this? Listen! Your father and I have been worried. We’ve been looking for you! ”
49 Jesus replied, “ Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know that it was necessary for me to be in my Father’s house? ”
50 But they didn’t understand what he said to them.
51 Jesus went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. His mother cherished every word in her heart.
52 Jesus matured in wisdom and years, and in favor with God and with people.
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