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Note: We are going to continue plodding along through Luke\u2019s Gospel, right up through Jesus\u2019 passion in the season of Lent.\xa0 So from Christmas to Easter, we will have completed the reading of a Gospel together.\xa0 Continue to join us for it.\xa0 But for now: today\u2019s text\u2026

On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived.\xa0 When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, \u201cEvery firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord\u201d), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: \u201ca pair of doves or two young pigeons.\u201d \u2026 When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him. (Luke 2:21-24, 39-40)

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Luke goes from the stories of Jesus\u2019 birth into an extended set of stories about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph at the temple.\xa0 A lot of legalese frames these stories, which is Luke\u2019s way of saying that Mary and Joseph were among the righteous of Israel.\xa0 They did everything right, quite literally by the book: by the \u201claw of the Lord.\u201d

In Jesus\u2019 later scuffles with the religious authorities, no one could turn back and blame it on a heretical upbringing.\xa0 Jesus was an insider to the Jewish faith and people, thoroughly\u2014trained up in obedience to the ways and rituals of the Temple, Law, and Synagogue.\xa0 As Paul would later say to the Philippians, so could Jesus: \u201ccircumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of [Judah], a Hebrew of Hebrews\u2026 as for righteousness based on the law, faultless\u201d (Philippians 3:5-6).

This was a revelation that not everyone had the eyes to see and the ears to hear at that time, however.\xa0 Joseph and Mary were portrayed not overtly, but still quite certainly as outcasts of Israel in the opening verses of this chapter.\xa0 There was no room for such a sinful, living-together, pregnancy-out-of-wedlock couple as them in the little town of Bethlehem.\xa0

But then the story shifts.\xa0 The unclean, cast-out shepherds are singled out and brought to the centre of Israel\u2019s life as messengers of the Gospel who would proclaiming the Messiah\u2019s birth.\xa0 And then the curtain comes up on Mary and Joseph too as they are also revealed to be, not outcasts, but Hebrews of Hebrews\u2014the very epicentre of righteousness, obedience, and attentiveness to God in the life of Israel.\xa0 They had the eyes to see the angels, the ears to hear God\u2019s message, and the righteous obedience to follow through and enact the Word of the Lord from both the law and the angel\u2019s message.\xa0

On the 8th day, in faithfulness to the law, these supposed outcasts had their child circumcised, naming him Jesus in faithfulness to the word of the Angel.\xa0 What a supple faith and obedience that was both open to and able to integrate these various Words from the Lord, both old and new, in a living, active obedience.\xa0

And they would continue to do so.\xa0 When the time came for purification after birth, they approached the house of God where there was room enough for them, purified themselves, and consecrated their child to the Lord.\xa0 There\u2019s a provision in the law that allows families to \u201credeem\u201d their child from this consecration to the Lord, but Mary and Joseph didn\u2019t do that.\xa0 Jesus would belong to the Lord.\xa0 Again, a supple faith that integrated the reality of God\u2019s new revelation within the contours of Israel\u2019s ancient faith.\xa0 The wisdom and grace of God was with Jesus as he grew and became strong.\xa0

Today we often think that to find our ways into more true or authentic forms of faithfulness to God, we need to abandon the old ways of the church with its boring, stodgy, firm-set rituals.\xa0 But that is not the Biblical picture.\xa0 In the telling of the Gospels, these new works and words of God come from the heart of faithful obedience and participation at the centre of the life of faith represented in the Temple worship.\xa0 Jesus is an insider from first to last.\xa0 He does not reject the temple, its leaders, or its rituals, but speaks authoritatively from them, to them.\xa0 Eventually it is the leaders who will reject Jesus, but not the other way round.\xa0

God continues to invite our faithfulness within the church, not outside of it.\xa0 No matter how disingenuous, disheartening, or dishevelled the place may be: it is still the context within which God chooses to work and invite our work, where he chooses to speak and invites our response.

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