Preached on the Second Sunday after Christmas, January 4, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington, by The Rev. Stephen Crippen.
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84:1-8
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
Luke 2:41-52
The Boy Jesus in the Temple, He Qi.
The kids are not alright.
We are living in the first decades of an era when children in this country do not expect to exceed their parents in education, income, health, or length of life. The advent of new technology always inspires anxiety, but we really do not know how generations raised on the internet will develop, what they will need, or whether they will thrive. Children and youth, particularly trans and queer children and youth, are thrown around as political footballs in a profoundly unhealthy public square. They are abused by politicians who will say or do anything to distract us from what’s really going on in this country, and around the world. We should be talking about climate justice and wage justice and public education, but instead we are provoked to argue about trans kids in sports.
So I want to hear some good news. I want to hear the Good News. Thankfully, our companion in Good News this morning is Luke, the third evangelist, my favorite (Luke just barely wins my approval in a photo finish with the sublime John). I love Luke because Luke is sanguine, but not a pollyanna. Luke is cheerful, but not glib. Luke writes in gorgeous prose, and Luke assumes that a diverse audience can keep up with an urbane, sophisticated storyteller. So… Mark the evangelist tells the story of people “digging” a hole in a roof to let down their friend to Jesus, for healing. But Luke, in his telling, improves the architecture: the man’s friends remove roof tiles, not clumps of sod. Luke’s Gospel is a classy establishment.
Yet Luke is not a snob; Luke does not preen. Luke composes gorgeous songs and puts them on the lips of humble people — a young woman (Mary of Nazareth), two older women (Elizabeth and Anna), two older men (Zechariah and Simeon). This is exceedingly rare in ancient literature: a compelling story of salvation, but very young and very old people have lines in the story. I am grateful to Luke for this. Luke is a good companion for us as we search for the Good News that can be announced to — and from — young people, including our kids who are not alright.
And today, Luke does not disappoint. Today we hear a vivid story, told by Luke, a story that stars a teenager. And somehow, in his genius, Luke’s ancient teenager jumps off the page. We readily recognize this precocious, confident kid. We’ve met this kid. Luke gives us the lightest sketch of a scene: The Holy Family joins a “group of travelers,” probably a caravan, to make the yearly Passover pilgrimage to the holy city of Jerusalem. The caravan likely makes the trip both cheaper and safer. (And this is a bit of subtle foreshadowing: years later, the adult Jesus will return to Jerusalem, again at the time of Passover, to accomplish his great work of salvation there.)
But back here in his teenage years, Jesus gets lost in the crowd, and his parents assume what you might assume if your kid gets mixed up in a jumble of friends and extended family: he’s fine, he’ll turn up, he always appears when he’s hungry! But he doesn’t appear. Three days go by as they search, ever more frantically, for him. (Always the three days! We Christians delight in three-day adventures, from Jonah in his fish all the way to the Great Three Days of Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection.)
Finally, the parents find him, and we can all forgive Mary for letting him have it. “Child, why have you treated us like this?” she hollers. “Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety." My mother would have required fewer words. “What is the matter with you?!” she might have shouted.
But this kid is unruffled, which I suspect might have been maddening for his parents. In fact he throws a bit of shade on Joseph, his adoptive father, by saying, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But Luke writes a safe and tidy ending to the story (perhaps in a way that stretches our belief), saying that after this encounter, Jesus obeys his parents, so much so that his mother has time and energy to “treasure” all these things in her heart. This is not the first time that Mary treasures things, ponders things, contemplates all that is happening to and around her.
And this “treasuring” of the mother of a teenager — we should stop and consider this. We shouldn’t just let it go by, a neat little ending to a story about a wondrous youth. By treasuring what her son told her, and treasuring what he did, even though his actions caused great anxiety, Mary takes her place among the Temple teachers, the ones who were spellbound by Jesus for three days. Mary is savvy enough to reflect on her provocative child. She is a scholar, and she is an example for us.
Friends, we should do some treasuring, some pondering, this morning. We should turn aside, like Mary, the mother of an intriguing teenager, and ponder what this Gospel might teach us.
We could enter the story anywhere we like: some of us may naturally identify with the exasperated parents, others with the precocious tween, still others with the friends and kinfolk in the caravan, helpless to relieve the anxiety of these parents, bemused by all that’s going on.
But I’d like us to enter the story through the teachers in the Temple, the ones who were smart enough to stop and listen to this youth. Luke doesn’t tell us what Jesus says to them — we will find out soon enough, as the story of salvation unfolds. But there’s another possible reason why Luke doesn’t record all the dazzling things Jesus says in the Temple: if we don’t hear what the young Jesus had to say all those centuries ago, then we stop reading it as an historical account (and while something like this could very well have happened, this story about the young Jesus is not a newspaper article). It’s better understood as a parable that turns our attention not to the long-ago 12-year-old Jesus, but to our own young companions.
That’s why, this week, I emailed the parents of our teenage members here at St. Paul’s. I wrote them to invite their children to consider these questions:
“What do you — a teenage member of St. Paul’s — think the rest of us need to know, or need to do, or need to be? If you could say one thing to us, what would you say? What is the most important thing for this faith community? What matters most to you? If you had the microphone and our 125 people on a Sunday could hear what you have to say, what would you say?”
And my friends, I got some answers! (And please know: I also received permission to share these answers, and their authors’ names, with you.) Damian Anderson is fourteen years old, a bit older than Jesus when he lit up the temple with his ideas. Here are Damian Anderson’s responses to my prompt, and you’ll notice that he took it very seriously, and answered every question:
Damian says that the people of St. Paul’s need to know “that a lot of kids (maybe more than you think) want to learn about God and will benefit from learning about God but need more spaces than just church [services]. [They need] a ‘youth group’ or something like that.”
Regarding what we all need to do, Damian says, "The people have been doing a lot already, but having kids help during the services is fun.”
(Are you writing this down? Don’t worry, I am.)
Damian said more. What do the people of St. Paul’s need to be? Here’s his answer: “The people need to be leaders in the community, a safe sanctuary. If you need safety, you know you can go to St Paul's. Or if you want to talk to someone, [you know you can go to St. Paul’s]. Maybe [have] a ‘hotline’ that is staffed by volunteers that kids could ask questions. That might be fun!”
(I suspect it might be more than fun. I suspect that if we took our cue from Damian and set up a hotline, we could save more than one young life.)
But Damian had more to say! When I asked him what he wanted to say to us, he answered my question with his own question. Damian Anderson, 14, asks this of us: “What is most interesting to you about the younger generation?”, Damian wonders. And he added this idea: “It would be fun to have an ‘ask the teens’ event or a game night with teens.”
Noted.
But there’s more! When asked what is the most important thing about or for this faith community, Damian replied, “That you know you are helping people, and [helping] yourself.” And when asked what matters most to him, he said, “My family; using my voice to help make changes that need to be made; and people being treated with kindness.”
Amen.
And finally, if Damian had a microphone and our 125 people on a Sunday could hear what he has to say, he would say this: “This is going to be a long year and we have to stay connected to what we care about and help our families and anybody who needs [help.]”
Damian speaks with authority, and not like the scribes.
Then I heard back from Ivey and Grey Hopkins. They had fewer words to say, but their responses were no less powerful. Their mother Kira replied by saying, “Ivey… is most interested in animal welfare, especially equine welfare. [She] did a school project on how horses should be treated better, especially in the Olympics, where the U.S. standards are not equally applied to other nations. I think for both [Ivey and Grey], they are most interested in fairness and justice.”
I would only add this, regarding Grey, who gets the last word in the Good News according to St. Paul’s, the Good News proclaimed more eloquently here than even Luke the evangelist can manage, the Good News that comes to us from our youngest companions. Here is something Grey recently did, and again, I have his permission to share. Some months ago, on a Sunday I was downstairs with our younger members, Grey was the only one in the room in his age group, and it didn’t really seem best to loop him into a Godly Play story. So he and I played chess.
Chess? Yes. Heaven and earth are found, in splendid discourse, on a chess board. Two people can learn a lot about the world while playing chess together. Grey and I played our way through the game, and I realized to my growing chagrin that I was beating him. This was our first significant encounter: I didn’t want to win. I wanted Grey to feel welcome here. I felt that dull pressure we church folk feel to pander to people, to meet their every need as if we were the customer service department of a retail store. But I noticed my feelings, suppressed them, and went on to win the game.
Grey looked at the evidence of his defeat on the board. He thought for a moment, then tipped over his king, stood up, and extended his hand. “Good game,” he said. I almost burst into tears. The class, the wisdom, the maturity. The delightful, dazzling decency of this young person! I was evangelized. I was stirred with hope and eager expectation for a bright future on this weary earth.
Keep listening to these companions, slight in years but vast in wisdom. Listen for their good words, their Good News, for us, and for the world. And take it from me, out here in the ministry field alongside these good Christian souls:
The kids are alright.