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Living with Rules

ANCHORS OF HOME

Living with Rules

July 8, 2007

Text: Luke 2:41-52

Luke 2:41-52

Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44 Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” 49 He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he said to them. 51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.

52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

NRSV

Rules.

Here’s a list of rules I ran across. These are the rules men want women to know about men. Please note—I did NOT make them up, someone else did!

1. Sunday = sports. It’s like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.

2. Shopping is NOT a sport. And we are never going to think of it that way.

3. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become null and void after 7 days.

4. If something we said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.

5. Christopher Columbus did not need directions, and neither do we.

6. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

Here’s another list of rules. It’s a list of what toddlers want everyone to know about toddlers. These rules are a lot simpler:

1. If I like it, it’s mine.

2. If it’s in my hand, it’s mine.

3. If I can take it from you, it’s mine.

4. If I had it a little while ago, it’s mine.

5. If it looks just like mine, it’s mine.

6. If I think it’s mine, it’s mine.

7. If it’s yours and I steal it, it’s mine.

8. If I saw it first, or last, makes no difference, it’s still mine.

Rules.

They’re everywhere.

Families, especially, have rules. They’re what help make a house a home. They’re what help make a collection of individuals a family.

A rule of life is this: a family has to have rules—and it’s rather nice if the parents set the rules, not the children, know what I mean?

But wait a second. There could be an exception to this rule.

Think of Jesus growing up. The Messiah. The Son of David. The Co-Creator of the universe, according to John’s Gospel. And this Son of God—Yahweh, Lord Almighty—is in your care, living in your house.

YOU are going to set rules for HIM? That’s like a kindergardener, crayon in hand, going up to Einstein and saying, “No, you have it all wrong—you need to work the problem this way…”

I KNOW Mary and Joseph had to think twice before disciplining him!

And yet, you see from today’s passage his parents did indeed establish rules in their household, and expected Jesus—the second person of the Trinity—to abide by them.

It’s obvious from today’s passage that one of the biggest rules they had is one that we share:

“Children, stay with us. If you want to go somewhere, tell us.”

Isn’t it refreshing that even though times have changed, this rule hasn’t? From the very beginning of the origin of humankind, this has been a bedrock rule.

So...

WHAT RULES ARE IMPORTANT TO YOUR FAMILY?

If your family is like my family, you’ve never really sat down and written them out, have you?

Working on this sermon gave me occasion for reflection. Our family’s rules seem vaguely based on the 10 Commandments. Instead of “Thou shalt not covet” we turn that into “Thou shalt share.” Instead of “Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain,” we turn into “Thou shalt not say ‘My God’ in conversations, but ‘My goodness.’” Instead of “Thou shalt not kill” we turn into “Thou shalt stay on thy side of the back seat, and keep thine hands unto thyself.”

It truly might be interesting for you and your family to go home and talk about what rules you are all to live by. Have a dialogue. Explain what the purpose behind each is.

Even the act of attempting to do that may be transforming for your family. Just doing this would be something that maybe 90% of American households will never think of doing. Maybe it’s because Americans are too busy. Maybe it’s because parents don’t want to appear to be the “bad guy” to their kids—especially if those parents are divorced.

In the last century the Duke of Windsor was asked what impressed him most in America. He replied, “The way American parents obey their children.”

It’s absolutely essential that especially American families—maybe even if that family is just husband/wife—ask themselves, “What rules are we to live by?”

Mary and Joseph’s rule is one that my wife and I share, of course.

When our six year old Emma asks to play outside, we say that she can play as long as she stays in the front yard. Sometimes, maybe five minutes later, we’ll go out and she’s nowhere to be seen. The girls two houses down were playing, they called her to join them, and she went without thinking. Or someone was shooting off some bottle rockets, and she wandered down the street.

And how do you think mom and dad feel when we discover our front yard is Emma-less?

And how do you think Mary and Joseph felt?

As they were leaving Jerusalem, Jesus keeps looking back to the Temple. He’s drawn to that place, the “holy house of God.” Drawn to it just as a child is drawn to play with other kids, or oooh and aaah over bottle rockets exploding in the sky. He can’t help himself. He returns to “his Father’s house.”

Mary’s response said it all. After three days of searching, and finally finding him in the Temple, she exclaims,

“Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.”

Isn’t this true to life? You find your child, and you hug and kiss and ask if the child’s all right. Then you hug and kiss some more. And then you say, “WHY have you treated US like this???”

In your family,

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN RULES ARE BROKEN?

I think the most natural thing in the world is to take it personally, like Mary and Joseph did.

Your teenager sneaks in an hour after curfew, and doesn’t call you on the cell phone to say he/she is going to be late. You know what your most natural response is? It’s the same response your parents heard from their parents. The same response your grandparents heard from their parents. It’s the same response your children will make when your grandchildren will break curfew:

“AFTER ALL WE’VE DONE FOR YOU, THIS IS THE THANKS WE GET????”

After the anger subsides, and after you say these words that you know—because of this sermon—you shouldn’t say, but will anyway: after the anger, is there a better way to respond to a child [or parent or spouse, for that matter] who breaks the rules?

In the movie Gandhi, there’s a scene in which Gandhi’s wife refuses to

rake and cover the latrine in the new community that he has built. A community principle was that everyone share the work equally. She asks Gandhi why he wants her, his wife, to do the work of untouchables. “It’s not me, it’s the principle,” he tells her. When still she refuses, he grows angry and implacable, pushing her out the door, shouting, “Go then, leave this place!”

The Christian writer Sue Monk Kidd, reflecting on this scene, says:

“Enslaved by the rightness of his principle, he loses sight of what matters--his wife, the woman before him with all her faults and complex reasons. But then in a moment that never fails to touch me with its grace, he sees that his principle has become detached from the ground of Love. We witness the hardheartedness drain out of him. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ he asks. ‘I apologize.’ His transformation becomes the seed of her transformation. ‘I must go now,’ she tells him, ‘and rake and cover the latrine.’

After this Gandhi stands by his principles with unwavering dignity and yet never loses his compassion.

--Weavings, 11-12/2000

So, what do you and I do when the rules are broken?

Can we combine “unwavering dignity” with “compassion”?

Here are some thoughts.

Does a broken curfew provide a learning opportunity for the teenager—and for the parent?

Does breaking a rule give you an opportunity to question the rule, and its place?

When a rule is broken, does it give you a window into the heart and mind of this person you live with?

When a rule is broken, does it open up a window so you can glimpse a larger scene of life?

It’s this last question that leads to the climax of the story.

After his mother expressed her hurt and anger, Jesus replied,

“Oh, Mom, for pity’s sake, what are you worried about? I’m twelve years old! I can look out after myself! You never let me have any fun!”

Mary and Joseph could have handled that response. They were prepared to respond like parents of teenagers have always responded:

“Young man, while you live under our roof, you will abide by our rules—do you understand?”

But Jesus didn’t respond like a typical son.

He replied,

“Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

So much for their prepared response that began, “Young man…”

This caught them totally off guard. No wonder the Bible says,

“They did not understand what he said to them.”

Of course they didn’t. Jesus had broken one of his family’s rules—but he was obeying a “higher” rule: “I MUST be in my Father’s house.”

The story ends with Jesus returning with his parents to Nazareth, where Luke carefully notes that he was “obedient” to them. I think this was Luke’s way of saying, “Children, Jesus was a trained professional. Do not try the ‘I must follow a higher law’ technique at home!” But you can’t help but think that Jesus’ words in the temple must have stayed in their minds. And in the back of their minds they had to have asked themselves, “Do the old rules we have for our son still apply?”

They were facing what all families must face as year chases year:

WHAT RULES MAY CHANGE?

That teenager of yours goes off to college. He/she returns for the summer. And what’s the most natural thing for mom or dad to say as the child goes out for the evening? “Now, you be sure to be home by 11 o’clock.”

Yeah, right.

We like to keep the same old rules. There’s security in them. They set our roles down in stone. They remind us of the good old days. They keep us pretending we are who we once were—and that our children are still who they once were.

But there’s a higher law that calls our rules into question over time.

“Don’t you know I must be in my Father’s house?”

“The world is opening to me,” the teen might say. “I have a higher calling. Don’t you know that I must grow up and change? And don’t you know that you have to continue growing and changing as well? Don’t you know that some of the rules we live by as a family have to change?”

And maybe it’s not just the teen that says that, but the parent as well.

The time for the rules to change hasn’t happened to our family yet. But it’s coming. And I hope I will have the grace to be like Jesus’ mother Mary, who saw her son growing up and “treasured these things in her heart.”

To help me treasure these things, I’m going to remember that rules and families are fluid. At any given time a family is at one of these stages:

Setting rules--Breaking rules--Changing rules.

The birthday of a particularly difficult boy was coming up. His parents were discussing what to give him for a present. The mother said, “Let’s buy him a bicycle.”

“Well,” said the father, “Maybe, but do you think it will improve his behavior?”

“Probably not,” said the mother, “but it will spread it over a wider area.”

Rules are no guarantee that behavior will improve. Maybe a bike is a short-term answer at times.

But bikes are poor substitutes for rules—rules that shape a child, rules that shape a parent.

Where are you?