Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.’ That’s a text that has always appealed to me one that could usefully be painted on all church walls over the pulpit. But what does it really mean? What, to start with, does the author mean by the word of Christ’? When he was writing there were no gospels no records that are familiar to us which recorded Christ’s words. Is he in fact referring to Jesus’ actual teaching or might he mean the words of good news preached in Jesus’ name by his apostles? Or might he mean the word of God found in the Old Testament which is also the word of the eternal Christ, because Christ is the fulfilment of the Hebrew Scriptures? In other words might he be suggesting that you should let all the readings you hear today, including this sermon, dwell in you richly? And what of that curious combination of verb and adverb dwell in you richly or abundantly.’ The implication is that what you hear should take up residence in your mind make itself at home there, not just camping out but seriously settling in, decorating the place expensively and furnishing all the rooms of the mind with good things. Put like that this richness might seem a bit indigestible especially when faced with what we have actually heard from scripture this morning.
The first reading presents us with the infant Samuel so beloved of sentimental painters. I suppose the reading is there because it depicts Samuel’s parents going up to the sanctuary at Shiloh for the yearly sacrifice, just as in our gospel reading Mary and Joseph go up to the Temple for the Passover festival but the connection is rather strained. Samuel lives at Shiloh because his mother had dedicated him to God’s service. She had seemed to be barren but God answered her prayer and gave her a son whom she gave back to God in gratitude. It is in the sanctuary that the infant Samuel hears someone calling him. He thinks it’s Eli, the high priest, but it turns out to be God for when he grows up Samuel will have a special vocation and task. Eli clearly senses that Samuel is special but he has other things on his mind. He is very old and his own sons lead infamous and immoral lives they will eventual be killed in a battle in which the ark of the covenant is captured by the Philistines. This is the environment in which Samuel is growing up. He is isolated from his family and vulnerable. The little robe his mother brings him once a year is perhaps a symbol of the pain and anguish underlying this brief reference to Samuel’s childhood.
Clothing is the symbol which introduces the next reading. The Christian virtues of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, forgiveness and love are presented as a kind of costume, which is to clothe us, something to dress up in. The list of virtues is a familiar one, but perhaps we can make something out of the order. Above all it says, clothe yourself with love but love is a word Christians are always talking about and which so confuses us because of our own confused needs to love and be loved. Love is a word to work up to; it’s perhaps best to start with the humbler garments in Paul’s list as it were the socks of kindness or the vest of patience, clothing yourself with those as an apprentice of love. It’s a great word kindness’ because it is related to that other use of the word as in people of one’s own kind.’ The basic motivation for kindness is that under God everyone is of one’s own kind. To be kind to them is simply to do for them what you would want for yourself because we all make up the family of humankind.
Which brings us on finally to the family of Jesus going up to the Temple for the Passover feast. This is the only story in the gospels of the childhood of Jesus or more accurately that moment at the age of twelve when in the ancient world boys were thought to leave childhood behind. It was also the age at which Samuel was supposed to have begun his prophetic ministry. The purpose of the story is to show Jesus’ early promise as a virtuoso teacher he confounds the teachers in the temple with his wisdom and knowledge. The story also sets the distinctive pattern of Jesus ministry whereby family life assumes secondary importance to the task of carrying out his heavenly Father’s work. The phrase, Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house’ is probably better translated, Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?’
And yet this commitment is a source of pain to those who love Jesus, just as Samuel’s vocation is a source of pain to his parents. Neither Mary nor Joseph understand Jesus, not now nor during his ministry. When his parents find Jesus in the temple it seems to Mary that he neither cares about them nor appreciates their anxiety. And yet in spite of this pain and uncertainty the story ends with Mary treasuring all these events in her heart. This is more than Mary keeping a mental scrap book of Jesus’ childhood. Mary ponders and treasures up these things which she has painfully to accept, things she doesn’t understand. And that can take us back to the idea of Christ’s word dwelling in us richly, which is the equivalent of Mary’s treasuring up her experiences of Jesus. But here pain and uncertainty become part of the richness. Mary is the representative of the church; she trusts, she listens, she stores up, and remembers. We like Mary are to have faith that gradually it will all make sense and that our vocation is to grow in understanding and in love, as the word grows ever more richly at home in us. Amen
Stephen Tucker