The First Sunday after Christmas, December 29, 2024

The Sundays after Christmas and Easter are often described as “low Sundays.” After the celebrations of the Nativity and Resurrection, things go back to normal, attendance drops significantly, and in multiple staff congregations or when a supply preacher is available, the senior pastor usually takes a holiday. Despite their reputation as off Sundays, I have always prized the “low Sundays” and regardless of the intensity of Advent, Christmas, and Holy Week, I look forward to grounding the mountaintop holy day experiences of Christmas and Easter in daily life. The First Sunday of Christmas highlights the experiences of two growing youth, Samuel and Jesus, with the affirmation that both are growing in wisdom and stature.
My liturgical guidance for the First Sunday after Easter is creative informality reprising the carols of Christmas and celebrating the Word made flesh in our lives. This is a good Sunday for a brunch after church or a favorite cookie cavalcade, maybe even with mimosas or sangria (for the adults!) and festive beverages and games for the children and those who abstain.
The Gospel reading leaps forward twelve years from Jesus’ birth. The years after the Holy Family’s return from Egypt to age twelve and then from age twelve to thirty remain a mystery, beckoning us to imagine Jesus’ childhood and young adult and adult spiritual adventures prior to his baptism. Twelve years old, Jesus is on the verge of adulthood and expresses the freedom that comes as a child distances themselves from their parents. Jesus must strike out on his own, forging his own path, and claiming his own vocation. There is no evidence in the Lukan passage that Jesus is fully aware of his vocation of God’s Chosen One, the Word Made Flesh. Rather, Luke gives a developmental portrait of Jesus, both unconsciously and intentionally taking the first steps toward the ministry to come. Jesus is not ready-made Godhead but must grow in faith and experience as he responds to God’s Christic aims for his life. He must claim the wisdom of his tradition to transcend and transform it.
Jesus grows! Jesus grows through study, listening, and sharing. As Luke notes, “After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.” Jesus is our pattern for spiritual maturity: Jesus doesn’t claim to have all the answers; he is committed to an evolving spirituality and to sharing the truth as he currently understands it.
I prefer the alternative translation, “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature” to “Jesus grew in wisdom and years.” We can age – even reach senior adulthood – and still be spiritually and emotionally immature. Our spirits can constrict rather than expand. We can focus on self-interest rather than world loyalty. For ten years, Americans have witnessed a senior adult living out loud, who appears to reveal in the smallness of his vision and narrowness of compassion, and who happily acts as if he has learned nothing in a decade, and in his stasis has led millions astray and may continue to do so. As we grow, our calling is to become Christ-like, to become big spirited mahatmas and Bodhisattvas, who experience the peace and prophetic call which comes from expanding our selves to embrace the Soul of the Universe. Jesus and Samuel found favor with God because they aligned themselves with God’s vision and became the embodiment of God’s aim in their personal goals and moment by moment encounters. As we grow in years, we are called to spiritual and ethical expansion, to grow from self-interest to world loyalty.
The passage from Colossians describes the characteristics of a person who is growing in wisdom and stature. A person growing in wisdom and stature – that is, spiritual size – is clothed with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. They are also adorned with love, peace, and wisdom. Growth is the result of commitment to God’s vision, gratefully doing “everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Francis of Assisi was described as a person whose whole life was a prayer. Christ-like growth is prayerful growth, always attending to God’s presence in our lives and encounters. When people meet us, let them see Christ: let us be living witnesses to God’s inspiration and compassion.
The Psalm takes us from Jerusalem and Israel to the Cosmos and invites us to participate in a world of praise. Creation, human and non-human, is alive and in constant contact with God. Experience, though varied in complexity and intensity, is universal, and God inspires evert moment. All creation praises God. Even the sun and rain, hail and snow praise. Indeed, as the final words of the Psalms (Psalm 150:6) affirm, “Let everything that breathes praise God.” Let our breath be a prayer.
Christmas need not end on December 25 or with the taking down of the tree. We can align ourselves with the teleology of the universe, aiming at beauty, and awaken to and share God’s incarnation in our lives every day of the year.

Bruce Epperly is Theologian of Residence at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, Bethesda, Maryland. A theologian, professor, university chaplain, and seminary professor and administrator, Epperly is the author of over 80 books, including “Homegrown Mystics: Restoring Our Nation through the Healing Wisdom of America’s Visionaries,” “Saving Protestant Theology to Save the World,” “Jesus: Mystic, Healer, and Prophet,” and “The God of Tomorrow: Metaphysics, Mysticism, and Mission in Whitehead and Teilhard.” He is also of six volumes of 12 Days of Christmas meditations, the most recent being “Once Upon a Time: The 12 Days of Christmas in Story and Film.” He may be reached at [email protected].