Well, happy 5th Day of Christmas. Did you know it was the 5th day of Christmas?
Many people mistakenly think that the “12 Days of Christmas” which we sing about are the 12 days leading up to Christmas, but actually they are the days between Christmas and Epiphany, which we will celebrate next Sunday.
So even though Christmas Day has come and gone, we are still in the midst of the 12 Days of Christmas.
That means the Christmas Season is still upon us, so we’re going to continue to enjoy singing Christmas songs and looking at all of these beautiful Christmas decorations this week and next Sunday, too.
Now although Christmas morning was just a few days ago, our scripture reading from today’s lectionary for the 1st Sunday after Christmas isn’t about the baby Jesus. Instead, we hear a story about an adolescent Jesus.
I know most of us want more to hear more stories about the baby Jesus during the Christmas season, but there really aren’t many stories of Jesus’s childhood in the Bible.
If you Luke’s gospel, you’ll see Jesus is born in chapter one and then in the very next chapter, he’s already 12 years old!
What happened to all those years in between? What was Jesus doing?
Well, we don’t really know. And I actually kind of like that we don’t know, because it implies to me that Jesus’s childhood was probably very ordinary, much like ours.
Jesus didn’t know he was the “Son of God” as little boy. He was just an ordinary kid.
And, that’s why his parents, Mary and Joseph, are so shocked and surprised to hear the way their 12 year-old son is talking to the Rabbis in the temple in today’s Gospel reading, because up until now, Jesus has been just an ordinary kid.
But, at the age of 12, he’s beginning to show signs of spiritual wisdom, much beyond his years. He’s growing and changing.
Now, after this one story of Jesus at the age of 12, the Bible fast-forwards to Jesus at the age of 30! Again, we don’t really know what Jesus was doing between the ages of 12 and 30. The Bible doesn’t tell us.
These years are sometimes referred to as the “Lost Years of Jesus,” and there are a lot of theories about what Jesus was doing in those years.
You can read books from world-renown theologians who claim that Jesus went to India and Nepal during those “lost years” and was exposed to Hinduism and Buddhism and Eastern spirituality.
This is all speculation, of course. No one knows for sure.
But, obviously, throughout his teenage years and throughout his twenties, Jesus was growing in spiritual wisdom and coming to a greater understanding his Divine Nature and his purpose for being.
He was “awakening.” He was rising in consciousness.
And, as the years of our lives go on, we, too, should be growing in spiritual understanding and rising in consciousness.
The 20th Century Christian mystic, Thomas Merton, the famous Trappist monk, once said, “If the ‘you’ of 10 years ago doesn’t consider the ‘you’ of today to be a heretic, you are not growing spiritually.”
What he meant was: We have to “let go” of old ways of thinking and being if we’re going to keep growing spiritually, if we’re going to keep growing in wisdom.
Now, since today is the 5th Day of Christmas, do you remember what the song says about the 5th day of Christmas? “On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 5 GOLDEN RINGS.”
All the gifts in that song have a spiritual significance. The spiritual significance of gold is that is symbolizes wisdom and spiritual transformation.
And, they’re rings because there’s no beginning and there’s no end. Our spiritual growth and wisdom continue throughout our lives.
When I think of gold in the spiritual sense, I often think of the book entitled The Alchemist by Paolo Coehlo. It was published in 1988 and has since become a contemporary spiritual classic.
An alchemist is someone who takes base metals and transforms them thru fire into precious metals, like silver and gold.
Jesus was an alchemist, of sorts. As he grew spiritually, he discovered that through the power of the Christ Light (through the fire of the Holy Spirit within), he was able to transform things like water into wine; blindness into sight; lack into abundance; death into new life.
And (in John 14:12), he says to us, “All of the things that I have done, you can do, too.” And then he added, “These things and greater!”
My friends, through the power of the Christ light within us (through the fire of the Spirit) we can transform our lives and our world. We can turn base metals to gold!
Our “base metals” are our “base thoughts,” our lower thoughts. But, we have the power within us to transform those thoughts into something greater.
And when we transform our thinking, we transform our lives.
This isn’t “New Age” mumbo jumbo. This is Scriptural. We hear it time and time again in the Bible.
In 2 Corinthians 5, it says: “If anyone is in the Light of the Christ, old things are passed away. Behold, I making all things new.”
In Ephesians 4, it says: “Put away your old way of thinking and be renewed by the Spirit of your mind.”
And in Romans 12, it says, “Be ye transformed by the renewal of your mind.”
Today, as you know, is the very last Sunday of 2024, and the end of one year and the beginning of another is a very powerful spiritual time for renewal.
It’s about letting go of the old, so that we can welcome in the new.
Some of you may be familiar with an ancient “end of year” tradition called the Burning Bowl. The Burning Bowl is a sacred ritual of purification and renewal.
The purpose of this ritual is write down the things that are no longer serving us anymore and burn them, so that we don’t carry them into the new year. We’re burning away the old to make way for the new.
So, my question for you today on the last Sunday of the year is: What are the things that are no longer serving you, that you do not wish to bring into the new year?
Maybe you’d like to release – burn away – thoughts of resentment, anger, jealousy or judgment. Maybe you’d like to let go of thoughts of worry, fear, lack or limitation.
Between now and New Year’s Day, I’d like to encourage you take some time alone with God – to enter into the Silence/the Kingdom of Heaven within you – and to set your intentions for the coming year.
You can write a new chapter or you can keep writing the same old story. The choice is yours. The power is within you.
For as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Wishing you all a very Happy New Year.