Youth are a gift. We mark their arrival with balloons and cakes, candles and presents. In Jesus’ day, it was prescribed in the Law of the people of God for parents to present a newborn boy in the Temple, and to be purified, and to celebrate, and to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Those who were well to do would offer a lamb, and those who were not would offer two doves. Weeks after his birth, Mary and Joseph presented Jesus at the Temple, and they brought with them two doves to offer to God.

I’m not sure who there would have taken notice of them. Doubtful it was one of the chief priests and scribes we hear so much about in the Gospels, who will in later chapters antagonize Jesus for how he says we should welcome the poor and embrace the downtrodden. It wouldn’t have been one of the elite who noticed this humble couple and their infant son. They would have been biased to favor visitors carrying a prized lamb and accompanied with extended family.

It’s a surprise to me that anyone took notice at all of the Holy Family. But, as God would have it, two older, faithful, everyday people, who visited the Temple often, saw this small family on the margins, and they both proclaimed blessing and honor. This was not a kindness for Anna and Simeon; it was a privilege. Clearly they were guided by the Spirit.

How much power do you and I possess to offer encouragement to people who need it and to nurture confidence in those who feel little but insecurity! Every sage and senior, every grandparent and great aunt, can pour forth blessing on others fumbling to make their way in the world, unsure of their next steps.

I remember going through my teens and my twenties, and seeing what I interpreted as a vast ocean of possibilities all around me. The scope of options was paralyzing for me; I didn’t know which direction to move in. I couldn’t settle on a goal to strive toward or a vision for my future, for my life. Would I live in DC or Baltimore or Atlanta or the mountains? Would I study math or economics or art or something else? Would I advocate for, or assist and empower, people who struggled to find affordable housing? Would I pursue a calling to ministry with the Church? And would the Church have room for someone like me?

A little while later, I would discover those same uncertainties and ambiguities were on the mind of a parishioner with a former congregation where I served. She was fresh out of community college, she was unsure what to do with herself, she was working at the time as a grocery store clerk, and she carried tremendous guilt, that her mother had sacrificed so much to educate her and to raise her, but still she couldn’t launch into a career or a vocation.

She took on internships with the General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church, where she wrote about her own experiences, her doubts, and her optimism. She expressed herself in writing more clearly, more insightfully, and more abundantly than she did in conversation.

Month to month, I looked forward to learning what new directions she was testing out, setting aside, or trying again. And one day, after two years of hearing from each other, we met over coffee and spoke for the last time. I told her that getting to work with her and with the dozen or so youth of that church in discovering for themselves what they would do with their lives, was “the best part” of my time there.

She gave me a bookmark that she had knitted. And I said goodbye to her, as she embarked on a new journey, to pursue her passion and excellence in writing, to leave her family and her childhood and her indecision behind, and to make her mother proud, to make her sister proud, to lead her life, so that she would be proud of herself. 

I know you can relate. Whether it’s before you or behind you, discernment is a feature of our lives, no matter the starting point, no matter who we are.

I wonder if Mary and Joseph felt like they had a lot of options in front of them, or if they were struggling to make a way through it all. Did they have people they could count on, family and friends, neighbors and work contacts? It was just the two of them in the stable when Jesus was born. Did they have a minister who believed in them? Did they recognize God’s love for them in the stories of the scriptures?

Or did it feel like it was all up to them, and them alone, setting out on their own? What threats and fears of the authorities would lead to their immigration to Egypt? Do you think they hoped to find better work prospects in another country? Do you wonder, like I do, if they were rejected by their own community, facing stigma and prejudice, coming up against barriers to finding a sense of belonging, so they had little to gain by staying put? Would they have survived at all without the gifts of the Magi? What a troubling start in the world Jesus had, and what a blessing to him Mary and Joseph were.  

To a fledgling family, only just making their way in a world stifled by inequalities which we struggle to comprehend, would come promises of God’s presence in their lives. Anna and Simeon declared: This dependent, this child, would lead to the “redemption of Jerusalem,” its liberation from Roman occupation and imperial oppression. This child of promise would be God’s salvation, a light – for revelation to the gentiles and for glory to Israel – for greater understanding and illumination, for a shared epiphany for how things should be, for how God wants us to live, for how God wants us to care.

To care for another is to connect with that person, to find a bond that was created before we were born. We all bear the image of God, and to acknowledge it in the people around us, even the people we think we are nothing like, is both to know ourselves more completely and to see God more fully. We become less and less strangers to ourselves and more and more conscious of who God made us to be.

And anyone carrying a message like that (a call for addressing each other with kindness rather than hate speech, for including everyone in a diverse and beloved community, even the so-called “sinners” to break bread with both zealots and tax collectors); to cast vision of equality, where there is no division between Greek or Jew, male or female – all of us a servant to one another, all of us free to be ourselves; anyone bearing that kind of good news for all people (good news not so much for the powerful but for the poor) would understandably be destined for “the falling and rising of many,” “a sign that will be opposed, so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.”

I don’t know if Mary and Joseph (or anyone) would expect to hear something like that at the presentation of their child, at a baptism, or a service of confirmation. I don’t think the words of a sword piercing their heart would be a source of assurance and peace. I don’t imagine they would leave anyone feeling anything other than heightened uncertainty and deepened apprehension.

But hesitation and worry are sometimes what you feel when you sit through a graduation speech. The students, who are marking a transition from childhood to adulthood, from learning to leading, are happy to celebrate the occasion. In those ceremonies, youth are often charged by the valedictorian to make something worthwhile with their lives, to work for something good, to overcome challenges and pitfalls, to resist taking shortcuts and settling for what too many of us settle for. We are all charged to be different from those who have gone before us.

Each graduate is herself a light, guided by the Spirit and trailblazing with her own life a brand new way to engender compassion and to show kindheartedness to others. Each one of you is an experiment in some innovation, some untested and untried expression of goodness and grace, empathy and inner strength. Each one of you is an epiphany. Each one of you is a breath of fresh air.

My only prayer for all of us is that when we see a light such as these in our lives, the Spirit of God would guide us so that so that all of us can respond for ourselves, not to dismiss or disapprove of the new light that shines into our lives (like a wet blanket), but, with courage and with creativity, to reflect it, to be vulnerable enough to reveal the inner thoughts of our hearts, to claim our own hopes for a better world, and to fan the flame, until at last, it has come to be.  

Will you allow yourself to be guided by the Spirit, to mirror the light of God in your life, every day you’ve been given, in every way that lies before you? I pray you will. Amen.