Finding Jesus is Even Harder Than Finding a Zhu Zhu

Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family, Year C
St. Jude Catholic Church, Indianapolis, IN
1 Samuel 1.20-22, 24-28 Psalm 84 1 John 3.1-2, 21-24 Luke 2.41-52

I didn’t get one for Christmas, and I don’t really want one. But there’s no doubt that the Zhu Zhu pet was this year’s must-have Christmas gift. In case you’ve missed all the craze, the Zhu Zhu pet is an electronic hamster that advertisers claim to have all the things about hamsters that you want without any of the things about hamsters that you don’t want – like the smell, the mess, and the need to continually feed them and clean their cages. These little hamsters move around their habitat on their own, making over 40 different noises depending on what they find and how you touch them. They will even purr for you if you pet their head in the right way. And they’re cheap – only $10 retail. But as usually happens with these must-have toys, the real challenge of the Zhu Zhu pet is that they have been hard to find. Many parents and gift-buyers spent the whole month of December desperately searching for a Zhu Zhu. Stores sold out within minutes after getting new stock of the pets. And sometimes the only way to find one was being willing to pay as much as 6 times the regular price on E-bay or other online stores. The story of this year’s Christmas shopping season could easily be told as the story of looking for these elusive, electronic hamsters that seem able to think on their own. If only we would spend as much time looking for Jesus in our world as we did looking for toy hamsters.

Finding Jesus is not always easy. It’s not there he’s elusive, or hiding, or deliberately trying to avoid us. It’s hard to find Jesus because the distractions of the world and the failings of our human nature get in the way. Even Mary and Joseph had to look for Jesus. They were caught up in the caravan of relatives and neighbors from Nazareth and didn’t even realize that Jesus wasn’t with them. Remember, they were the Holy Family, not the perfect family, and for a few days their regular routine separated them from the center, the heart, of their family. Jesus was doing what he was meant to do, but even his parents had to search to find him in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Jerusalem at the time of the festival. Jesus was not lost; but he had to be found.

And so it is for us. There are so many distractions around us and even in our own hearts that it takes effort to find Jesus. He is here, in this church, whenever we come here to pray. But he is also in our homes, in our relationships, whether they are holy relationships or broken relationships. He is in our schools and workplaces, our parks and malls, our sports arenas and courthouses. He is in our hospitals and nursing homes, our prisons and shelters. He can be found wherever we are. But we must look, we must look beyond the surface of people’s faces and actions, we must look deeper than required conversations about sports and weather, we must look inside the heart and soul of each person we encounter. For Mary and Joseph, the holiest family that ever lived, it took three days to find Jesus in the Temple. For most of us, it will take much longer. But don’t give up. The rewards of finding Jesus in our world today are so much more lasting and meaningful than the simple satisfaction of finding a Zhu Zhu pet hamster.