What was left out? When I see a movie after reading the novel of the same story, I am often frustrated by what they left out. I get it. It’s hard to compress a novel-length story into a couple of hours of movie.

On the day after Christmas we went to see the movie Wicked. And loved it. Since the movie was two hours and forty minutes and part two is still to come out later this year, it made me wonder. If the Broadway musical is about three hours and the two movies together will be nearly six hours, what is being added? What was left out from the 1995 novel Wicked? Same with the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. What was left out?

We don’t have photographs from Jesus’ life, though wouldn’t it be cool if we did? But imagine if we could. We would have lots of pregnancy and baby photos, from the infancy stories in Matthew and Luke—ones we have heard the past week in church. There would be photos of Elizabeth and Mary together. Pictures of the birth in a stable. Pictures of shepherds and the Magi. Pictures of Simeon and Anna forty days after the birth. Then skip ahead a long way to Jesus’ last three years of his life. Gobs of photos. And even more of the last week of his life. There would be photos from only one event between his birth and his public ministry. One event in approximately thirty years: the gospel today, of the twelve-year Jesus being left behind in the temple. There would be a lot of lost years in the photo album we are imagining. That’s worth pondering.

Just exactly where does God reside now? What is God’s address? It sounds like a children’s question. Or the beginning of a children’s sermon. Or a good title of a children’s book.

Where does God live? On Heavenly Lane? Beyond the clouds? In churches and temples? In nature? In the human heart? Is it someplace or is it everywhere?

The creation story in Genesis is a birth story and we read it each year at the Easter Vigil.  “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” And tonight’s gospel sounds similar. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God.” Jesus is the Word made flesh. And that Word—that God-energy—was from there from the beginning of time.