Luke 2:25-35
Christmas 1
December 31, 2023
William G. Carter
The Christmas Story does not begin with shepherds in the fields and a baby in a manger. The Christmas Story begins in the temple.
This is a Jewish story, so it begins with characters right out of the Jewish Bible. There is a priest, a prophet, an old woman, and an old man. The priest is Zechariah, who serves in the temple. He represents the worship life of Israel, the atonement sacrifices, the holy days, and the singing of the Psalms. The prophet is a woman named Anna. Like the prophets of Israel, Anna speaks when the Spirit falls upon her. The old woman is Elizabeth, who is Zechariah’s wife. Luke says she is barren, unable to bear a child, until like Old Sarah, God gives her a future.
And then there is Simeon. He has a small but important part in the Christmas pageant. Listen to his story:
Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, 31which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”
And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed - and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
Luke goes to great lengths to remind us that Christmas does not happen out of the blue. Christmas comes out of the faith of Israel. Simeon was an old man with an ancient religion. He kept the faith, offered the prayers, and clung to his hopes. He was an exemplary believer, deemed righteous and devout. Every time somebody opened the temple door, there he was.
We know people like that. No need to mention any names, but we know who they are. Every spiritual community has such people. They attend every worship service and sing every hymn. They go to Bible studies and offer their talents. They give generously and pray fervently. They make sure the lights are turned on, and worship services stay on schedule, and tables are set up for the next potluck dinner. They call me at home to say, “Someone left the doors unlocked.” We know these people. Some of us are these people.
Simeon stands among them. He hopes, believes and shows up – yet he has never been allowed to see if any of it is actually true. He has always been a believer. He trusts God made a people and given them instructions on how to live. Simeon believes in the covenant, the commandments, and the call to show concern for the poor and needy.
Yet he is still looking for something. Luke calls it “consolation.” Another translation calls it “the comforting.”[1] And what is this consolation, this comfort? Simply this: that everything he’s heard will turn out to be true. There is a God who will make good on his promises.
I remember the small news item from September 2006. Three Jewish rabbis were ordained. I remember because that didn’t seem like a big deal. Rabbis get ordained all the time, right? Except happened in Germany, the first ordination since the Gestapo shut down the rabbinical schools in 1942.[2] 200,000 German Jews were among the six million people who were killed during the Holocaust. Their leaders were the best educated and most progressive in the world. Hitler stopped all that; and sixty-four years later, God started it up again.
Somebody interviewed an old man who spent four years hiding beneath a staircase in the 1940’s. He said, “I never thought we would see new rabbis in my lifetime. I was tempted to give up on God.”
How do anyone keep faith for sixty-four years of deprivation – or much longer? I think of Simeon all those years ago. In his day, there was no Hitler, but there was a King Herod. In the middle of Herod’s rule, along came the Romans. Historically speaking, his faith was live in a compromised environment. He breathed in a politically charged atmosphere. Yet Simeon kept going to the temple, studying the scripture, and praying for “consolation.”
Most of the Bible is a prayer for consolation. Ever notice that? There were very few periods in the Bible books that were settled or peaceful. Faith survives in the middle of turmoil. Hundreds of years before, Luke’s favorite prophet, the prophet Isaiah, cried out, “Comfort, comfort, my people. Say to Israel that her warfare is over, that she is done paying for her sins.” Those are wonderful words, so beautifully set to music in Handel’s Messiah. By the time Simeon came along, those words had been in the air for hundreds of years with precious little comfort.
All of this begs the question for us, namely: when will our consolation find us? When will the comfort come? If we keep going to church, year after year, will we see pay-off? If we keep praying while life gets shaken, when will our prayers be answered? Where is the assurance that the Temple where we’ve worshiped will continue to be a beacon for the community? That the future will unfold according to God’s grace? When will we gain the assurance that the very things that we want to believe really are true?
Simeon’s story points us to two complimentary answers. The first is the presence of the Holy Spirit. No surprise there. Luke is always talking about the Holy Spirit. Nine times in the Christmas story, including three times in today’s story, we hear about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is what prompted Mary to sing to God. The Holy Spirit offered messages to Zechariah and Elizabeth. The Holy Spirit whispers to Simeon, “Hang in there; you’re going to see the very thing you are hoping for.”
Think of it this way: the Holy Spirit is just enough of the presence of God that you want even more of the presence of God. The Holy Spirit is what creates a spiritual hunger inside every one of us. The Holy Spirit is what brought all of us back to church after all the candles are extinguished.
Have you ever thought of God that way? That God can create within us a hunger for something deeper? Not necessarily something more – here in the suburbs, we’re tempted to think it’s always about something more – no, not something more, something deeper. Our lives can have such a deeper purpose, a deeper grounding, a deeper confidence. The hunger for these spiritual riches comes from God. When God gets inside us somewhere – that’s the Holy Spirit. It’s the Spirit that pushes Simeon into the temple, and it’s the Spirit that whispers to him, “You’re going to see what I have promised that you’ll see.”
And then he sees the real consolation: Simeon sees Jesus. That’s the second answer. Simeon wobbles right up to the young couple with the bundle in their arms. He croaks out, “Let me see his face.” He pulls back that little blue blanket, sees a little tiny baby, and he looks into the eyes of the One through whom all things were made. The Holy Spirit fills him once again, and Simeon starts to sing:
Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.
Let’s call this the “take me home” moment. It’s that rare moment when we see something so special, something so beautiful and amazing, that God could take us home right then and there.
One of my friends is a Catholic priest. The day he was ordained, people were shaking his hand. Suddenly he saw a nun that he’d known ever since he was a wild child in parochial school. She was tiny, barely came up to his waist, but she stretched up and wrapped her hands on his face, and said, “Tommy, I’m so proud of you that I could die right now” Or to put it another, “Take me home, Lord, it doesn’t get any better than this!”
Simeon looked into the eyes of little Jesus, and he knew his whole life had prepared him for this moment. He knew that, even though this weary old world is in a mess most of the time, everything is going to turn out OK. He knew “the hopes and fears of all the years” would be most deeply met in this one, little Child. And he also knew that this little Savior would save us all, but only after going through a battle of his own.
“Mary, your son will expose people for what they are,” said Simeon, “and some will oppose him, and it will pierce your soul.” Welcome to the world that you made, little Jesus. It’s a world where the crèche is never far from the cross. Yet in crèche and cross, God shows us how far he will go to save the world. He will give himself to a people who reject him, that even in the means of his ultimate rejection they might be saved.
The writer Philip Yancey has this to say:
In the birth stories of Luke and Matthew, only one person seems to grasp the mysterious nature of what God has set in motion: the old man Simeon, who recognized the baby as the Messiah, instinctively understood that conflict would surely follow… Somehow Simeon senses that though on the surface little had changed – the autocrat Herod still ruled, Roman troops were still stringing up patriots, Jerusalem still overflowed with beggars – underneath everything had changed. A new force had arrived to undermine the world’s powers.[3]
This Christmas, I don’t know what you were looking for, or if you were even looking for anything. It could be that you are content with all the hustle, bustle, and noise. Or you simply tried to get through it all as quickly and inexpensively as possible. Or you enjoyed the lights and decorations, but the rest of it only in small doses.
But there really is something very important at the heart of this holiday. Call it a Holy Spirit Hunch. That little baby boy in Jerusalem started something. He keeps sending his Holy Spirit and we find ourselves hungry for something more than tinsel and artificial light. His Spirit pushes us to stand in places that we would not have noticed the truth if we had not been pushed.
The Holy Spirit that opened Simeon’s eyes and loosened his tongue is the same Spirit that compels us to look more deeply and sing more boldly. And the same Spirit comes to give us a glimpse of Jesus, to show us the world is held securely in his wounded hands. Whether we are ready to depart the world or ready to dig in, his saving work continues. It will be a light for revelation, a glory for his people. And this is our consolation.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment