Sermon Seeds: Righteousness is Born/Long-Awaited Gift
First Sunday after Christmas Year B
Lectionary citations
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 148
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:22-40
Sermon Seeds
Focus Scripture:
Luke 2:22-40
Weekly Theme:
Righteousness is Born/Long-Awaited Gift
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Reflection:
by Kathryn Matthews (Huey)
The shepherds, the angels and the heavenly hosts are all gone now, and Joseph and Mary have a baby to raise. As devout Jews, they took him first for circumcision and naming and now, after the appropriate time has passed, they’ve come to the temple in Jerusalem for Mary’s purification and Jesus’ presentation as a firstborn male to be consecrated to God.
Jerusalem and the temple are significant throughout Luke’s Gospel, and it’s important to Luke that Jesus is seen as one who was raised in faithful observance of Jewish law. He makes that point in today’s reading; in fact, while Luke uses the word “law” nine times in his Gospel, five of them are found in this passage. Jesus was raised in full obedience to the Law of Moses, within a religious tradition that praises and honors God in all of life, when you rise up and when you lie down, in your going out and your coming in, in the way you dress and what you eat (see R. Alan Culpepper, Luke, New Interpreter’s Bible). Fred Craddock has observed, “Later in life Jesus would be in tension with some interpreters of his tradition, but his position would not be that of an outsider” (Luke, Interpretation).
Culpepper has observed that this ceremony of presentation expresses Mary and Joseph’s “deepest awarenesses and commitments.” They “saw God at work in events they had experienced. They lived within a covenant community and they sought to fulfill vows they had made as well as to introduce their son into that covenant community” (Luke, New Interpreter’s Bible).
This Holy Family, then, is devout and observant. And they are poor, so their offering is simple, just two turtledoves instead of a lamb. But they also offer, or present, their child, Jesus, who would later be called a “lamb.” In the temple, at least in the outer court where women were allowed, they encounter two old saints who represent, in Fred Craddock’s words, “Israel in miniature, and Israel at its best: devout, obedient, constant in prayer, led by the Holy Spirit, at home in the temple, longing and hoping for the fulfillment of God’s promises” (Luke, Interpretation). They embody what have been called “the wonders of waiting,” an art lost to us today. It is to this covenant community that Mary and Joseph introduce Jesus.
Perhaps Mary’s first amazement was that Simeon addressed her at all, since it was unusual for men to talk with women they didn’t know, especially in public. (Won’t this be exactly the sort of thing that will get Jesus into trouble one day?) Luke tells us that Simeon has been assured by the Holy Spirit that he won’t die until he sees the Messiah, so he clearly has some power backing him up. Sure enough, when the big moment arrives, Simeon has the insight, the gift of recognizing what he has been waiting for all along. What he holds may be “just” a baby, but he sees the salvation of God, glory for the people of Israel and light for the gentiles, not just long ago but today, not just for himself and his people, but for all people, all the children of God.
James C. Howell writes evocatively of this scene: “How lovely, how tender, the way aged Simeon, the frailties of his years draped over him, cradles the infant Jesus in his arms. Imagine holding in your arms this most wanted child, the hope of the ages, the yearning of your entire life.” Ironically, God didn’t come down as a powerful emperor or a rich man: “God came down, not to thrash evildoers or crush the Romans, but as an infant, to elicit love, to nurture tenderness” (Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 1). Like Mary and Zechariah before him, Simeon breaks into a beautiful song, praising God and asking to be released now from his duty as watchman – “like Habakkuk before him,” William Herzog writes, “standing at his post, keeping watch and waiting for the Lord” (Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 1); he asks to be released from his waiting for the “consolation of Israel,” for he has beheld it before his very eyes. He can now die in peace, a peace that Stephen Farris describes as “wholeness or ‘shalom'” (The Lectionary Commentary: The Old Testament and Acts).
Wasn’t it a recent president who had a problem with “the vision thing”? Didn’t we know that that didn’t mean eyesight but something more, something deeper and much more powerful? I once had a conversation about the vision thing with a colleague who had lost his eyesight many years before. We talked about this reading, about the ability of Simeon to see more than a baby in his arms, to see within and beyond this baby to God’s hand at work in the world.
My colleague said that his own inability to see with his eyes is sometimes a gift because it enables him not to be distracted by things that might keep him from seeing “to the heart of things.” Whenever he would say that something was “gorgeous,” I wondered how he knew that, but he explained that his heart sees what his eyes cannot. He says that he has the ability to see the beauty of creation – instead of ugliness – because he can only see with his heart, his soul, and his mind. Most of all, he tries to see to the heart of each person he encounters, so the things that matter to the world matter very little to him. He looks, instead, within the person, to the Christ within. He believes that we’re each called to see – to behold – the promise of God’s grace and the Christ in one another – which helps us to understand better Jesus’ teachings about things like loving our enemies and having the reign of God within us.
As it turns out, scholars note that Luke often uses “sight” in his Gospel as a metaphor for perceiving the Word of God, for “getting it” when it comes to faith. So this Simeon is a good example for us of someone who sees with his heart and soul and mind; it’s as if he stood there and felt the presence of God’s promise about to be fulfilled. He was open, as we should be, to what is yet to come. Of course, Simeon also “sees” beyond the beautiful baby to a shadow side, to the opposition that Jesus will experience, a division that will cut like a sword through the heart of Mary. Fred Craddock says this beautifully: “Jesus will bring truth to light and in so doing throw all who come in contact with him into a crisis of decision. In that decision, rising and falling, life and death, result. Jesus precipitates the centrally important movement of one’s life, toward or away from God.” Preachers, take note that “anyone who turns on light creates shadows. This is what is meant literally by ‘making a difference,'” and may give us pause lest we step into the pulpit and “casually become an accessory in the radical alteration of the lives of others” (Luke, Interpretation). And James Howell draws an important if subtle distinction between the way the world sees things, and the way of the gospel: “Notice the order,” he writes. “In the world, it’s rise and fall. The rise and fall of the Third Reich, the rise and fall of the business tycoon, the rise and fall of a movie star. But with Jesus it’s fall and rise…We fall, and from that lowest point, we rise” – and there’s a sermon in that one line, isn’t there? (Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 1).
Anna, too, has the gift of seeing, of recognizing God’s hand at work doing not so much a new thing but keeping an old promise in a new day. We may not get to hear her words directly but we hear that she went around praising God and telling everyone all about the great thing God was doing in their midst, the great thing she had waited for so faithfully. (It’s interesting that Simeon addresses the couple, but Anna goes out and spreads the good news, even at her age.) Even as she’s “ready to move offstage,” Fred Craddock says, she knows that the new thing God is doing “is not really new, because hope is always joined to memory, and the new is God keeping an old promise” (Luke, Interpretation). However, like Simeon, Anna understands what a blessing is, and it has been the central hope of her life, the focus of her heart: “God’s blessing,” James Howell writes, “was not a continual smorgasbord of titanic experiences and shiny baubles. God’s blessing was just one thing, and it was eighty years coming” (Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 1).
What do you think about this vision thing, this thing of seeing within and beyond, of seeing with our hearts and souls and minds? Think for a moment about our hope for God’s reign to be experienced right here, in our midst, all around us, about our deepest longing when we are poor, or oppressed and marginalized, excluded and pushed around, when we’re sick and suffering, when we’re depressed and downcast, when our hearts are grieving or weary and we think we can’t go on, not one more mile, maybe not one more step, and then, in a moment, we are lifted up, strengthened, healed, loved, accepted, chosen. This can happen in the most amazing ways.
I remember a story on TV several Christmases ago about a young boy who had been diagnosed with cancer and was given a grant by the Make-a-Wish Foundation to make his wish come true. He decided instead to see a different vision of what he could do with his time and energy and this monetary gift, and decided to create a foundation himself to give toys to other children who had cancer. When other people heard about it, they sent lots of donations. And there he was, on the TV screen, taking the toys, carrying good news and comfort and healing, to young, hurting people whose pain he understood and whose needs he saw with a vision far greater than most.
Like Simeon and Anna, like this young boy, we can speak out the good news, not just for ourselves, but for every one of God’s children. Like Simeon and Anna, we can see beyond what’s right before our eyes to the future unfolding of God’s plan, to the promises of God being fulfilled here and now, and in the days ahead. They looked at a baby, and saw grace and hope. While we’ve been inspired and blessed by the songs of Zechariah, Mary, and Simeon, they are about more than what happens in church, during our religious observances. Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan devote a chapter of their excellent book, The First Christmas, to these songs about the fulfillment of our hope: “These hymns proclaim and remind us that the God of the Bible is concerned about the whole of life….this language is about how the world should be.”
How often do we hear that politics have no place in church? What do we mean by that? For Crossan/Borg, these hymns from the Bible “combine what we often separate, namely, religion and politics, spirituality and a passion for this world,” and they recognize that Jesus “decisively reveals and incarnates the passion of God as disclosed in the Law and the Prophets – the promise and hope for a very different kind of world from the world of Pharaoh and Caesar, the world of domination and empire.” Whether we are Simeon and Anna long ago, or the people of God today, we recognize with our hearts “the one who reveals God’s dream for this world” (The First Christmas).
What would it mean for the United Church of Christ to recognize the newborn baby as “the one who reveals God’s dream for this world”? Perhaps we see only the baby right now, and we need to be able to dream of what is yet to come. Think about our children’s children, the ones who will someday come the doors of our churches, long after we have gone to rest in the arms of God. We are their ancestors, and they are our heirs. Those heirs of ours will look back and hear the story of how we, in these days long ago, dreamed of them and built up this great church to be a place of warm and open welcome, a place of justice and love, a place where we all move over and make room for every single person, a place that can be a home where we sincerely tell each new person, “We’ve been waiting for you.”
These are uncertain, even scary times, here on the brink of a new year. Alas, our extravagant hospitality offends the religious sensibilities of many people, but sometimes, as that same colleague once told me, the church finds that it must be faithful in new directions even if those directions are painful and terrifying (think for a minute, by the way, about the Protestant Reformation – that must have been pretty scary, too). Yes, maybe there are those who are scratching their heads at us, and questioning what we are doing and where we are going. But these are hopeful times, too, because we have glimpsed the promises of God unfolding before our eyes, and we’re looking beyond the uncertainties and the fears and the criticisms; we’re setting off on this journey with our eyes and our souls and our hearts and our minds fixed on Jesus and on the very example he set for us in his own life, when he welcomed all of God’s children, and healed them, and fed them, and called them to follow him.
Simeon looked beyond the child Jesus as a baby, and saw the Christ, the Promised One. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we each of us could see the Christ in one another, and in every single person we meet? Wouldn’t it transform our relationships, our churches, our families, our nation, the world if we could see the potential in each person as a gift of God who has a role in the unfolding of God’s promises and plan in our midst?
Perhaps a baby resembles that unfolding of God’s promises because we have no idea what will happen in the future, what and who a baby will grow up to be. The narrator of Marilynne Robinson’s deeply moving book, Gilead, reflects on what it means for one person to bless another. The elderly pastor in the book, the narrator, says the reality of blessing is that it “doesn’t enhance sacredness but acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. I have felt it pass through me, so to speak. The sensation is of really knowing a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time.” Simeon, holding the baby Jesus that day in the temple, surely did not comprehend the mystery in his arms. But he allowed for the possibilities of God’s power to unfold in ways he could not imagine but only hope for.
On a personal note: All of my life, each time a baby is baptized, I can hear my 92-year-old mother telling me that her mother, for whom I am named, always kissed the head of a newly baptized infant, and so my mother in her turn always did the same. My mother has been gone three years now, and I find myself remembering her, each time I baptize a baby, when parents (including my own children – the photo above is from the baptism of my seventh grandchild) bring their beloved child to introduce him or her to their covenant community. Like Simeon and Anna long ago, we acknowledge the reality beyond our eyes even as we behold the beauty and the mystery of a new child, a new person, a bearer of God’s peace and hope for the world. If they sang God’s praises so long ago, how can we do otherwise on each bright and hope-filled morning?
The Rev. Kathryn Matthews Huey serves as dean of Amistad Chapel at the national offices of the United Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio.
For further reflection:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 19th century
“To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.”
Annie Dillard, For the Time Being, 20th century
“There is no less holiness at this time – as you are reading this – than there was on the day the Red Sea parted, or that day in the 30th year, in the 4th month, on the 5th day of the month as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Cheban, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of god. There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree at the end of your street than there was under Buddha’s bo tree…. In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in trees.”
Lailah Gifty Akita, 21st century
“Each new day on earth is a sacred moment.”
“One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God.”
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
my whole being shall exult in my God;
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,
so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
to spring up before all the nations.
For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
and her salvation like a burning torch.
The nations shall see your vindication,
and all the kings your glory;
and you shall be called by a new name
that the mouth of the Lord will give.
You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
Psalm 148
Praise God!
Praise God from the heavens;
praise God in the heights!
Praise God, all you angels of God;
praise God, all you host of heaven!
Praise God,you sun and moon;
praise God, all you shining stars!
Praise God, you highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens!
Let them praise the name of God,
for God commanded
and they were created.
God established them
forever and ever;
God fixed their bounds,
which cannot be passed.
Praise God from the earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind fulfilling God’s command!
Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
Beast of the forest and all cattle,
crawling things and flying birds!
Rulers of the earth and all peoples,
nobles and all leaders of the earth!
Young men and women alike,
old and young together!
Let them praise the name of the Sovereign,
whose name alone is exalted;
whose glory is above earth and heaven.
God has raised up a horn for the people,
and praise for all the faithful,
for the people of Israel who are close to God.
Praise be to God!
Galatians 4:4-7
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.
Luke 2:22-40
When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons.”
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,
which 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.”
There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband for seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.
Liturgical notes on the Readings
In ecumenical liturgical practice, there are normally three readings and one psalm at each Sunday service, in this order:
First Reading: Hebrew Scripture
Response: Psalm (or Canticle) from the Bible
Second Reading: Epistle (or Acts or Revelation)
Third Reading: Gospel
The first two lessons are normally read by laypeople, the Gospel by a Minister of the Word or a layperson. In Roman Catholic, Anglican and liturgical Protestant churches, it is uncommon for an ordained minister to read all of the lessons.
The psalm is not a reading but a congregational response following the lesson from Hebrew Scripture: it is normally sung with a refrain or recited by the congregation as poetry. Occasionally, a canticle is appointed in place of a psalm; it is sung or recited in the same way. The New Century Hymnal provides a complete liturgical psalter with refrains and music.
A hymn may be sung as an introduction to the proclamation of the Gospel.
During Ordinary Time (seasons after Epiphany and Pentecost) two alternative sets of OT readings with responsorial psalms are provided. The first option is a semi-continuous reading through a book of Hebrew Scripture; the second is thematically related to the other readings.
Notes on the Lectionary and Liturgical Colors
Advent and Christmas
The Violet color for Advent is traditionally connected with royalty and penitence. Blue is symbolic of expectation and hope, not only for the birth of Christ, but also for Christ’s return at the end of history. Rose on the third Sunday of Advent, which was Gaudete (Joy), provided a little relief from the somberness of Advent in earlier times. Some Advent wreath sets include a rose candle. White first appears on Christmas Eve and may be continued through the Sunday after Christmas, Epiphany, and the Sunday after Epiphany (celebrated by many as the Baptism of Christ) to show that all of these events are related in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. White is also used for Easter and Sundays following. (Some traditions use Gold or both for Christmas and Easter.)