Scripture Text: Luke 2:25-40
It was a balmy 30 degrees in Cape
Cod last week and not an inch of snow. The day after we left, they got hit with
a foot or more of snow. Sometimes we do time these right! But we did have our
problems. On our way out we sat at Midway airport for 15 hours, from 6 in the
morning to 9 at night, because of the snow. But it was good to spend a week
together as a family, something we rarely get to do now.
We did do some interesting things: on Christmas Eve we
worshipped at the First Baptist Church of America in Providence, RI established
by the first Baptist settlers in 1638. Earlier that day we visited the Roger
Williams Memorial Park – one the greatest Baptist pioneers. His unwavering
commitment to religious liberty, seen also in his support for Native American
culture, language and religion, got him and his Baptist followers thrown out of
the Massechussetts settlements and they went on to establish Providence –
named, obviously for God’s grace to them. Roger Williams and the first Baptists
are great heroes of the faith to me, because they are the ones that set this country on its path towards
religious pluralism.
We saw many other historic places including the
Plymouth Rock – which turned out to be much smaller than we had expected. We
remembered that when Malcolm X said, we did not land at the Plymouth Rock but
the Plymouth Rock landed on us!
But most of all we were able to just be family. You
all know how important it is to spend family time together. For a long time, we
took this last week of the year as our vacation time, but we rarely were able
to go out of town. It was too cold to do much anyway so we read and we talked.
Our family has now got into the habit of buying each other books for Christmas.
So, Christmas shopping for us is a going to a Borders. If there’s a K Mart
closeby, that would be useful. But we did a lot of reading and a lot of
talking. We talked about the year that is passing, the year to come and what
the future might hold. Each of our children is in a different stage of self
discovery, so it was good to talk about what they would do in life and where
faith and their values will fit in that. Dhilanthi and I are grateful to God
that each of our children are following in ways that honor the gifts that God
has given them. We sometimes marvel, when we remember what the kids were like
when they were very small, and how they have now turned out. I know how anxious
parents of young children get when children get active and out of countrol.
There is hope, I often tell them. We’ve been there, done that!
We talked about what we’ve been through this year as a
church. As you might guess, I’ve carried a heavy burden about what happened
here this fall and the events that led up to it. And I’ve been very anxious about
what would be in our future – what next year would bring. This week, in the
context of family conversations, historic places and heroes like Roger Williams
and time for quiet reflections, I noticed that I am at beginning to accept what
happened as God’s gift to us. What seemed like serious blow might actually be a
blessing, because of the clearer self definition it brings with it. We will
talk more about it when we have our Co-Creator Team meeting from January 20th
onwards. But I have come to accept that I can leave this thing behind us and go
on to the new year
That too is what this sermon is about. A week after
the birth of their first born child, Mary and Joseph took him to the temple as
the law required. In the outer courts where all the young parents go to make
the special sacrifice to God a priest will meet them and help them offer
gratitude to God for the gift of the child. An old man named Simeon approaches
Mary and Joseph. They do not know who this old man is, but we do, because Luke
tells us that Simeon "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."
Simeon just didn't happen to be in the Temple, but he
was "Guided by the Spirit..." God directed Simeon to the Temple, and
over to Mary and Joseph in particular. Out of all the new parents in the outer
court, Simeon somehow knew which child is the Messiah. The Spirit led Simeon,
in the same way the Spirit leads us to the Messiah. If you recognize Jesus as
the Messiah, you can be sure the Spirit of God has led you. And Simeon does
what all people do when they recognize Jesus as the Messiah: Simeon praised
God, with a song. "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word; for my own eyes I have seen your salvation, which you
have prepared in the presence of all peoples; A light to reveal your will to
the Gentiles and bring glory to your people, Israel." Centuries later, the
church would take these words of Simeon and put music to them. By the fifth
century, the faithful would sing this hymn, the Nunc Dimmitis at evening
Vespers.
Did you recognize the sense of relief that there is
for Simeon in this song? “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace”
-- in shalom. That prophecy is fulfilled. The waiting is over. The anxiety is
relieved. Unto us a child is born. Before the child was born we really did not
know how enormously generous God was. Before the child was born we did not know
the great abundance of God’s love for humanity -- the providential care for us.
Now, “my eyes have seen your salvation” so I can be dismissed in peace. This was true also of the prophet
Anna, who at 84 years of age was still fasting and praying every night and day
at the temple. She began to praise God and speak about the child to all who
were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
Salvation -- when we hear that word, do our minds go
back to the day when we made a commitment of our lives to Jesus Christ? That
day, we were forgiven of our sin and restored to God. But when we hear that
word, do we think of the day when we were healed in our body of a disease, or
when our relationship with our spouse was restored, or the day when we found
the job that we felt God really wanted us to do, or the day we found a new
freedom or release from whatever that was holding us back. We must understand
salvation as something that encompasses all of our life. In the Bible it is
never meant to be just a spiritual experience or even just a personal
experience. When Simeon was singing about salvation I think he was singing
about a holistic salvation that included all of life; but not only personal
salvation of individuals but the corporate salvation of the entire community.
Simeon lived among a “people who walked in darkness.”
That there was no salvation -- that the Messiah had not yet come was a matter
of anxiety for Simeon. He was carrying a big burden for his people. He desparately
wanted God to come through, and on time. God had told him that he will not die
before he sees the Messiah. Perhaps he worried that that promise will go
unfulfilled. He carried a burden from yesterday and worried about tomorrow but
on that day in the temple the Holy Spirit led him to a young couple and their
child and pointed out to him the savior of the world. The burden was lifted,
the anxiety faded away and Simeon burst into a song of praise. Is this not what
happens to us as well. We go to Jesus carrying heavy burdens and filled with
anxieties. But when we see him that burden gets lifted and the anxiety fades
away and we burst into song?
Sam Keen, one of my favorite
theologians, writes about this in his book To a Dancing God. He suggests that
just as much as we are fragmented from our native place, from that beloved
community that sustain and support us, we are fragmented from our native time.
Simeon was fragmented from his native time. He was carrying burdens from the
past and anxieties about the future -- that is, until he came face to face with
the infant Christ. He suggested that we too live between these two poles, the
tyranny of the past and the terror of the future. Native time he suggests is
the vibrant present. It is the time when we are truly home. It is the time when
we see Jesus. It is the time when we live in God’s presence, in deeply trusting
for God's providential care.
Wondering how to unpack this for
you, I was reminded of one of the most powerful dramas that I have ever seen --
Andre Obey's "Noah". Based on the Genesis story of Noah, this play
most effectively dramatizes the real day to day issues Noah's family would have
had to face. Here was a family which was living a fairly secure and comfortable
life and was suddenly faced with a unique problem. Mr. Noah, had taken to his
head that he wants to build an Ark. Now, once something gets in his head, it is
very difficult to get it out. So despite the protestations of the family, he
goes ahead and builds it. But incredibly, he builds it in the middle of the
jungle! There isn't a body of water anywhere close. Now, the village folk get
curious about this and start asking questions, and Noah says, that God is going
to make it rain. Rain! The country had been experiencing a severe drought and
we wouldn't blame these people if they thought that the man had lost his
mind.
Then as if to confirm their
suspicions, Noah then begins to get all kinds of animals into the Ark. And Noah
becomes the talk of the town. The tabloids are screaming out their headlines
saying that Noah is practicing witchcraft. And his family, his wife, his three
sons and their wives were extremely embarassed. One day, Noah asked his family,
to come to the Ark, and more out of curiosity they came. When they are in, Noah
closed the door to the Ark. Soon, the clouds moved in and the sky became dark
and it began to rain. And it rained and it poured. Noah, his wife, his three
sons, their wives and animals, mammals, birds, reptiles, were now locked up in
this Ark. The floods came and the Ark became a "floating tub" for 5
months. Imagine being locked up like that for 5 months -- not a luxury cruiser
you know, it was more like a zoo. Can you imgine the smells they would have had
to put up with? Now add to that the pressure of feeding and taking care of the
animals. After all these were endangered species. If they didn't look after
them the species would be extinct!
At one point in the play, we find
Noah and his wife chatting. She feels exhausted; she has had quite enough of
this ride. "How long is this going to last," she asks, "can't we
go back home now." You see, things were quite good back home, they had a
nice house and land to farm. There was security there. She missed her neighbors
and friends, she said. She hadn't quite
caught the impact of this trip. They have left the old neighborhood for good.
That old neighborhood is no more. Noah, talked to her about nostalgia. There
was no point in thinking or fantasizing about what was. Nostalgia makes it
difficult for us to take the present seriously, when our security is bundled up
together in the "good old days." They can't go to the old house even
if they wanted to. Now, this old "tub," with its most uncomfortable
bunks and its awful smells and the enormous amount of cleaning up and feeding
animals and everything that needed to be done, was home.
Now, I don't have to tell you, how
sometimes we yearn for the good old days. Sometimes places hold us to our past,
and sometimes people do. The yearning can be so strong that it is not uncommon
for us to try to re-create a piece of our old home and lifestyle in our present
environment. It can be so strong that we can unconsiously see a father, mother
or a significant other, in our present relationships, and treat them in some
similar ways. We may carry burdens from these places and relationships of our
past that would leave us guilt ridden.
There may be situations or events about which we feel God has not been
just, because we expected God to act one way and things turned out differently
and we may feel angry at God. Now, of course, we never figured out how to deal
with them or at least talk about them. These desires, these feelings of guilt,
shame and anger we carry, we repress and they become huge burdens we carry
around our necks. That's the tyranny of the past.
In the play, the kids, the
innovative young people build a steering wheel for the Ark. Its a good, strong,
well-built and a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. They wanted to make good use
of their time, besides, they wanted to control their destiny. Nobody knew where
this old tub was floating. They wanted to give it a sense of direction and
purpose. Would we have any problem with that? No, of course not! We do that all
the time.
The fact is that the kids have no
idea what the future is like. That is
terrifying. We are on the other side of the story, so we may not feel
that their fear is justified, but they didn't feel so. Theirs was a real
existential threat. They had no idea if the flood was going to subside or not.
They may have had to live and die in the Ark. They probably had no idea how
long the Ark would hold up. At least with a steering wheel, they could provide
it some direction. They are justifiably proud of their achievement and so take
it to their Dad. At first, Dad is quite taken up by it. He feels proud of the
kids, that they have put their skills to such a creative task. But then, his
attitude changes. A steering wheel, he says. A steering wheel! Didn't you know
that this is God's ship and we don't need a steering wheel for this. Didn't you
know that God steers this ship? Take your steering wheel, grind it and make
tooth picks out it! This is God's ship and God will steer it. We don't have to.
Did that outburst seem fair? Most of
us, if not all of us, I am sure, plan our lives so carefully that it would be
quite predictable what we will do on any given day. I want you to note
carefully though, this is not about responsible planning. God wants us to do
that and if we are spiritually attuned, will tell us how and what to do. But
this is about planning based on our anxiety, fear and terror of the future,
about planning to take the future out of God's hands and take control of our
destiny. It is about stockpiling money not because one wants to be responsible
about using it in a way that glorifies God, but because of a terror of the
future, with the feeling that money will save us. It is about trying to gain
power by stepping over others in order to somehow, by any means get to the top.
It is about presenting a mask to the world because you are afraid that people
will not respect and care for you if they knew the real you. It is about doing
the prudent thing as against the loving or unselfish thing, because we are
afraid. At bottom, it is about doing things out of our worldly wisdom rather than a spirituality
that is rooted in Jesus Christ. The terror of the future makes us do things out
of our fear rather than our sense of obedience.
If
we are not consiously living in the vibrant present, then we are not living in
native time. Coming to live in the vibrant present is like a home coming. Noah
knew all along that God was with him in spite of the terrible things that were
happening around him. When his wife wanted to dwell on the past, he did not let
her. When his sons wanted to steer the Ark he did not let them. Everyday he
would go to the deck and spend time in prayer. He had no idea where he was
going, but he knew that God was going with him. He did not allow the tyranny of
the past or the terror of the future to keep him from living in the vibrant
present. Jesus lived like that too. Always in God's presence. Don't worry about
tomorrow he said, look at the birds, look at the lillies. Today's worries are
enough for the day. All of his actions, words, his life itself demonstrated
that he was so attuned to God. He lived in the vibrant present. Simeon's
tyranny was the burden he carried for the liberation of his people. His terror
of the future was the anxiety he faced for the Messiah to come before his
death. But as he looked in the arms of Mary and his gazed fixed on that baby,
his burdens were laid down and his anxiety lifted. He came home to his native,
vibrant present.
How can we come home to the vibrant
present? Pradoxically, the awareness of the immediate moment, unprejudiced and
unbiased by the tyranny of the past and the terror of the future is at once the
most natural and the most difficult of human achievements. We begin by being
accepted by God through Jesus while we are yet sinners - while we are still
caught in the tyranny of the past and the terrors of the future. Once you take
that first step then you will want to grow in the knowledge and love of God,
develop a spirituality that is at once aware of God's presence and other
relationships. This is a continuous process of laying down burdens and lifting
away anxieites. An important part of that development is to deliver our
relationship with God and others from the baggage that we carry both from past
relationships and events and from future expectations. Again the awareness of
the immediate moment, unprejudiced and unbiased by the tyranny of the past and
the terror of the future is at once the most natural and the most difficult of
human achievements. This is why prayer and spiritual disciplines are so vitally
important. Vacations with family – that is getting away from day to day
struggles, spending time with loved ones, taking time for reflection amidst
artifacts and heroes that are meaningful to you, I found out this week, can
also help.
A wise person once said, "Yesterday
is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Today, is a gift. That's why its called the
present." Receive it -- its God’s gift to you.