SunDec282008
Title: Insignificant Package, Significant Gift
Text: 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 worshiped 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.
The Letdown after Christmas
What happens after Christmas? For many people there is a bit of a letdown. We spend days and weeks looking forward to, anticipating, getting ready for the big day. Then, suddenly, it is over.
A cartoon in the New Yorker magazine said it all. In the middle of the floor was a dried up, withered, Christmas tree. The calendar on the wall read December 26. Dad was sitting in his chair with an ice pack on his head. Mom was in a bathrobe and her hair in rollers. The floor was a virtual mountain of torn Christmas wrapping paper, boxes, and bows. Junior was reaching in his stocking to be sure that there was no more candy. In the background you could see a table with a thoroughly picked turkey still sitting there. The caption on the cartoon simply read: The morning after.
In 1978, Lou Holtz was head football coach at the University of Arkansas. He was taking his team to play in the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Arizona. The game was to be played on Christmas day.He was asked how he felt about playing a game on Christmas, rather than being with his family. The coach answered candidly: "I would rather be in Tempe. After all, once you have been to church, had Christmas dinner, and opened the presents, Christmas is the most boring day of the year."
As the New Yorker cartoon and Lou Holtz remind us, it is possible to lose the spirit of Christmas rather quickly. When the decorations come down for another year and the tree gets dragged out to the street for the garbage man to haul away, it's not uncommon to experience a sinking feeling, a kind of emotional letdown.
Our story from the Gospel of Luke this morning is a post Christmas story. It is six weeks after the birth of Jesus. The Christmas star has faded or moved on, the heavenly hosts have returned to heaven and the shepherds are back at work tending their sheep in the outlying fields. Mary and Joseph and the baby have remained in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Conforming to the practice of pious Jewish families, the young parents present Jesus in the temple and offer a sacrifice for their own purification, as the law prescribed.
It was not an uncommon thing--this dedication and purification ritual undertaken by parents following the birth of a child. Many parents brought their newborn children to the temple courts to fulfill their religious duties, just as we pastors frequently receive calls from young parents, desiring that their child be baptized. It was not an uncommon thing, what Mary and Joseph were doing, presenting Jesus in the temple to the priest to God, but an uncommon thing happened on the day they came with their new baby.
The uncommon thing was not the actual dedication of the baby Jesus by a priest. In fact, there is no mention of the actual dedication ceremony. Rather, the uncommon thing was an encounter with two elderly people in the temple that day--Simeon and Anna. They were not professional religious people, but they were devout and open to God. Simeon is described as one on whom "the Holy Spirit rested." Three times Luke mentions the Holy Spirit in relation to Simeon. And it is said of Anna, that she "fasted and prayed night and day" in the temple. The nineteenth century psychologist and philosopher, William James, once said that religion is either a dull habit or an acute fever. Religion for these two elderly saints in the temple that day certainly fell in the acute fever category.
Have you ever looked forward to something for a long, long time and then when it happened, it was so much more than you anticipated? David Livingstone, the explorer and missionary to central Africa in the mid-1800s set out to see what no other European had seen. What Livingstone saw was so much more than he could imagine. In his journal he tells about his discovery of the great falls, which he named the Victoria Falls, and what that experience meant to him.
He had heard from the natives that there was something up the river, but he was not sure what it was. He could hear the roar of the falls for miles and he could see the spray five miles away. He said he could never explain the splendor that fell upon his soul when he looked on the falls for the first time. Suddenly, right before his eyes, the Zambezi River was a mile wide; it sloped slightly and then plunged 360-foot in a display of awesome splendor. He said for several minutes the sight literally paralyzed him. He had known that something was ahead but when he first saw the mighty Victoria Falls, it was beyond his wildest imagination.
Something like that happened to Simeon in our story. He knew the Messiah was coming. He had waited and prayed for the day to arrive. He was told by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he saw the Lord's Messiah. Every time parents brought their children to the temple he was filled with anticipation that possibly one of them was the child he was waiting for. Then Mary and Joseph arrived at the temple and Simeon, now an old man, took the child up into 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 for all peoples.
The scene is a moving one: an old man now ready to die holding a six-week-old baby, the one long awaited, who would be "the salvation for all people." How did Simeon know? What tipped him off to the value of this first Christmas gift, One in the guise of a helpless infant, who would literally alter the course of human history. It certainly wasn’t apparent to most. The temple priest, who performed the religious ceremony missed it. The rest of the folks in the temple courts that day, apart from Anna, didn’t notice anything unusual about him.
Really valuable gifts are not always easily recognized. One of the programs I sometimes watch on PBS is a program called the Antiques Road Show. People bring all sorts of items to the show to have them evaluated by experts. The owners are almost always asked how they got the item they have brought. Sometimes the items have been purchased at garage sales. Other times they were picked up at antique shops. Others have been handed down through the family.
One particular item that captured my attention was an old wooden bowl. It didn’t look like much to me. It wasn’t particularly attractive and it had a crack in the bottom that had been repaired. But the eye of an expert appraiser saw something quite different in this bowl that had been handed down through several generations to the man who brought it. The bowl, which was quite large and made from Koa wood, came from Hawaii. The appraiser said it was made in the 1800's. He said it was unusual because of the way it was made and because of its size. Furthermore, the crack in the bottom that had been repaired, rather than diminishing its value, actually made the bowl more valuable. This unattractive old wooden bowl with a crack in the bottom, that looked almost worthless to me? Anthony Slayter-Ralph, the expert appraiser on the Antiques Road Show, valued it between $18,000 and $20,000 dollars.
The year 1809 was tumultuous on the international scene. Napoleon was making a bloody sweep across Austria, transforming the political landscape. Few cared about babies. But the world was overlooking some significant births. William Gladstone, destined to become a great English statesman, was born that year. That same year another Englishman, Alfred Tennyson, who would greatly impact the literary world, was born to an obscure minister and his wife.
On the American continent, Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Not far away in Boston, Edgar Allan Poe began his eventful, albeit tragic, life. It was also in that same year that a physician named Darwin and his wife bore a child and named him Charles Robert. And on February 12 of 1809, in a rugged log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky a baby boy was born. The baby's name? Abraham Lincoln.
If there had been news broadcasts at that time, the headlines most likely would have been: "The destiny of the world is being shaped on an Austrian battlefield today." But history was actually being shaped in the cradles of England and America. Similarly, when Jesus was born 2000 years ago, everyone thought the big news was news coming out of the palace of Herod in Jerusalem, or news about a new tax decree from Augustus in Rome.
Instead, a young Jewish couple on their way into the temple in Jerusalem carried the biggest news of all. And a devout old man who had been waiting forever cradled in his arms the infant Jesus and proclaimed: ". . . 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."
On the day Joseph and Mary brought their six-week-old baby to the temple to be dedicated, he was overlooked by almost everyone. The people coming and going in the temple that day saw nothing unusual in the infant Jesus. Only two recognized the gift God was giving to the world. Disguised in that helpless infant was One who would turn the upside-down world right-side-up, One through whom people might enter into a new relationship with God. As Paul put it in his letter to Galatian Christians, God sent his Son so that we might be adopted as God’s children, adopted into God’s family.
As I read and reflect on this story in these post-Christmas days, I wonder, where am I in the picture? I fear that all too often I am one of the crowd, caught up in the everyday worries of living, keeping a roof over my head and food on my table and paying my real estate taxes. They come due in the middle of January and seem to go up every year. Or perhaps I am the priest in the story, so wrapped up in weddings and funerals and hospital visits and sermon preparation, that I miss the most important things in life.
In these post-Christmas days I pray that I not lose the wonder or take for granted God’s greatest gift to the world. Like Anna and Simeon on that day in the temple courts, I pray that I may be open to the times and places where God is nearby, but easily missed.
As was Simeon, may all of us be open to the gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit, reminding us of the holy in our midst, as we move into a new year, the year 2009.