Richard Davenport December 30, 2018 1 st Sunday after Christmas Text: Luke 2:22-40 (NIV) Jesus Presented in the Temple Avoiding Disappointment 22 When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord [a] ), 24 and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: a pair of doves or two young pigeons. [b] 25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord s Messiah. 27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: 29 Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss [c] your servant in peace. 30 For my eyes have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel. 33 The child s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too. 36 There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37 and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. [d] She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. 38 Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. 39 When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. 40 And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him. Footnotes:
a. Luke 2:23 Exodus 13:2,12 b. Luke 2:24 Lev. 12:8 c. Luke 2:29 Or promised, / now dismiss d. Luke 2:37 Or then had been a widow for eighty-four years. For those of you who were born and raised in previous generations, finding a special someone, going on dates, and eventually getting married probably was the same for you as it was for everyone else before you in history. In the last 20 or 30 years however, things have changed with the advent of online dating. If you re not familiar with it, you typically find an online dating website, you fill out a big profile of who you are, what someone should know about you, what kinds of things you like, what s important to you, and maybe a bit about what kind of person you re looking for. Then you start looking through other profiles to see if you find someone who piques your interest, while they re doing the same for you. There are some advantages to the system. If you don t think you have anything in common at all and it isn t going to be worth the time and energy trying to build a relationship with a particular person, you don t have to talk to them at all. If someone s a jerk to you, you can cut off all communication with them. You don t know each other outside of the website, so you re pretty safe from anyone that you don t want to deal with. On the other hand, it can be a lot tougher to build that relationship if you don t have places where you interact. It s nice to have friends in common so you can get together and not feel like you have to be on you re A game all the time. You also might have to work a bit harder to find the common interests you have. If you a student at the seminary and not already involved with someone, your options are pretty limited. By the time I got there, the dances and socials that had been established with a couple of the local nursing colleges had disappeared. I didn t have any friends who lived locally, so online dating was one of the few options available. There s a lot of stress involved in dating in general, and I think that s more true in this kind of situation. You contact someone. You talk for a while. You agree to meet up. You re
there at the restaurant, waiting for the other to show up. You ve enjoyed the talks you ve had, but you don t really know the other person beyond that. She agrees to meet you, but nothing says she has to. She might be a nice, agreeable person who actually wants to meet up with you, but she might not be. She might be just leading you on or she might have gotten cold feet, or simply decided she didn t really want to get to know you after all. You re there waiting, waiting, waiting. An hour passes, maybe more, and she doesn t show, doesn t call, just leaves you sitting there in expectation. Thankfully I never had to deal with that situation. I m sure I wouldn t have taken it very well. The build up as you get ready to meet someone you re interested in, the excitement of finally getting to meet and spend some time together, only to be snubbed and left there alone with no explanation. I can imagine Simeon facing a similar circumstance. He had been told by the Holy Spirit he would see the Christ, the anointed one, the one promised as the savior of the world. We have no idea how long Simeon was waiting. By reading it you get the impression he was an old man, but nothing really says that. He could have been a young man, full of youthful energy and waiting to tell the world the savior had come. He could have been an elderly man, nearing the end of his life and wanting to see his salvation before he died. Having been there at times when Christians are nearing the end of their lives, I ve seen people who were at peace with dying, knowing everything was ok. You get a sense of that here as well. Simeon has been here at the temple waiting for some time. Finally, the moment arrives. Everything he had been waiting for showed up. He s sitting at his table in eager expectation. He d heard a lot of good things, but nothing compared to the actual meeting. There he is! The Christ child! The one the world had been waiting for for so long. He holds the child in his arms and knows all the waiting and all of the excitement were worth it. But, perhaps he s just one of the lucky ones. Luke says Simeon was waiting for the consolation of Israel, the one who would comfort the people and build them up again. Are you waiting for the same thing? Like that eager guy or gal waiting at the table for your special someone, God promises to come to you. He says he loves you and wants to have a personal relationship with you, but life goes on and you re still here waiting. If you encounter someone who is new to the Christian faith, they re excited. All of this is new and wonderful, like a young man or woman full
of passion for their new found love. Everything is giddy happiness when they are here in God s house. But you ve been here a long time and it feels like you re still waiting. For most of us who have been Christians all our lives, our time here feels more like a waiting game. Is God ever going to show me he loves me? It seems like I m sitting here day after day and no one ever shows up. It gets disappointing. You want that fire, that excitement of having God near. You don t want to just hear he loves you, you want to see it and feel it. You want to get caught up in the relationship and know firsthand he s going to take care of you and that all of the bad stuff you deal with is going to go away. You want feel like you should sing for joy. Simeon certainly did. This meeting more than made his day, it made his life. However much longer he lived, he lived knowing he had seen the messiah, held him in his arms. God had promised he d be there and he came, just like he said. Simeon might have been waiting a while, might have been waiting decades, but in the end it didn t matter. There he was, and now Simeon could leave a happy man. The words of his song reflect the sentiment of those ready to die in peace, but that s not really what he s describing. He says, Lord, now you are letting your servant go in peace, as he holds the baby Jesus, but he isn t ready to die. The words don t carry the sense of release, like we might first think, so much as a sense of being sent. Simeon has been waiting and waiting. Suddenly the Son of God arrives on the scene and it s like a moment out of time. Like when I saw Laurie walking into the sanctuary in her wedding dress, everything else in the world fades into the background for a moment. You bask in that giddiness for that moment as time seems to stretch out, but then life returns. The excitement of the moment passes but you are changed. You are one who has received what you were waiting so earnestly for. Simeon holds the promised messiah in his arms. He has his moment and then it passes. But he isn t let go, like a balloon soaring off into the sky, never to be seen again. He is let go so he can get back to life. The time of waiting is over. Now is the time to be busy. Simeon lives in a world where the Son of God breathes and lives as a human being. There is a great deal to do now. Simeon sees the baby Jesus and knows everything has changed. God s glory isn t going to be out there somewhere. It isn t going to be found in the temple anymore, as it once was.
It s right here. Everything God wants to reveal to his people will be found in this tiny baby. Everything God has ever said is right here, wrapped in swaddling clothes, a perfect little message of God s love. Not just for Jews, but for all people everywhere. Simeon has seen the child and knows now that, whatever doubts and anxiety he may have had, they were unfounded. His patience was amply rewarded and, in this moment, he has but to bask in God s love and look forward to a relationship with his savior. Our complaints about waiting for God to show up are typically because we aren t looking for the right thing. Like sitting at the table looking around for a brunette in a green sweater when you should be looking for a red-head in a blue jacket, God we think we ve been stood up when God was trying to get our attention the whole time. God spent thousands of years carefully crafting a love letter to you. Cover to cover, the Bible is one long story of what God has done, not just in a generalized sense of his care for creation, but for you specifically. Jesus comes to the world to personify that message, to BE that message, to come to and tell you face to face, This is how much I love you. Even if you were the only one in the world who sinned and you had your doubts about God s love, God would have told you to wait and behold God s love with your own eyes and hold his Son in your own arms and know, firsthand, his love for you. We want Jesus to come in and sweep us off our feet. We want him to make all of the bad in our lives go away. We want to fall in love and never think about anything else and we get upset when it doesn t seem to happen. But our sinful sides don t really want any of those things. Our sinful self wants to be a loner, a free spirit, coming and going as we please without being tied to anyone. The thought of being in a relationship with anyone, even God, isn t something we ready to jump into, not yet. Jesus has to make us into that person, a person that wants to be in love with someone besides ourselves. Simeon mentions to Mary that Jesus will be responsible for the falling and rising of many. This isn t a political activity or some grand historical narrative, like William Shirer s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, where some people do worse with Jesus around and some people do better. Luther translates the word rising as Auferstehen, standing up. Jesus will be responsible for causing many who are high up to fall down into the dust and he will be
responsible for causing many others to stand up. It s the same word used for Jesus resurrection, his literal standing up from his rest in the tomb. We wait for Jesus when he s actually been here all along. We re not here waiting to meet Jesus and see, maybe he loves us, maybe he doesn t. He s already said it. It s a done deal. He doesn t need to figure out if we re worth his time. He jumps straight to the lifelong commitment. The meal we share is the rehearsal for the wedding feast. He s here now. He always has been. We think we ve been waiting for him, waiting for a sign he loves us when it s actually been the other way around the whole time. He s already there at the altar and his heart soars when he sees you walking down the aisle. He s preparing for the wedding feast. He will be responsible for the rising of many, including you. He loves you enough to be born into this world. He loves you enough to die for you, to forgive you, to reconcile the broken relationship you have with him. He loves you enough he wants to live with you forever.