SERMON – FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS
LUKE 2:22-40
DECEMBER 28, 2014
MINISTER: REV. BOB GILBERT
DECEMBER 28, 2014
MINISTER: REV. BOB GILBERT
Let us pray: May the words of my
mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our
strength and our redeemer. Amen.
I wish all of you could have been here four days
ago. Those of you who were here for the
Christmas Eve service will, I’m sure, agree with me. It was, as usual, grand and wonderful. We had a large crowd, candles, beautiful
music, readings from scripture of the Christmas story and – although I’m
somewhat biased – the choir sang superbly.
It was an inspiring, holy time.
But that was Christmas eve, the time of great expectation, and this is
the Sunday after Christmas, the time of great dissipation.
Oh, we are still singing carols and the decorations
are still beautiful, but nothing beats the expectancy, excitement, anticipation
of before Christmas. And few things match the letdown after
Christmas. Now is the season of crumpled
wrapping paper, overstuffed garbage cans, visits from Uncle George. For another Sunday, we’re singing songs about
the advent of the Messiah at Christmas, but we’re thinking of the advent of the
Visa bill in January.
For many of us, today marks the end of Christmas
holidays, the resumption of business as usual.
Christmas, when the child is born at Bethlehem, is the grand intrusion
of God into our lives, the great interruption with angels rending the
skies. But today, the Sunday after
Christmas, we’re on the verge of the Great Resumption. And though we hate to part with Christmas,
part of us is glad for the Sunday after Christmas. Late on Christmas afternoon, when all the
wrapping paper is collected, and you’ve had your tenth piece of Turkey, of pie,
of fruitcake, your last chat with Uncle George, isn’t there a part of you
that’s glad to beheaded back to the ordinary, the routine, the expected?
How fitting, then, that today’s scripture, should
be Luke’s account of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus returning to Galilee, to
their hometown of Nazareth, after presenting their child at the temple in
Jerusalem. The heavenly hosts are
gone. Their songs filling the air are
heard no more. Now Mary and Joseph have
a child to raise, religious obligations to keep, and a long, dusty trip back to
Nazareth. What could be more ordinary
and less inspiring than that? Among the
points that Luke wants to make in his account of the Holy Family’s going back
home to their rather ordinary town, back to their traditions, their routine,
even mundane way of life – is that Jesus, while new, is also part of something
that is very ancient – part of an age old tradition of hopes and expectations.
Simeon and Anna, the elderly man and woman, waiting
at the ancient temple, clinging to the ancient hopes of Israel, represent the
best of what has gone before. They wait
and pray, searching the scriptures as Israel had done for centuries. Simeon and Anna are Israel in miniature and
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.
God is doing something new, but it is really not new, because hope is
always joined to memory, and the new
is God keeping an old promise. As the
risen Christ was later to say to his disciples, “Everything written about me in
the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Anna and Simeon are a portrait of the Israel
that accepted Jesus, because they understood correctly their tradition and
opened themselves to the new thing God was doing which was rooted in their
history, identity and hopes as a people of God.
So Joseph and Mary, in keeping with the rules of
their Jewish tradition present Jesus, their first-born son at the temple and
obeying the “Law of God”, offer a sacrifice of a pair of turtledoves. Wealthier people sacrificed a lamb; poor
people were allowed to offer birds.
Joseph and Mary are at the temple, in accordance
with Jewish law, dedicating their child to God, and are welcomed there by two
faithful, older persons who have been waiting and praying for the fulfillment
of the hopes of Israel. Lest anyone
think that this Christ has come to destroy tradition, to overturn centuries of
belief and fidelity, to disrupt, disjoin Israel from its faith, we see, right
at the beginning, that will not be his way.
He comes as the fulfillment of the hopes of Israel,
in continuity with what has gone before, in answer to centuries of prayers of
people like Simeon and Anna. Ponder that
picture of an old man holding in his arms a new baby and you will see what Luke
is about in this story of Simeon greeting the baby Jesus and his parents. There is a rhythm, in this story of Jesus, of
continuity and discontinuity, of change mixed with tradition, intrusion, and
resumption.
Our lives are like that too. God doing something ‘new’ in continuity to an
historical context; this idea of change mixed with tradition is what our future
development initiative group is struggling with – how to move into the future
to which God is leading this congregation – which includes property development
– how to engage this ‘new’ thing God is doing in keeping with our identity, in
maintaining our values, in furthering our mission – which all relates to our
tradition, our history, our ethos.
We live in a society that seems to thrive on the
‘new’. We are a people that appear to
crave change – at least certain types of change – the new and improved model,
the latest fashion, the newest craze.
Sameness, habit, tradition tend to get negative press. I hear this about church. People get bored in
church, doing the same things in the same order of worship Sunday after
Sunday. We’ve heard this scripture
reading before, why read it again?
Whatever seems most spontaneous, most free and unrehearsed seems most
sincere, most real – from the heart – not read from some bulletin or script,
but as the spirit moves us, not when the presider motions for us to stand up,
sit down. But you know – the fact is –
no matter how spontaneous we think we are, none of us lives without habit,
ritual, sameness, pattern, repetition.
Just think for a moment of the routine most of us go through after
waking up in the morning or before we go to be at night. Such routine is the glue that holds life
together. Such ritual, sameness, keeps
life manageable. Ritual orders
life. Every religion tends to do certain
things over and over again because some things are too important to leave to
chance, certain things are too deep, too meaningful to be left to spontaneity.
If every day at church were like Christmas Eve,
then nothing would be like Christmas Eve.
Show me a church where everything is happy, upbeat, joyous every Sunday
and I’ll show you a church out of touch with real life. There are always peaks and valleys, sunshine
and rain. Life is a rhythm. If our religion is only a faith of Christmas
Eve and Easter Sunday, it isn’t much really because life has a lot of low
times, too. It’s great to go up to the
temple at Jerusalem. It’s a wonder, on
some mountaintop or Bethlehem of a place, to witness the heavens opening and to
catch a glimmer of angels’ wings. But
that can’t be for always.
Be honest now.
I know the fruitcake and the cookies and the chocolates we enjoyed at
seasonal gatherings were wonderful, but isn’t there a part of you, maybe the
most substantial part of you, that was glad to get back to cornflakes, or
toast, or even oatmeal this morning. The
Christian faith is not simply about warm spontaneous feelings surging up within
us, or about miraculous events, amazing stories, that excite the imagination and
uplift our spirits. It is also about
keeping the faith – day in, day out, about the habit of prayer, of Bible
reading, of doing what you are supposed to do, like Simeon and Anna, of quiet
waiting, of going to church on the first Sunday after Christmas.
Continuity amidst change, the ordinary returns
after the extraordinary, and everyday life resumes. Today’s Gospel reading says that is where God
is with us. Here is the affirmation of
Emmanuel – ‘God-with-us’ – as much as Luke’s story of the birth of Christ. God is with us now – going to church, doing
what we are supposed to do, following the rules, returning home after the
holidays, getting the pine needles out of the living room carpet, dragging the
tree to the curb, turning back to the office, back to the pots and pans – God
is with us in all of that ordinariness as God was with us at Bethlehem.
And yet, like Simeon and Anna – in the midst of
routine, and tradition, and sameness – we wait for God’s grace each day. We look to the morning with the same
anticipation that Simeon and Anna exhibited.
What will God do in this new day?
What will God do in this new year?
And we look to the new day; the new year with hope because we have been
taught to be a people of hope, whose hearts are held in the promise of a new
day, whose lives are lived within the companionship of Christ.
And we rejoice, as did Anna and Simeon, at the
fulfillment of God’s promises in the child Jesus. We rejoice because it is good news when God
speaks grace into existence. Jesus has
been described as “God’s best life lived among us.” Jesus is the doorway into the reality of
God. Marcus Borg says that “We know
about God – about God’s character and passion – most decisively through Jesus.”
Christianity declares that God is revealed most
fully in a person – one born in relative poverty and anonymity, born in
fulfillment of the promises made to God’s ancient people and in fulfillment of
their hopes and dreams – something wonderfully new – but intimately connected
to what went before.
May it be so with this congregation – valuing what
has gone before to make you who you are today – yet open to God’s doing
something new from and out of that past.
Jesus is God’s best live lived among us, and the shape of our own best
lives.
Our scripture
readings this morning remind us that we are heirs of God’s promises, and
continually called to something new – something that is intimately connected to
our saviour’s example and teachings – offering dignity to those deemed
worthless; empowering thos with not power; proclaiming a vision of a different
kind of world and helping people understand and experience the wideness of God’s
love. May God’s best life grow within us
in the new year. Amen.
Major Sources:
“The Ordinary Resumption
after the Grand Intrusion” by William H. Willimon in Pulpit Resource,
Vol.24, No. 4, Year A, pp. 51-54.
Editor: William H. Willimon. Wood Lake Books, Kelowna BC.
1996.
“God’s Best Life” by The
Rev. Mark Richardson in Preaching – Word & Witness Vol. 06:1 (Year
B),
p. 28. Editor:
Paul Scott Wilson. Liturgical
Publications Inc. New Berlin, WI. 2006.
“Commentary” in Preaching
– Word And Witness, Vol. 03:1 (Year B), p. 29.
Editor: Paul Scott
Wilson. Liturgical Publilcations,
Inc. New Berlin, WI. 2002.
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