Lessons:
It feels a little like Christmas to me right now.
Maybe it’s the candles. Maybe it is the story we heard from Luke this morning, this story of the baby Jesus. Because we really only encounter baby Jesus at Christmastime.
We even have on white stoles and there is white on the altar. It is a feast day and we hear this wonderful story of the presentation of Jesus at the Temple.
And one of the reasons I love that we are celebrating the presentation, Candlemas, on this Sunday (and as I mentioned in the parish hall this feast day always falls on February 2 but rarely on a Sunday) is because we get to encounter the baby Jesus again, outside of Christmas. And we get to hear a story that we do not often get to hear together in this place.
And this makes sense because most of the stories we have of Jesus, most of the stories in the Gospels, are of his ministry. Most of the stories begin when he is about 30 and he is baptized and he is out preaching and teaching and healing and liberating.
We do not have many stories of Jesus as a baby, or as a child, at least not in our canon, the scriptures as we received them. There are other stories written about Jesus as a child that we do not accept as canonical but that are really great stories. Stories of Jesus being quite a handful as a young person. One of my favorite stories is of Jesus as a 4 or 5 year old, who went out to play in the mud, and who fashioned with his hands out of mud these little birds and he brought them to life and they flew off into the sky.
And I think, because we only spend time with an adult Jesus we can default to seeing him as a kind of social justice warrior type, or that is a trap we can fall into. That Jesus is important because of these things he does and that Jesus is important because of these things he says. But today’s story reminds us that Jesus is important because of who Jesus was and who Jesus is. Jesus is the Christ, the messiah.
And Simeon had been waiting for the messiah, for a long time it seems.
Simeon was tired.
Simeon was old.
He’d had enough of this life, it seems.
But he held on to a promise whispered to him in a dream, perhaps. Whispered to him as a prayer. Whispered to him by the Holy Spirit which, today’s passage from Luke tells us, ‘rested on him.’
What a beautiful turn of phrase, right? The Holy Spirit ‘rested on him.’ I imagine the Holy Spirit like a cat curled up in his lap, like an infant sprawled out and snoring on his chest, like a prayer shawl gathered around his shoulders keeping you warm and safe.
And that day had come it seems. No angels proclaimed this baby Jesus, no heavenly chorus pointing this way like we saw in the earlier part of Luke in the account of baby Jesus. Just a whisper and a nudge, perhaps. So Simeon moved his ancient, stiff, aching bones and arrived at the Temple, perhaps as he did every day, to look for the one who was promised to him in a whisper.
I wonder what turned Simeon’s head that day. Because, honestly, there was not much to look at, in this little family weaving their way through the crowds in the Temple of Jerusalem. Just another devout Jewish mother presenting herself for ritual purification, 40 days after giving birth. Just another devout Jewish family ritually pledging their first born son, like Hannah did with Samuel, to the Temple in thanksgiving and praise to God. There was nothing noteworthy about this family, they were poor (the text tells us that by describing their offering, 2 pigeons, the least expensive, most basic offering allowed) and from the country, likely overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of the Temple that day.
But something caught Simeon’s eye, something about this unremarkable family, and he picked that baby up and he began to sing. This is one of the church’s most treasured pieces of scripture, this song of Simeon’s, also known as the “Nunc Dimmitis” which is the Latin translation of the beginning of this song, “now you dismiss” your servant in peace.
And he sang. He sang in joy. And I also wonder if he sang in surprise because I am not sure this is what he expected to find. I wonder if this is what Simeon expected to see, what Simeon thought God’s promise might look like, this Messiah he had staved off death to see. I wonder if Simeon had expected to see a king, or at least a show of wealth or power or strength. And this makes a whole lot of sense, given the kind of messiah a devout Jew would have been looking for in the 1st Century, someone who would have returned exiled Jews to their land in Israel, who would have ended poverty, war, disease, and empire, and who heralded the resurrection of the dead. I suspect he did not expect to see an infant, or at least this kind of infant, one from a poor and unremarkable family.
And I wonder if he is singing out of joy, and out of surprise. A lot of people seem surprised in this text. The Gospel tells us that Mary and Joseph were ‘astonished’ by what they heard from Simeon that day, which is weird because they have heard the same thing from Gabriel and shepherds and wise men all proclaiming their son Messiah.
But they were astonished. And maybe they are surprised because of what Simeon goes on to say next after he sang his song. He starts to prophesy. And this prophecy, it is hard. It tells of people rising and falling, of Jesus being opposed, of people’s inner most thoughts being revealed, and of a sword piercing the soul of Mary. I am not sure that is what Mary expected to hear.
I think sometimes God does not show up like we expect, and sometimes when God does show up God brings hard truths to us, and so we turn our head the other way, we close our eyes, so we do not notice God, do not notice Jesus. So instead we think God is not showing up at all.
Since coming to Grace I have spent some time with the youth on Friday evenings. The rhythm of the evening is often the same: we gather, we laugh, we eat, we check in about the highs and lows of our weeks, and we also share if we have had any ‘God sightings.’ When have we seen God in our lives this week?
There has been great conversation about what this expression, God sighting, actually means. Does it mean we are stopped in our tracks and hear a heavenly chorus above our heads like the shepherds in the fields did earlier in the Gospel of Luke and the world starts to glow and we realize yes, yes, this is God?
And maybe some of y’all have had that experience, and if you have I totally want to to hear that story, but we have shared that God sightings are often much quieter than that, much more fleeting, more ordinary than that. They are, as the theologian Frederick Buechner described, more as if an angel beats their wings over our head and we say “Wow, I wonder where I got the courage to do that?” or “God, what a gorgeous day to be alive.”
The young people in youth group share God sightings like that, and man are they wonderful. Their God sightings include having a realization that their dog is getting older and may die soon and feeling sad about that but knowing deep in their hearts that everything is going to be ok. Their God sightings include realizing that someone they follow on social media because they are funny and dark is also a human being who just lost a parent and they feel sad about that. Their God sightings include someone being kind to them in class or realizing their parents might be having a hard time. Their God sightings include a really, really, really good burrito.
This kind of God sighting requires us to slow down, to notice the little things in our lives, This is kind of God sighting requires close attention, requires patience. And I think there is something interesting that in today’s Gospel and these stories of the youth that the people who are most tuned in to these kind of God sightings are people at the first part and the latter part of their lives. I think there is some awareness about being those ages, maybe it is about going a little slower, maybe at those ages we just spend more time thinking about what this life is about and what God is all about..
But I think we are all capable of those kind of God sightings, if we slow down, if we look around us, we start to notice that God is everywhere my friends.
One of the things that I love about this story of the Presentation is that Jesus holds the baby Jesus, brings the baby Jesus close to him, rests the baby Jesus on him as the Holy Spirit rested on him and then he begins to sing.
I think that tells us something. I think that tells us that we have to gather God close to us, that we have to lean in, we have to pick God up with our very arms and rest God on ourselves in order to encounter God sometimes.
And so, my friends, my invitation to you this morning is to slow down, to notice, to gather Christ in your arms and pull Christ close to your heart. And to sing.