“Seeing Salvation” Luke 2:22-40
Rev. Jason Alspaugh First Baptist Church of Dayton December 28, 2014
Simeon and Anna had been waiting. It’s been said that “*t+hese two aged saints are Israel in miniature, and Israel 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.” (Interpretation, 40). This was more than the kind of waiting we practice for a few weeks each year during Advent. They had spent practically their whole, long lives waiting.
As least fifty of us began the Advent season promising to read just three psalms a day, so that we would be reading the entire Book of Psalms together every day for the next fifty days (Today is Day 29 if you’ve been keeping track). On day twelve I came across Psalm 119. With 176 verses it’s the longest psalm we have. It contains a serious of meditations on the Torah, the Law, one for every letter of the Hebrew alphabet. As I read it, I imagined Simeon and Anna reading it every day for years, making its words their words:
…Your statutes have been my songs wherever I make my home…
…At midnight I rise to praise you, because of your righteous ordinances…
…My eyes fail with watching for your promise; I ask, ‘When will you comfort me?’…
…Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long…
…My eyes fail from watching for your salvation, and for the fulfilment of your righteous promise…
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…My eyes are awake before each watch of the night, that I may meditate on your promise…
…I long for your salvation, O LORD, and your law is my delight… (Ps. 119:54, 62, 82, 97, 123, 148, 174)
Simeon and Anna had been waiting faithfully, and Jesus was born into that atmosphere of faithfulness. His parents observed the Law of Moses. After eight days they had Jesus circumcised, and “when the time came” they went to the temple for purification and to present their son. Jesus would grow and become strong, and be filled with wisdom. In the next scene we learn that “every year his parents went up to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover” and when he was twelve they lost track of him, only to find him in the temple, “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.” It was in this atmosphere of faithfulness, with people like Simeon and Anna, for whom the Torah was like air and food and life, that Jesus “increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.”
I think of Simeon and Anna, and I cannot help but think of all of the saints who have faithfully worshiped in places like this one for decades. I think about how many times they must have seen the Advent candles and the Christ candle lit. Imagine the number of pastors they must have seen come and go. Imagine all of the different colors of carpet they must have seen in the fellowship hall.
When I graduated from high school, my pastor gave me a large, dictionary-looking Oxford Annotated, New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Inside the cover page he wrote:
Jason, All the best now and in the days to come. May you grow in wisdom as you have in stature, in knowledge and in the estimation of others. Love Wes + Patty.
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I think of people like Wes and Patty, and the many others who helped create an atmosphere of faithfulness in which I and so many others could grow up. Like Simeon and Anna, they have dreamed, they have kept hope alive, they have kept seeking the kingdom of God. Howard Thurman once wrote that:
As long as [we have] a dream in [our hearts we] cannot lose the significance of living…*People+ cannot continue long to live if the dream in the heart has perished. It is then that they stop hoping, stop looking, and the last embers of their anticipation fade away…Where there is no dream, the life becomes a swamp, a dreary dead place and, deep within, *our+ heart begins to rot…The dream is the quiet persistence in the heart that enable [us] to ride out the storms of [our] churning existence. (Meditations of the Heart, 36-37).
It is this kind of belief that could lead Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to say “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Such faithfulness gives us the strength and the wisdom to wait expectantly and to be prepared (as prepared as we can be) for those moments when the dream becomes a reality.
When the dream becomes a reality, we have to be prepared for things to change. When the baby Jesus is staring back at Simeon, it’s a moment of sheer joy, because the wait is over. But then it dawns on Simeon that everything is going to change. “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed,” he told them, “so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” Christmas, the birth of Christ, is meant to bring about a change. And that means that Christmas presents us with a challenge. The preacher, Fred Craddock, has said that “As much as we may wish to join the name of Jesus only to the positive, satisfying, and blessed in life, the inescapable fact is that anyone who turns on light creates shadows. This is what is meant literally by ‘making a difference’…” (Interpretation, 39).
The birth of Jesus was meant to “make a difference.” The shepherds were not meant to go and see the baby and then return home to tend the sheep as if nothing had happened. The magi were not meant to give their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, to pay him homage, and then go back unchanged. T.S. Eliot envisioned the magi going home “no longer at ease” 3 | P a g e with the way things were. We are not meant to celebrate Christmas and then to carry on with business as usual. Everyone else can see it as just another time for family, and gift giving, and decorating, and other such good things, but not us, church. For the Church, Christmas presents us with a challenge; it is a time of decision-making.
Forget making New Year’s resolutions; make a Christmas resolution. Having heard the angels, having followed the star, having seen the baby, having sung all of those Christmas carols, will we now follow him? Christmas will cost us. That’s what Simeon saw, far out through those fading eyes.
Reflecting on the Rembrandt painting printed on our worship bulletin this morning, the poet Marilyn McEntyre communicates the contrast that is created when Simeon and Jesus meet. I’d like for you to look at that picture while I read her poem:
How light he lies in these ancient arms. The infant’s eyes open to meet the old man’s as they close.
I have seen his eyesight fade. I have wept some days to watch his long waiting, sonorous mumbling prayer trailing into sleep. For many months he has wished to be dismissed in peace.
Now, holding this child, he can let go.
Glad for his good release, I mourn the mother’s pain, the child’s plight, the loss that comes for me in this: no longer to see him on the temple steps, old eyes glittering 4 | P a g e with hope, always ready to retell the ancient tales while doves coo in the courtyard and chattering housewives pass in the street and within the drone of prayer turns story into song.
What darkness comes with this light burden he bears now, gurgling his brief contentment. Glory of Israel, Revelation to the Gentiles, this little gift of God will cost us all we know. I see the sword in his mother’s heart, and in his own – and mine, too, as the old man, his long watch ended, speaks his fateful benediction.
Notice the progression and the contrasts? It parallels the progression of the gospel lesson. At first there is the contrast of someone so old holding someone so young, like those tender moments of a grandparent holding a grandchild for the first time. But then, as “the infant’s eyes open” and “the old man’s” eyes “close,” something is happening, something is changing. “Now, holding this child, he can let go.” And there is gladness for Simeon, but also a sense of mourning in this moment; “What darkness comes with this light…” And, finally, there is the realization that “this little gift…will cost us all we know.” And suddenly, maybe Simeon’s “fateful benediction” doesn’t sound like such a “good word,” because it will cost so much:
“…Simeon’s word to Mary…is that Israel’s consolation and the salvation of the Gentiles will not be without great cost. Jesus will bring truth to light and in so doing throw all who come in contact with him into a crisis of decision. In that decision, rising and falling, life and death, result. Jesus precipitates the centrally important movement of one’s life, toward or away from God,” Craddock says (Interpretation, 39).
Looking at Jesus, Simeon said that his eyes had seen God’s salvation. And looking at Jesus, Simeon realizes that seeing comes with a cost. Jesus will later tell those who would follow him, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross 5 | P a g e daily and follow. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves…truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” You can call it salvation, or the kingdom of God, or just Jesus (for me it’s all interchangeable), but know that when you do see it, when you see him, you will be asked to take part, to participate, to follow.
Marcus Borg notes that, Biblically speaking, salvation is seldom about an afterlife; more often it’s about what’s going on here and now, in “life this side of death.” He defines salvation as “the twofold transformation of ourselves and the world.” In Exodus, salvation appears as liberation from bondage—economic bondage, political bondage, religious bondage. In Isaiah, salvation appears as return from exile. In the Psalms, salvation appears as rescue from danger. And then there are all of the archetypal images of salvation where people go from blindness to seeing again, from death to life, from infirmity to well-being, and from fear to trust. And politically speaking, there is salvation where people, communities, and nations move from injustice to justice and from violence to peace (Speaking Christian, 38-54).
So where can we see God’s salvation? Where does Christmas really begin to cost us? At what point does the “sword” pierce our hearts? Everywhere and at every point: Where people are in bondage—caught up in human trafficking, exploited for cheap labor, given no voice in government, granted no religious freedom. Where people are in exile—deported and separated from their families, kicked of the house for not being straight. Where people are in danger—living in war-torn countries, suffering from poverty, walking in fear of prejudice and violence. As Walter Wangerin, Jr. once wrote, “Where can I look and I do not see you?” (Ragman, ix).
So be faithful, create an atmosphere of faithfulness in which others may grow, that both you and they might see God’s salvation. Then follow Christ, give him everything you’ve got, and help transform one another and this world. And having done all of that, may you go in peace.
Amen.
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