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Sermon - December 28th, 2008
Sight for Sore Eyes
Rev. Gwen Drake
Scripture: Luke 2:22-40
Simeon and Anna had been waiting all their lives for this particular day, the day the holy family came to the temple. Simeon and Anna had been waiting to meet the One, the Messiah, savior of their people. They were aged prophets, persons of a strangely open and expectant faith waiting because one of the prophets of their Scriptures, Malachi said that when the Messiah came, he would appear in the temple; waiting because the Holy Spirit had whispered to Simeon that death would not come to him until he laid eyes on the one who would save his people. So, Simeon and Anna padded their bets and hung around the temple.
So here’s how it happen. Simeon’s hanging out at the Temple as usual. Mary, Joseph, the baby come to the temple because that’s what women did after they give birth. Women go to be purified and first born sons are taken to the temple to be presented to the Lord according to the Law of Moses.
However, Simeon’s not looking for a baby. Simeon is looking for a strong, handsome warrior on a magnificent horse, or for someone coming on a cloud. When Mary brings her newborn son to the temple, he is strangely drawn to the baby. He goes to her and says, “Let me see your child.” Simeon holds the baby, looks into the face of Jesus, and smiles. The baby looks back, and then Simeon sings his song, “Lord, let now thy servant depart in peace; for my eyes have seen your salvation.”
“Let your servant depart in peace.” These are words of thanksgiving and release. Then he gives the prophecy. “This child is set for the rise and fall of many.” He turns to Mary with these terrible words, “And a sword shall pierce your heart.”
Simeon was the expert witness. He was devout and righteous. He was a faithful “messiah-watcher.” He never missed a day at the temple. He had the credentials to identify the Messiah when he showed up. Witnesses didn’t come any better than Simeon. For Luke, it was important to have a credible witness to show those reading his Gospel that this baby, the one born in Bethlehem, was the long awaited messiah.
There was another reason Simeon was there. Simeon was there to announce an enormous change in the expected plan. The Messiah was not coming in suddenly and ushering in a whole new age where everything was set right. Instead, the Messiah came and everything was going to be pretty much the same as they had always been. At least it would look that way.
Maybe you have noticed that already. You woke up the day after Christmas, and the world, gosh darn it, still isn’t perfect. It’s the same old world, there’s still snow on the ground, the economy isn’t any better, maybe even worse. We read the same news in the newspaper, hear the same thing on TV, and many working people had to go back to work. We woke up and the cancer is still there, the loved one is still gone, troops are still in Iraq, and there still isn’t peace on earth. The miracle didn’t happen. Nothing has really changed.
Simeon is here the first Christmas Sunday to remind us that God didn’t come in with a flood and sweep everything clean so we could start over. God did not charge in and force change upon us with an army. God didn’t even come with a cure of the common cold let alone cancer. Simeon is the expert witness who sees and announces that God has chosen another way to change the world, the slow and often painful way of love.
I think he realized it the moment he looked into the baby’s eyes. Wait a minute, he must have thought, I’ve gotten it all wrong, I’ve been looking in all the wrong faces. This is not a warrior on a horse or a cloud taking the world by a storm, this is not an ambush. Look who has come to the temple this day. It’s just a baby. God is going to change the world through a baby. “God so loved the world that God sent a baby, the only begotten Son of God, not to condemn the world, but to save the world.” The plan is not what was expected.
That is what Simeon tells us. Simeon also reveals that it is not going to be easy. Yes, God will be victorious. Yes, the kingdom will come. Not all of the sudden in a blink of an eye. That would be the easy way. Many people expected that. We still expect it. We yearn for Christ to come in an instant, like a thief in the night, swooping down and rescuing us.
But Simeon says, look at the helpless baby. He is so fragile, so vulnerable, so dependent. If you are looking for fireworks, for a cloud, for a warrior, you are going to have to change what you are looking for, or you will miss it altogether. God’s plan is that it is going to take a while and it is going to cost a lot. That is the meaning of Simeon’s words, “This baby is for the rise and fall of many.” And a sword is going to pierce his mother’s soul.
David Mazel, a Jewish writer, said that one day his rabbi asked him how things were going. He said, “OK, but it wouldn’t hurt if they got a little better.” The rabbi replied, “How do you know it wouldn’t hurt?”
That is what Simeon is saying. Things are going to get better, but it is not going to be easy, it is going to cost something, beginning with the life of this baby he was holding in his arms. It is going to cost his mother something and all those who follow and believe in him.
That is why Anna is here on this Sunday as well. We almost miss Anna and skip right over her. She is not really necessary in the story. Simeon is sufficient to finish this episode. Yet there she is, adding her silent testimony. She, like Simeon is very old. Probably older than Simeon. Simeon and Anna—the Bible’s odd couple waiting at the Temple every day watching for the Messiah.
Anna, too, has credentials and authority, different than Simeon’s. She is a woman, not trained in the Scriptures the way Simeon was. Her expertise came from life itself. She is a widow in the days when being a widow meant she was part of the lower class. She had been around the block and knows that life is far from being easy. So when she sees Mary’s baby and says, “This is the one, this baby is the Messiah,” it means something.
Anna is here, I believe, to represent the survivors. She is here for whom the news never changes. She represents those who know Christmas is not going to remove their problems. She is here for those who know that they are just going to have to keep on going and that life is going to continue to be pretty much the same. So when Anna, the survivor, says, “This is what I have been waiting for, this is the fulfillment of my life,” it really means something. And those who are in the state of disillusionment and numbness about life are awakened by Anna’s announcement. Anna is telling us to pay attention, change our perspective, look at life in a new way.
Simeon and Anna are both here to tell us on this Christmas Sunday that the Messiah has come into a world that is broken. The Messiah they see is a tiny baby, a sight for their old and tired eyes, hope for their weary hearts, and they rejoice. This is it! The witnesses have testified to it. This is it! No Messiah is going to rush in and rescue us and solve all that is wrong with the world. No knight in shining armor is coming. No super hero is flying in on a cloud to bring us a perfect world. It’s not going to happen that way. And old Simeon sees that and he’s ready for death to take him, departing in peace. But the text tells us that Anna is still there. She’s going around telling everyone, “This is who I waited for. This baby is the redemption of Jerusalem.”
If Anna says it, then what it means is that the world doesn’t have to be perfect for you and me to find salvation. It doesn’t have to be perfect for us to experience what Christmas is saying about peace and joy and hope and love. Our world has cracks in it. Our world is messy and slushy and hard to get around in—God sees our world clearly, God has sent us God’s peace, joy, hope, and love already and always. We can know that and we can rejoice. God is in us, in our human-ness, in our imperfect world. God is here, loving us, and there’s nothing we can do about it, except one thing—open our hearts and our lives and believe it, receive it, accept it. Thanks be to God. Amen.