Today is a Christian
holiday. Does anyone know what it is?
No, Groundhog Day does not count. Neither does Super Bowl Sunday. Neither does World Ukulele Day. No, today is Candlemas.
Candlemas is celebrated forty days after the birth of
Jesus, and this year is happens to fall on a Sunday. Today.
Under Jewish law, a woman who gave birth to a male child had to wait
forty days to be “purified” and be allowed to enter the temple. To really celebrate it properly, you bring
candles to the church, which are blessed and used at home throughout the
year. The candles symbolize Jesus, who
of course we call “the light of the world”.
Our Bible reading for today takes place forty days after
Jesus was born, and it takes place at the temple in Jerusalem. So, at some point in those forty days, Mary,
Joseph, and Jesus must have made the trip from Bethlehem to Jerusalem.
Now, that was
not a long trip--it was about six miles. But, of course, Mary and Joseph
would’ve had to walk it, carrying Jesus, so it’s not like it was really easy.
You and I would probably be really upset if we had to walk six miles
carrying a baby. But back then, it was just the way things were.
People were used to walking everywhere they needed to go. It was no
big deal.
So Mary and
Joseph walk the six miles from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, and then walk some more
until they get to the temple. They buy the required sacrifice. And
while they’re there, they meet two people.
The first was
a man named Simeon. Simeon lived in Jerusalem, and he had been told by
the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he saw the Savior. This day,
this day when Mary and Joseph are presenting Jesus at the temple, the Holy
Spirit told him to go to the temple courts. We don’t know if the Spirit
told him why, but he went there. And he saw Jesus. And as soon as
he saw Jesus, Simeon knew. We don’t know
how he knew, but he knew. He knew that
this was, in fact, the Savior he had been kept alive to see.
And when we
read what Simeon said, it sounds like Simeon understood, far better than most
people at that time, just who the Savior was going to be. As we said last
week, most people at that time thought the Savior would be a great king,
someone who would return Israel to power as a great nation. But look at
how Simeon describes Jesus: “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and
the glory of your people Israel.” And then he tells Mary: “This
child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be
a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be
revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”
Simeon
understood that Jesus was not going to be a political leader. He was
going to bring salvation to both the Gentiles and the Jews, but that salvation
would be spiritual salvation, not a political salvation. And he would
cause “the thoughts of many hearts” to be revealed, both for better and for
worse. Simeon understood exactly what kind of Savior Jesus was going to
be.
And then we
meet Anna. Anna was a prophet. She was eighty-four years old.
We’re told she had lived with her husband for seven years after their
marriage and had been a widow ever since. Assuming she was married young,
as was often the case at that time, Anna may have been a widow for sixty years
or more. I know there are people here who’ve lost spouses, but think of that.
To be a widow or a widower for sixty years. That’s a long time to
be alone.
We’re told
that she never left the temple, but worshiped night and day, fasting and
praying. We don’t know how long she’d been doing that. It was not
necessarily for the whole time she’d been a widow, or even for most of that
time. But it seems like it must have been a while. And just as
Simeon finishes talking, Anna comes up, gives thanks to God, and starts telling
everyone about this child who’s going to be the Savior.
So what’s the
point? Why is this story in the Bible? Is it just an interesting
story, a little piece of the life of Jesus, or is there more to it? What
are we supposed to learn from this?
Well, I’m sure
there’s more than one thing we can learn from it. There almost always is,
when we read the Bible. But here’s the one I want to focus on today.
Have you ever
had a time when you felt like God was giving you a message? Or, have you
ever felt like the Holy Spirit was leading you to do something, or to say
something, or to go somewhere? Or maybe you did not recognize it as the
Holy Spirit, but you just felt like there was something inside you telling you
that you needed to talk to some specific person, or go to some specific place,
or do some specific thing. You did not know why, but you just had this
strong feeling that this was what you were supposed to do.
Have you ever
had that? I think probably most of us have, at one time or another.
And probably most of us have followed that prompting, at least some of
the time.
But here’s the
thing. Sometimes, we get that message, or we follow that prompting--we do
what we’re led to do, we go where we’re led to go, we say what we’re led to
say--and it seems like nothing happens. And some time goes on, and
nothing continues to happen. And we start to wonder. Did God really
give me a message? Was the Holy Spirit really leading me to do that, or
say that, or go there? Or was it something I made up, something I
imagined, something that came out of my own head or from someone else and I
just fooled myself into thinking it was from God?
When that happens,
we want some confirmation. We want to get some kind of a signal, some
kind of sign. We want something to encourage us to stay the course,
something to let us know that yes, we really did get that message from God.
We really were led by the Holy Spirit. God really did speak to us,
and God really is going to be faithful and keep the words God said.
God does not
always give us that confirmation, but sometimes God does. Even when God does, though, it sometimes
takes a while. Look at Mary and Joseph. The angel Gabriel had told
them that their child was the divine Son of God. They’d listened, and
they’d believed. They’d gone everywhere they were supposed to go, they’d
done everything they were supposed to do. But still, they had to wonder.
It had been several months, at least, since they’d heard from Gabriel
about who this baby was going to be. They had to be thinking, you know,
our baby looks like any other baby. He acts like any other baby. Is
he really going to be that special? Are we really going to be raising the
Savior of the world?
But even so,
they continued to trust. They continued
to have faith. And then, when they take
Jesus to the temple, here come Simeon and Anna. And they say, yes.
Yes, your child is going to be that special. You really are going
to be raising the Savior of the world. All that stuff that Gabriel said
is really true. You really have received a message from God, and God will
be faithful to God’s word. That had to be a huge relief to them. It
had to feel so wonderful, to have someone come along and confirm that they
really had received a message from God, that things were going the way they
were supposed to go, and that they really could trust God’s promises.
Simeon
probably felt that, too. He also had
been given a message from God, a message that he would see the Savior before he
died. But time had passed, and he was
getting older, and older, and nothing had happened. Was he really going to see the Savior? Had God really made that promise to him? Or had he just imagined the whole thing?
But even so,
he continued to trust, too. He continued
to have faith. And then, suddenly, here
he is. He really did see the Savior. It had to feel so wonderful, to actually have
it happen, to actually have God’s message confirmed.
And you and I
have been given messages from God, too. There are places were supposed to
go, words we’re supposed to say, things we’re supposed to do. And we try
to be faithful to that. But then,
sometimes, we don’t seem to see any results. We wish a Simeon, or an
Anna, or someone would come and confirm God’s message for us. We wish
they’d come and tell us that we did not imagine this, that we really have
received a message from God. We wish they’d say things are going the way
they’re supposed to go, that we really can trust God’s promises.
And sometimes
we get that. But sometimes we
don’t. At least not right away. Sometimes it takes a long time for that
confirmation to come. Time passes, and
we start to doubt. We start to wonder if
it’s ever going to come. We wonder if
maybe we were just fooling ourselves, that we just believed we’d heard a
message because it was wanted to hear, rather than truly hearing an actual
message from God.
And that’s when
we have to decide. Can we continue to
trust? Can we continue to have
faith? Can we persevere despite our
doubts, trusting that God will be faithful to God’s word? Can we trust that God is there, and that God
is doing things, even if we cannot see them?
Can we remember all the times God has been faithful to us and trust that
God will be faithful again? Can we trust
that, if we do our best to stay faithful to God, God will bless what we do,
even if we don’t see any evidence of it right away? Or will we give up on God?
Mary and
Joseph continued to believe that their son was the divine Son of God. God rewarded their faith. Simeon continued to believe that he would see
the Savior before he died. God rewarded
his faith. If you and I continue to
believe, and continue to trust God, God will be faithful to the promises God
has made to us. We’ll find that God will
bless what we’ve done and reward our faith, too. And we will see that Jesus truly is the light
of the world.
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