The Sunday night message given in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on December 31, 2023. The Bible verses used are Luke 2:21-38.
Well, it’s New
Year’s Eve. Tomorrow is New Year’s Day. People are celebrating the
coming of the new year, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.
But then, it will be January second. And it will be
just another day. Everyone will go back to work. On Wednesday the
kids will be back in school. The Christmas holiday season is over.
And too often, that’s how we look at it from a faith
standpoint. We drop Christmas as soon as it’s over. We leave the
baby Jesus in the manger and go on to something else.
But of course, Joseph and Mary could not just go to
something else. They had to deal with the reality of raising this baby,
this divine Son of God that they had responsibility for. That’s quite the
responsibility. So, obviously, they wanted to do it right. So they
presented Jesus at the temple.
First, of course, Jesus was circumcised when he was
eight days old. That was in accordance with the law. Then, we’re
told of Jesus being presented at the temple of the Lord. This happened,
according to Luke, “when the time came for their purification according to the
law of Moses”, which would have been forty days after Jesus was born.
That means that at some point in those forty days, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus made
the trip from Bethlehem to Jerusalem.
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 probably no big deal to them.
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 that this was, in fact,
the Savior he had been kept alive to see.
And as you read what Simeon said, you get the impression
that Simeon understood, far better than most people at that time, just who the
Savior was going to be. 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 in our parish 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 sixty or so years she’d
been a widow, or even for most of those years. 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? As we’ve asked before, 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 need some confirmation. We
need to get some kind of a signal, some kind of sign. We need 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, and God
does not promise that God will give it to us. Sometimes we’re asked to
have faith and to trust and to keep believing. But sometimes, God will
give us that confirmation. God will give us that encouragement. God
will give us a signal, a sign, that we really did get that message from God that
we thought we did.
That’s what happened here. 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. You know, 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?
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.
You and I have been given messages from God, too.
There are places we're supposed to go, words we’re supposed to say, things
we’re supposed to do. That’s true for us as individuals, and that’s true
for us as a church.
And a lot of us have been doing them. Some of us
have been doing them for a long time. And sometimes, we don’t seem to see
any results. We wish a Simeon, or an Anna, would come and confirm God’s
message for us. We wish they’d come and tell us that we really have
received a message from God, that we really are doing what we’re supposed to
do, that we really are going the way God wants us to go. We wish they’d
say things are going the way they’re supposed to go, that we really can trust
God’s promises.
Well, we may not actually get Simeon and Anna. But
I think there are signs all around us, if we look for them. I can’t speak
to each person’s individual calling, but look at our parish. We have our
kids programs going in both Onida and Gettysburg. In fact, the Faith
Builders program has grown a little. We don’t have as many people
worshiping in person as we’d like, but we’re reaching people on the
livestream. We’re expanding our ministry, reaching people in other towns,
reaching people who would never come here in person. We have a few more people
who are coming to church regularly–not a lot, but a few. There are signs
of good things going on in this parish, if we just look for them.
Does that mean everything’s perfect? Of course
not. Far from it. We have challenges, of course. But you know
what? We’ll always have challenges. Every church has
challenges. Mary and Joseph had a lot of challenges, too. God never
promised us everything would be smooth and easy.
But if we keep doing what we’re supposed to do, if we
keep going where God wants us to go, things will go the way they’re supposed to
go. God will confirm God’s message to us in any number of ways. God
really is speaking to us. And God’s word is always true.
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