Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "Child of Hope "
Date: January 1, 2006
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Luke 2:22-40

We have been paying quite a bit of attention to time at our house this past week.  Our daughter Amy flew to New Zealand on Christmas night.  Since it is on the other side of the International Dateline, New Zealand is one day ahead of us, less three hours, or, put another way, it is 21 hours ahead of us.  Most evenings we receive an e-mail from Amy, sitting in some Internet café, telling us of all the events she and her other teacher friends crammed into one day.  Her e-mail about last Thursday, her time, ended, “You’ll be reading this Wednesday, which I’ve already lived.  Ha!”

Maybe you too have been focusing on time this weekend.  Did you stay up to watch the crystal ball drop in New York City last night?  Did you see it live at 9 p.m. our time, or tape-delayed until midnight?  And here you are, just ten hours into the first day of 2006, wondering what the remaining 364½ days will bring.

Shortly after the birth of Jesus, Mary was concerned about time as well.  Like every good Jewish mother, she kept counting to 40.  According to God’s law in Leviticus, that was how many days she had to wait until she reentered the life of her community.  Until then, because she had given birth, she was set apart for a prescribed period of recovery before she could touch holy things at home or go back to synagogue on the Sabbath.

A mother’s time apart was called her time of “blood purification,” and when it was over, there was something very specific she had to do.  She had to take a lamb to a priest, who would sacrifice them to God on her behalf.  After that, she would be clean again.  If she did not have enough money for a lamb, the law contained a poverty clause.  She could offer instead “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

We do not know whether Mary and Joseph walked or rode a donkey in the one-day journey from Bethlehem to the temple in Jerusalem.  We do not know whether they brought the birds with them, or purchased them there, but we do know they took the poverty clause, because there was no lamb involved—unless you count what Mary carried in her arms.  Maybe that was what old Simeon saw when the couple stepped into the temple, pausing just inside the door while their eyes adjusted to the light.  Simeon saw the Lamb of God in a little child. 

He may not have intended to be in the temple that day, for Luke indicates he was “guided by the Spirit.”  Maybe the Spirit spoke to him often, or maybe it was rare, but Simeon could not afford to ignore it, because that same Spirit had promised him he would not see death until he had gotten a good look at God’s chosen one.

Can you imagine how Mary, who had probably never been to Jerusalem or its temple before, felt when this old man with a long white beard, eyes clouded by cataracts, shuffled up to this couple, held out his aged arms and asked, “May I please hold your baby?”

Mary, by that time used to strange shepherds and innkeepers stopping by to see her child, must have felt it was okay.  She untucked the baby Jesus from that warm place next to her breast and held him out to the old man.  Then Simeon took Jesus into his arms and said the most startling thing:  “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”  (Luke 2:29-32)

It was such a beautiful thing to say that the early church turned it into a song, one that is still in most church hymnals today.  We call it the Nunc Dimittis, the “Now Dismissed.”  For Mary and Joseph, though, it was not just a

song they heard.  It was a revelation about their son.

Simeon did not just rely on his own hunch about this particular baby being the promised Messiah.  Rather there were two critical things.  Luke tells us that Simeon was “looking forward to the consolation of Israel.”  Luke is saying that Simeon was steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures.  In the book of Isaiah God comforts the people by redeeming them.  So first, Simeon based his pronouncement about Jesus on Scriptures.  And second, Luke tells us that Simeon was being guided by the Spirit.

Those two sources of understanding — the outward one of Scripture and the inward one of God’s direct inspiration — still stand today as our means of identifying Jesus as the “child of hope.”  The best place to look to decide who Jesus is is the Bible itself.

• Jesus, child of hope, is the one, who, after he was baptized, lived up to his baptism every day by the way he honored and obeyed the heavenly Father.

• Jesus, child of hope, is the one who proclaimed the good news of God, preaching repentance and announcing that the kingdom of God had begun.

• Jesus, child of hope, is the one who was so filled with compassion that though it sometimes seemed to get in the way of his proclamation ministry, he still took time and energy to heal the sick.

• Jesus, child of hope, was the one who embodied the very authority of God, and whose life embroidered the deeds of God on the fabric of human experience.  This was so evident that people who heard him commented on it.

• Jesus, child of hope, was the one who did not shun bad company, but who called them also to repentance and a place in the kingdom.

• Jesus, child of hope, is the one who repeatedly withdrew to pray.

• Jesus, child of hope, is the one in whom his contemporaries recognized a special connection with God — a recognition that led Peter to call him “the Son of the living God.”  (Matthew 16:16)

• Jesus, child of hope even as he went to the cross, understanding that in doing so, he was being obedient to the will of God, and was doing something profound for humankind.

• Jesus, child of hope, is the one who arose victorious over death on Easter and is thus living today.

William Sloane Coffin, Jr., former Yale chaplain and senior minister of New York’s Riverside Church, once remarked, “The Word of God hits the world with the force of a hint.”  What had Simeon seen, really?  Little more than a hint.  A little child, powerless and speechless.  Yet like the shepherds and the Magi, Simeon, because of his knowledge of Scriptures and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, felt he beheld the salvation of the world when he held and gazed upon that little infant boy.

We just walked through the rest of the gospel story:  how this helpless child grew up and what he ended up doing and proved to be.  For that matter, what we actually know right now of how 2006 will play out for us is not much more than Simeon knew at that moment in the temple:  promise, but not fulfillment; “hints” and hopes, but not yet proven outcome.

As we enter a brand new year, our faith will be renewed and invigorated to carry us through if, like Simeon, we can find the “child of hope,” the presence of Christ in our lives and that of others.

Simeon held the Child in his arms and saw the salvation of Israel.  Whom do we see?