Sermon:  "For Lo, the Days Are Hastening On"
Date:   January 1, 2012
Minister:  The Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  Luke 2:22-35

Things have changed greatly over the years—indeed the centuries—in the activities around a baby’s birth.  I remember sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast on December 5, 1957 when my father received a phone call telling him that his second daughter had been born at a hospital across town.  In 1979, I was present in the delivery room when our second daughter Amy was born, and I was the first to hold her after the delivering doctor and the nurse.  I imagine that some 2000 years ago, Joseph was present when Jesus was born.  Someone had to assist Mary in that stable delivery.

Jesus was raised in the Jewish faith, and there were Jewish customs attendant with his birth.  On Christmas Eve we heard from Luke’s Gospel that on the eighth day he was circumcised “and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” (2:21)  During the 40 days following the birth of a son, a Jewish mother was considered ritually unclean, and was not to enter the temple sanctuary.  At the end of this time, she took a lamb to be offered as a thanksgiving sacrifice.  Leviticus allowed for those of limited financial resources to offer two turtledoves or two pigeons.  Such was the situation of Mary and Joseph as they entered the temple forty days after Jesus’ birth as our lesson begins today.

In the temple they meet Simeon and Anna, who are portrayed as faithful, elderly Jews.  Likely, they were poor.  Some scholars suggest that they are representatives of the “poor ones’ (anawim) who relied solely upon God for their sustenance.  They waited in hope for God’s promised savior.

Against the backdrop of the magnificent temple, moving among the masses, we encounter this poor man from the hinterland, an old man waiting to die.  Indeed, “it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.” (2:26)  Guided by the Spirit into the temple, there is the tender and touching scene as old Simeon takes the new baby in his frail and wrinkled hands.  Simeon’s eyes are not so dimmed by age that they fail to see “your salvation…a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”  (2:30-32)  According to the promise made to him, he intones the canticle the church calls the Nunc Dimittis, “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word…”

Simeon is, in effect, saying, ‘Lord, I am at peace now and ready to die, for I have seen your promise come to life and light in this baby Jesus.’  Simeon sees precisely because he has been faithful for so many years, precisely because he has patiently waited, hoped, and believed.  Old Simeon had lived long enough to know that if God really wants to bless us, to save us, somehow this God must confront the worst about us, the things we do to one another, even the things we do to ourselves.  That confrontation would not be cheap, nor comfortable.  This cuddly baby Jesus in Simeon’s arms would grow up, would teach the word to us, would ultimately die for us.  So a cross stands behind the manger this morning and the birth we celebrate at Christmas will lead to the death of that same person on Good Friday.  But as the refrain from our opening hymn reminds us:  “Christ was born for this!  Christ was born to save!”

We often overlook this incident in the temple when we read the Luke passage of Jesus’ birth.  Yet it was precisely while reading this Gospel selection for today—old Simeon saying he was now ready to die since he had seen God’s salvation come in Jesus—that a verse of our closing hymn today came to my mind: 

“For lo, the days are hastening on, by prophet seen of old,

when with the ever-circling years shall come the time foretold…”

  (It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, vs. 4)

What a word for us on this first day of 2012 to remember that our days too, like Simeon, “are hastening on.”  I experience that on a weekly basis in my ministry.  I have conducted a memorial service here in the sanctuary on a morning for someone who has died, and hours later in the same place joined together a couple in marriage.  One afternoon last week I offered solemn prayers with a person near death, and two hours later happily renewed the marriage vows for a couple married here twenty years ago.  I have visited a newborn infant and parents in the hospital and next went to the room of a very sick church member.  I experience the juxtaposition of all these moments—sometimes celebratory and sometimes sad—in people’s lives.  For each and every one of them, young or old, as with all of us, the days are hastening on.

What do we do with the days before us?  Whose lives will we touch?  Who will be better for it?  What shall we accomplish?  Where will we find the faith to go on?

Martin Luther says, in part, of this text from Luke:  “Therefore godly Simeon wanted to warn everyone and to lead us thither…, that we could accept Christ Jesus, whom our fancy has not created…  It all depends on this, that we with the dear old Simeon open our eyes and see the Babe, take Him into our arms, and kiss Him, which means, that He is our hope, joy, comfort, and our life.  For where this faith is firm…it must follow that the heart is content and is not afraid of sin or death, for it has a Savior who delivers it from them.”  (Sermons from 1544, W.A., 52, 157)

As I conclude a year of ministry and begin another, as the days and years hasten on, I look at the broad spectrum of ages and situations I am privileged to step into—and it is indeed a privilege—and in every case where Luther affirms that “faith is firm,” then each of those persons believe they have a Savior who delivers them.

Christmas is about a God who loves us so much that he becomes one of us, born among us into a human family, looks like us, feels like us, lives and dies like us.  A God who comes to us must be a God willing to get his hands dirty in the human condition, and Jesus certainly did.  A God who comes to teach a new way to us will be resisted, “destined for the falling and the rising of many” as old Simeon predicted.  A God whose words will be sometimes a sword in our heart and sometimes a comfort.

This is the God come to earth, Emmanuel, God-with-us, who walks with us, guides, loves and sustains us as all our days hasten on.