Sermon for the Presentation

This sermon was given on February 2, 2020 for the Feast of the Presentation, which delightfully fell on a Sunday this year. The texts used may be found here.

We live in difficult times, and hopefully this conveys what it was like for others who lived in difficult times to catch a glimpse of hope, and rely on that.

In the name of the one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Mother of us All—Amen.

• I wonder if there is something that you have been waiting for your whole life—something that, once seen, you might feel so free that you could sing to God: “Now you are dismissing your servant in peace.”
• What was it that Simeon saw in that baby? Have you ever had a moment like this, when you knew that the world would be alright—because you saw something that others had not yet realized?

• This Sunday, we have gone back in time a little bit. Last week we heard the story of Jesus as an adult, calling his first disciples. But this week, we are celebrating the Feast of the Presentation. This is an annual celebration, always falling on February 2, which happens to fall on a Sunday this year.
• And while this might induce some whiplash, I think it is also an important reminder: that God’s work does not move linearly.
  • Though Advent and Christmas have come and gone, the time of waiting is never complete—never only assigned just to Advent.
  • The beginning of the story is never just in one place when God’s time is concerned. Any time we think that we are in the middle of the story, or the end of the story, or that our period of waiting has ended, we are reminded that we are still, always, actively waiting for God’s transformative work in this world.

• In this story from the Gospel of Luke, Mary and Joseph go to the temple to do what every young couple will do at the birth of their first son—offer a sacrifice and dedicate him to God. It is something they will only have to do once in their lives, but it is an event that is expected in the rhythm of life. Mary will share this event with her sisters, her aunts and cousins and nieces. And yet, in the course of this ordinary action, extraordinary events occur.

• When they come to the temple, two devout elders approach them. Simeon and Anna both have extraordinary messages about who Jesus is and what he will become. They have been waiting their whole lives for this.

• This is Luke’s version of the Epiphany. In Luke, there is no parade of wealthy magi who get an audience with the king, and arrive with gold and frankincense and myrrh. Aside from the shepherds, the people who first recognize who Jesus is and pay homage to him are elderly, devoted people. These people are exceptional in their faith, but not that much different from the rest of us. It is easy to see how Simeon and Anna might be like our own surrogate grandparents in our own faith communities.

• Luke is especially concerned with the Epiphanies of normal people—of the ordinary being a carrier for the extraordinary.

• To this day, Simeon’s song of praise is still used at Compline, and has been sung by monks and nuns and faithful people at the close of the day for two thousand years. These are the words of someone who was finally received the fruit of a promise, waited on for a life time. It is powerful for us to say his words also, reaching deep into our cultural memory to relive hope realized, salvation experienced, God known.

• But there is a darker side to Simeon’s message—a strange oracle for Mary alone that follows his song.
• Simeon’s words for Mary foreshadow what will become of her, of Jesus, the disciples, and the early Christian community. Jesus’s work will be divisive, and difficult, and salvation will not come about as they expect it to: “destined for the rising and falling of many in Israel–a sign that is to be opposed.”
• It is that final line that sticks with me, though, “A sword will pierce your own soul, too.”

• All parents know, to some extent, what that statement means. To have a child is to unleash your heart into this world, let it walk around, and then let it go. Parents are asked to give life to children, to care for them, help them grow up safely and kindly to be themselves. Ultimately, we give them birth in order to set them free into their own lives. We cannot control the choices they make, or the paths to which they are called. It is wonderful. It is joyful. It is painful to let them become who they are.

• Mary will know well, by the time her son is grown, how amazing and dangerous releasing him into his own vocation will be. Sometimes she is able and sometimes she is not—just like the rest of us. She is an ordinary mother in extraordinary circumstances.
  • She asks him to begin his work at the Wedding at Cana, but when he begins to attract the attention of the authorities, she tries to come and reign him in. He does not oblige.
  • She tries to protect him, but he has his own call, his own vocation, and even for his own mother he cannot rest.
  • In the end, her process of loving him and letting him go will lead her to the foot of that cross, where she is weeping—but also to the upper room where he appears to them, resurrected, where she may finally see, after all the angels and the oracles, the miracles and healings—then she can see what God is doing through her son.
  • But, she cannot get there without accepting that she cannot protect him from this. Without that sword in her heart.

• To love is to accept the reality of brokenness—to invite heartbreak in. Our children have their own destiny; the beloved is their own person, and because we cannot love perfectly, to love at all is to love imperfectly, to love at all is to face loss at some point. With the joy comes the pain.
• This would be cruel and full of despair if it was not the exact place where God choses to go.

• In the letter to the Hebrews, we are told that in Jesus, God came to be among us as a brother, sharing in our flesh and blood, to suffer as we suffered, to be as we are.
• To love is to accept the reality of brokenness, yes—but, the good news is that God has chosen to be in it with us, to show us the way:
  • not away from pain, but through pain–not free from vulnerability and heartbreak, but toward salvation from within vulnerability and heartbreak.
• For that is the salvation that Simeon has seen. He has not seen the healings, the miracles, the work of the cross, nor even the resurrection, but the presence of God in an infant, the presence of God in flesh and blood, weak and vulnerable as an unspeaking baby. Through that ordinary child, God has made an extraordinary promise: that from within our own fragile realities, he will transform what love is, what power is, what it means to be human, and set us all free from the tyranny of fear.
• And if it is not something worth waiting for, I do not know what is.

• And so, we too can sing Simeon’s song, because we too have seen this moment. We’re going to end a bit differently this week, by singing rather than holding our usual silence. Please join me in opening your hymnals to number 499, and join me in singing the Song of Simeon together.