Sermon for the last Sunday of a long year

 LUKE 2. 22-40

DID YOU NOTICE?

This sermon is on the last Sunday of the year 2020; a year when the refrain of many is to just get it over (the year, not the sermon…or so I think that’s the case) a collective look toward a new year and putting this all behind us. 

When asked what one word best describes 2020 a frequent reply is LOSS or LOST.  

•  ·      Loss of life --- over 377,000 Americans, nearly 2 million worldwide
• ·        Loss of livelihood ---- record numbers of unemployment, businesses closing, foreclosures looming
• ·      Loss of normalcy --- we don’t go to stores, resteraunts, bars, movies, gyms, in-person worship, school
• ·      Loss of community
• ·      Loss of trust in one another and our institutions

 …..sigh…with so much loss how do we get found? How to find ourselves? How do we restore our connection to one another?

 What does this story in the Gospel of Luke have to do with helping to get us found?

 In these verses, it is clear that Luke, the gospel writer, wants to emphasize that Jesus was a faithful, obedient Jew.  His parents are in the temple to perform the purification ritual and to offer a sacrifice for the birth of their first born. As noted in the Law found in the Old Testament book, Leviticus, chapter 12 the required sacrifice was a lamb yet the law had a “poverty clause” that stated for those who could not afford a lamb, the sacrifice of two turtledoves was sufficient and was what Mary and Joseph offered. As writer, Fred Craddock puts it, “the parents were such who managed to get by on the religious equivalent of food stamps;” somehow that fact is even more poignant in this time of blocks-long lines for food bank pick-ups and the widening chasm between wealthy and poor.

 Luke emphasizes that this child will bring a broad, inclusive message for the Gentiles and the entire world….pssssst, that’s where you and I come in so we ought to be paying attention to what is taught and lived and try and follow actively.

 A pattern in Luke’s gospel is to include both men and women in his stories and illustrations. In the well-known parables of the lost sheep and prodigal there is the woman with the lost coin; the parable of the Good Samaritan followed by the story of Mary and Martha; the persistent widow who persistently bangs on the judge's door and the humble publican and here the introduction of Simeon and Anna, both older, faithful and long waiting and soon to have their faith confirmed by the appearance of the infant Jesus, the one for whom they’d been looking.  

 After a season of waiting, we are provided portraits of two people who had waited decades for the promise to be fulfilled. Do we need more of a contrast?  The young couple, their infant son and ancient Simeon and Anna; wrinkled hands and hunched shoulders, feeble legs and thinning hair gathering up the baby and prophesying the one Mary delivered will, in many ways, deliver.  

 In many ways the year 2020 has been a long slog of worry and waiting of tiredness and tension.  Our very nature as social beings has been compromised and isolation is the new reality. We are fearful and in our fear we become angry.

What answers do Simeon and Anna offer to we who live in a state of lost-ness?

I hope to seek, to build, to have the “prayerful expectancy” of Simeon.

I want and I need the constancy and commitment of Anna who kept showing up and keeping watch. 

  During these times there are a lot of movies being watch and re-watched; we are breaking out the films that inspire or comfort us with a laugh or a lesson or both.  The other day the film SIMON BIRCH checked both those boxes for me. After the death of his mother the character Joe says, “I’ve got faith. I just want proof to back it up.”  

I seek to develop and to strengthen the kind of faith that can embrace the mystery; a faith that is able to live in times of such uncertainty and unsettlement. I want to live a faith that believes in what I’ve not yet seen nor experienced because of what I already have seen and experienced in a God of love and Presence, of grace and joy, of inclusion and justice, of resurrection.

As we wind down the year 2020 and ready for a new year, a new beginning, I plan on so doing and suggest that we each engage in the practice of noticing.  To slow down and like those early reader books of “Dick and Jane” to look and to listen.  To pay attention and notice what is going on within one’s self, what is happening within the lives of those closest to us, within our community, our nation, our world.  

Notice. Notice and sit with and reflect on what you see, hear, feel. 

 As the old song by “Seals and Crofts” refrains “We may never pass this way again…” and as 2020 will soon fade into history many are probably echoing an Amen….whatever is ahead of us may we notice, may we experience, may we trust, may we be faithful.