H. Stephen Shoemaker
Myers Park Baptist Church
Charlotte, North Carolina
December 31, 2006

"SEEING MESSIAH"
Text: Luke 2:21-40

How was this "wee" child Jesus raised? Our hearts are hungry for details. Luke gives us a glimpse. On his eighth day he was circumcised, given the name the angel gave to Mary and Joseph, "Jesus," or Yeshua, which means "God saves."

Then forty days after his birth Mary and Joseph travel to Jerusalem to the temple for his dedication and Mary’s purification.

This scene, often called "The Presentation at the Temple," is found only in Luke. It is a deeply textured scene with important messages in almost every word and movement.

Take a look at Rembrandt’s painting on the cover of the order of worship. There, lower left, is the back of Joseph’s head as he tries to take it all in. Are we Joseph taking it all in? You see Mary looking at her son, listening ot what Simeon is saying to her. You see Simeon holding the child, speaking earnestly to Mary. You see Anna, the prophetess beholding the child, her hands raised in wonder.

How did Mary and Joseph raise Jesus? The text says that they did "everything required by the law of the Lord." Jesus was raised in a deeply observant Jewish home. Later, in his ministry, Jesus would make a sharp, prophetic critique of how his religion was being practiced and how Torah was being interpreted, but he did so as an insider not an outsider. His quarrel was a lover’s quarrel.

In the temple we meet two new figures, the priest Simeon and the prophetess Anna. Fred Craddock says of them:

These two aged saints are Israel in miniature, and Israel at its best: devout, obedient, constant in prayer, led by the Holy Spirit, at home in the temple, longing and hoping for the fulfillment of God’s promises.... God is doing something new, but it is not really new, because hope is always joined to memory, and the new is God’s keeping an old promise.

Mary and Joseph take the infant Jesus to the Temple and dedicate him to God. There are many echoes here of a famous O. T. story: Hannah and Elkanah dedicating their baby son Samuel to the Lord. Here is a child whose life would be given in service to God. In fact the last words of today’s text are almost a direct quote of what was said of Samuel:

Here is what we hope for all our children: Growing in body, growing in wisdom, growing in God’s grace. All three.

The offering they give as a purification offering was, yes, "two turtle doves." Two turtle doves was a special concession to the poor. Most people brought a lamb. Jesus was born in a home of modest means.

Today many scholars identify Mary and Joseph as members of a group in 1^st century Judaism called the Anawim. The name literally means "The Poor." And it referred not only to people’s financial condition but also, most importantly, to their spiritual posture. They saw themselves as spiritually poor, in need of God. The "empty ones" who hungered for God, and who relied on God and God alone for their redemption. Flannery O’Connor once wrote, "You accept grace the quickest when you have the least." God placed Jesus in a family and a community who had the least, who knew their need of God and would accept no substitutes.

Simeon and Anna may also have been a part of the Anawim. Luke’s description of them suggests so: Simeon, "righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel;" Anna, wholly devoted to God, "looking for the redemption of Israel."

Isaiah’s prophet had announced deliverance from Exile: "Comfort, comfort ye my people." The Lord would "comfort Israel and redeem Jerusalem." (Isaiah 52:9) And so God did. But as history goes, as it still goes, one liberation is followed by another tyranny, and Israel five hundred years later found itself in the hands of another oppressor, this one named Rome.

What the Anawim hoped in, waited for, was Messiah, no one and nothing less than Messiah, one who would come and save us for good.

It is tempting to settle for Messiah-substitutes, some political savior, some spiritual guru, some temporary bliss. But the Anawim - - and the Anawim in us - - know only God can make us whole. Only Messiah will do. And they keep their eye out for Messiah, whenever, wherever the Messiah appears.

When the old priest Simeon saw the infant Jesus he knew this one was the Messiah, the anointed one of God. Simeon’s life was open to the winds of God’s Holy Spirit, - - another theme of Luke’s is the importance of the Holy Spirit acting in our lives - - The Spirit had told him he would see the Messiah before he died. The Spirit led him to the Temple. Now he holds this child and sees Messiah, and says words which have become a song sung in worship for two thousand years, the Nunc Dimittis:

Now, let thy servant, O Lord, depart in peace,
for my eyes have seen your salvation.

The salvation Simeon sees is not parochial, not sectarian, it is universal. It is "prepared in the presence of all peoples." It is "a light of revelation to the Gentiles." It is "glory to your people Israel."

Let me say it plainly: Any salvation that is not glory to Israel and is not the salvation of all peoples is not the good news of Jesus Christ. Any gospel at the expense of the Judaism, any gospel excluding any people is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

When Simeon finished these words he blessed Mary, Joseph and the child. Their hearts were filled with wonder at his words. Then he offered a prophecy somber and real. This child, he said, "is set for, destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel." Simeon goes on: I’m interested in the order of the verbs, not "rise and fall", but "fall and rise." In Christ, with Christ, we fall and we rise, we die and are reborn, we stumble and fail, we are lifted up and redeemed. The one meant for all will not be seen by all. This child "will be a sign opposed, a sign disputed, a sign spoken against." This child will "reveal the inner thoughts of our hearts." What is hidden will be revealed. This is the only way healing happens.

And then he said to Mary, to prepare her for the unthinkable - - that she would one day bury her son - - "and a sword will pierce through your own soul too."

I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die.

The presence of the Messiah in human history will always be a disputed sign, a sign spoken against. We are too limited in heart, in mind. Disputed not only as to who is Messaih but the meaning of Messiah. Only at the end of history will Messiah be an undisputed sign, only then will all the world with opened eyes and unhindered hearts see him and kneel before him, "lost in wonder, love and praise." Then will be joy, undiluted, in the presence of the Beloved.

For now it is given us one by one, person by person, church by church, community by community to see him and receive him. Would you this day see him, receive him?

Not only did Simeon see this child as the Christ, so did Anna, a prophetess, widowed after seven years, now eighty-four years old. She had devoted her life to prayer and fasting, living in the temple, serving God day and night.

I know women like her, and men like Simeon, wise, older followers of Jesus who have dedicated their lives to the church and to God. "Pillars of the church" we call them, who have kept the faith, built up the church, loved God’s people, carried the word of God in their hearts and lived it out. Prayed when we stopped praying. What would our lives, our church be without them? We praise our Simeons and Annas today. They encourage our hope, fan our faith, pat down our fears, and guide our feet on trusted paths. Thank God for you.

"At that moment," the text says, Anna happened in the temple when Jesus was being dedicated. "At that moment," meaning the Spirit led her there. And she too saw the child as the promised Messiah, and she was filled with praise and began to tell the news to all who "were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem." Go tell it on the mountain.

Who are you in this text today? What is God calling you to do, to be? And who is your neighbor?

Is God calling you to a new level of believing today? To receive this one called Jesus into your life? To set your feet on the path he walks?

Is God calling you like Anna to go tell that you have seen the Messiah?

Sometimes we draw back from naming him Christ and Lord because we are not sure of what this means to others who do not. We name him Messiah and testify to him not as a claim of spiritual superiority but as a witness to being found by him, he having come into your life, he being the shape you wish your life to take. Would you unashamedly call him the Christ because in him you have been grasped by God, ultimately grasped, grasped in the deepest places you know?

You need not omniscient to be a witness, you need not know everything in order to know. So we can say:

Jesus, the Christ, is God’s love to me.
God’s sophia, wisdom, word, made flesh.
He is grace abounding.
God’s anointed one who has anointed me.
He is the Unnameable One named,
the Uncomprehended comprehended,
the Holy made human.
He is the savior of all that needs saving,
the physician of all that needs healing.
Love rejected now forgiving.
Born, crucified, raised.
Our birth, our dying and re-birth.
All this in a manger, in the temple, in an old priest’s arms.
 

Do you see Messiah here? American poet, poet laureate, Richard Wilbur did, and wrote thisChristmas hymn:

A stable-lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven,
A stall become a shrine.
This child through David’s city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
Though heavy, dull, and dumb,
And lie within the roadway
To pave his kingdom come.
Yet he shall be forsaken,
And yielded up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men:
God’s blood upon the spearhead,
God’s love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,

The low is lifted high;

The stars shall bend their voices,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry

In praises of the child

By whose descent among us

The worlds are reconciled.