Sermon for Candlemas, 28 January 2018.

MORECAMBE PARISH CHURCH 28 JAN 2018

LUKE 2: 21 – 40 CANDLEMAS

Introduction

Being fortunate enough to have a car and 2 good legs, I’m not often dependant on buses. But last week I didn’t have time to walk from Galgate to Lancaster while my car was being serviced. I might have been warmer if I had – the bus was 50 mins late.

Many thoughts went through my head while I waited; gratitude for having a car; sympathy for folk who wait for buses every day and less charitable thoughts about the bus company! But also how difficult I find waiting; how impatient and crabby I get!

Life is full of waiting isn’t it?

- waiting for your dream job – or at least something that would be more fulfilling
- waiting for the time when you can live without money worries
- waiting for circumstances to change so that you will be free of some responsibility
- waiting for an operation or the results of a medical examination you are dreading
- waiting for God to answer a prayer

Life is full of ‘waitings’, major and trivial. Some things we wait for are just vague wishes, some we long for with all our hearts. Waiting is part of life but when it comes to waiting for God, we have some things we can learn from this passage.

Simeon and Anna were waiting for something God had promised over a long time. And they were part of what God wanted to do that day, because they’d waited. They’d learned to wait attentively, to live expectantly, and they had the great joy of seeing what they’d waited for.


1 SIMEON v 25 - 35

We don’t know if Simeon was an old man, we are only told Anna’s age. I guess we presume he is an old man because he says he’s ready to die once he’s seen the Messiah. He lived every day in expectation – will this be the day? If he was indeed an older man, maybe, as he grew more creaky and prone to illness, he might have been tempted to wonder if it really would happen in his lifetime.

And how would he know which child? So many infant boys were brought by their parents to pay the usual 5 shekels to redeem the first-born. Simeon had to be always ready, always listening to the voice of God. When the day came he was there, in the place where there would be a fulfilment of the promise, where he would hear: “this is it”.

Simeon takes the child in his arms, and he prays this prayer that we have had sung to us just now: the Nunct Dimitis. This beautiful prayer has been used at Evensong and Compline for more than 350 years. But actually “dismiss your servant in peace,” for Simeon meant dying not sleeping!

As Simeon looks down at this child in his arms, he understands that this Jesus he has waited for, would bring salvation, not just to his own race, but to everyone: Jew and Gentile. Outsiders would find the light they are groping for; insiders would see his glory in its fullest and truest sense. He recognised this wonderful revelation in a tiny baby. This was worth waiting for; now he could go in peace.


2 ANNA v36 - 38

The second person here is Anna. She had also learned to wait – probably longer than Simeon. We do know that Anna was old. 84 is a good age now, but a great age then. It says she was widowed after only 7 years of marriage, so she could have been a widow for at least 60 years.

This was no ordinary lady! She was a prophet, always in the Temple day and night worshipping, fasting and praying – no mean feat for someone 84 years old! She was also waiting, waiting for the Promise to be fulfilled, waiting expectantly.

Anna was old but hadn’t ceased to hope in the Lord. She had suffered aloneness but hadn’t grown bitter. As a result, here is someone else in the right place at the right time. She didn’t have to go far because she was always there waiting in God’s presence, and speaking about him to everyone she met in the most natural way. The waiting had made her who she was.

Anna and Simeon were probably long dead before Jesus began his ministry but they played a very important part by not losing hope, always listening, speaking the truth, waiting expectantly for the promise of the Lord.


3 LESSONS IN WAITING

At Bible Explorers last Tuesday we were studying this account and I asked the group what do we learn from these 2 people about waiting.

Here are some of the things they said:

- Waiting teaches us to stay with our convictions
- Waiting helps us get our priorities right – we have to push away what isn’t important
- Waiting teaches us perseverance and patience. We have to simply trust that the promise will come.
- Waiting on God like Simeon and Anna, means allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us; so we take note of the nudges – do that now; go and see that person today.

It’s great what comes out of those discussions – I love it!

One or two other observations about the waiting process:

Firstly, God is not in a hurry. 

We live in a very impatient culture that wants everything now. We hate waiting for things to happen. But this time of year in our country teaches us something very important – we can’t hurry spring. I’m longing for the daffodils and even more those long light evenings. But nature is not in a hurry – and neither is God.

Secondly, waiting is not a waste of time. 

It isn’t necessarily inactive. Years ago I read this: “When you’re waiting you are not doing nothing. You’re doing the most important something there is, you’re allowing your soul to grow up – you’re becoming what God created you to be”. (Sue Monk Kidd: When the heart waits). Waiting matures us.

Thirdly, waiting is open-ended. 

As far as we understand, Simeon and Anna did not know exactly how they would recognize the Messiah when he came; they had to wait for the nudge of the Holy Spirit. Those who had got it all worked out at the time didn’t recognize him when he came, because they were too sure they knew what they were waiting for. To wait like this, open-endedly, is not an easy way to live, because we are not in control, we have to let go of our ideas.

Conclusion

If we want to know what direction the Lord wants us to go in and that applies to us as a church, what we should do, what he is calling us to be, we are going to have to learn to wait and listen. So let’s learn together how to wait attentively, to listen expectantly for the nudge of the Holy Spirit.

- Sue Kiernan

Sermon for Advent 4 2016 - The Virgin Mary

Sermon for Advent 4 2016

This is the sermon from last Sunday, slightly edited to make it more readable!

Through Advent we have been anticipating an event that is often described using the very technical name of The Incarnation. As my friend Bob once observed, most people when they hear the word ‘incarnation’ are immediately reminded of how they used to eat tinned fruit in the 1970s.

OK – I’ll get my coat…

Today on the fourth Sunday of Advent, we particularly focus on the person and role of Mary, the mother of Jesus in that unfolding story. And it's not easy - Mary has become the church equivalent of a political football over the centuries as theologians and clergy tried to describe her place in the Christian story.

In Roman Catholicism, Mary has a very high and exalted place. She is described as the Queen of Heaven, the Mother of God (we’ll come back to that one, btw), she is described as having been immaculately conceived – without the taint of original sin (our human nature), perpetually a virgin – never having a sexual relationship with her husband, and they also believe and celebrate that she was assumed bodily into heaven. And as you will probably know, Catholics use prayers devoted to her in order to seek her intercession to God. Most well know is the ‘hail Mary’, which quotes the words of the angel Gabriel when he comes to tell Mary that she will bear a child – what we call the Annunciation. Similarly, in the Orthodox churches of Greece and Russia, not all of these doctrines are expressed in quite the same way, but Mary is still held in very high esteem.

Meanwhile, in protestant churches Mary often occupies very little attention outside the readings we use at Christmas. She is pretty much overlooked apart from that.

For Anglicans, as always we are somewhere in between. Back in 1662 the Book of Common Prayer, heavily influenced by Protestant thinking, just had special days in the calendar for events in Mary’s life that are recorded in the Bible and no further. The Annunciation, the visit of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, Christmas etc.

Later, especially in the 19^th century when more Anglicans became influenced by Catholic traditions, some churches started to mark more festivals. So much so that our current calendar is a change from the one we had in the Alternative Service Book published in 1980. Then we marked Mary on Sep 8 – traditionally the feast day marking her birth. Now we do that on August 15, when the Catholic Church celebrates her being assumed into heaven.

In some Church of England churches Mary is still low profile, whereas in others more ceremony takes place on her behalf. I have even heard of Anglican churches processing with statues, casting flower petals and making a great spectacle of it all.

So what do we make of all of this? Should we go 'Catholic' or 'Protestant', or is there another option? I'd like to suggest that there is.

What John's gospel describes as the Word becoming flesh – God coming amongst us as a human caused fierce debate for over 400 years after the time of the Bible. If you think present controversies about sexuality and gender are going on a bit, we haven't seen anything yet! Jesus fully God and fully human was so difficult to describe accurately, and yet was so vital. Why? Because the early church had a very simple way of describing God's saving action in history: "He became what we are that we might become what he is." And it's important to describe him becoming what we are correctly, otherwise it goes wrong - a bit like putting the wrong number in a mathematical equation. 

So here's my take on Mary.

1. Mary wasn’t some kind of angelic being.

Part of the point is that Jesus genuinely became like us – so it seems to me that it is necessary that Mary is an ordinary girl. If Jesus’ mother is completely different to us – unusual birth, unusual death, etc– then has Jesus really become one of us? I’ve always thought there was something strange about that. Jesus must be born of a real human being like us, or God hasn't really entered this world properly.

And why can’t she have other children? The Bible refers to brothers and sisters, although they are explained as cousins in traditions that hold she was ever-virgin. What does it say to the rest of us if even a sexual relationship with her own husband is off-limits? 

I had a friend who was brought up in Ireland as a Catholic. She once described how she had been taught that Mary was the example of motherhood to aspire to; the problem was that no mother was ever-virgin, and neither could they have a child so special. She talked about it as being set up to fail by the person teaching her.

2. Mary can’t be discarded – she’s a strong character

Protestants, on the other hand, often make Mary a bit part, subserviently doing what God asked of her at the relevant moment and then conveniently disappearing from history. But consider these stories:

The Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) - Mary's song when she discovers she will have a child. The mighty toppled, the rich brought low, the humble and poor exalted. That sounds more like the slogans of a protest for social justice than a meek and mild subservient girl.

The wedding at Cana (John 2:1-12). Mary isn't put off by Jesus' initial response of 'what is this to do with us', and makes him respond by pointing the servants his way.

Who are my mother and brothers (Matthew 12:46-50) Mary and the family turn up, as Jesus has been away with his followers. He has to account for that, by explaining that he is there for all people

At the foot of the cross (John 19:25) What a terrible anguish it must have been for any mother to see their son crucified. And yet she is there.

Praying with the disciples (Acts 1:14) Jesus' followers are meeting behind closed doors, for fear of being caught, yet Mary is there praying with them.

3. Mary is an example to us all

...but not the kind of example that spooked my friend.

Remember I said we’d come back to ‘mother of God’? In the ancient church, the word they used was 'theotokos', which literally means bearer of God. I think that’s a much more helpful term to reflect on and it’s more inclusive. No-one – Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox etc can object to that, as all those varied and different traditions hold to the belief that in Mary’s womb was God incarnate. She carries God in her own body. 

And here’s the exciting bit. Regardless of our biological ability to have children, or even our gender, we can all follow her example to be bearers of God. Not in the same way, but in a very real way. The events of Pentecost moved the focus from God being in the world specifically in one person to being in the world by his Holy Spirit in all who receive him. So each of us who have received that spirit are bearers of God too.

Different people will have different opinions about the formal beliefs about Mary. Perhaps we need to focus more on Mary’s example.

·       Her faithfulness to God’s call

·       Her strength in speaking out against the oppression of her people

·       Her courage in following Jesus even to the hardest place.

And perhaps most of all in following her example to bear God within ourselves, so that all may know the good news of his coming.

Mike Peatman