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 Candlemas, 29 Jan 2017

MORECAMBE PARISH CHURCH 29 JAN 2017

LUKE 2: 22 – 40 CANDLEMAS


Introduction

Can you guess who I’m talking about? ‘They are becoming a strain on public services’, ‘they are guilty of bed- blocking’. Oh and by the way, ‘the church is full of them’!

It is true that we are becoming a nation of older people!

There are more people aged over 60 now in the UK than there are under 18 years old. Over half a million are over 90! My mother is among them – she was 90 just over a week ago.

So have we outgrown our usefulness? Are we just a nuisance? I include myself - as I’m one of the post war baby boomers that our government is so afraid is going to push our country’s resources over the edge.


The old in the Christmas story

This is very different from Jesus’ day when the average life span was 34. So the fact that there are there are some very old people in the scripture we’ve had read to us is intersting. In fact the whole Advent and Christmas story is about old people whom God expected to prepare for, and be changed by, something very new.

At the beginning of the story in Luke are an elderly couple – Zechariah and Elizabeth. They are given the task of bearing a child to herald the coming of Messiah – John the Baptist.


Then the Shepherds - they were not children in teatowels, not if it meant being out in the fields overnight.

The Wise Men would have been old, otherwise in their culture they would not have been called wise.

According to legend, Joseph was old. He certainly seems to have departed this life by the time Jesus is 30.

And lastly, at the conclusion of this season of Epiphany, we have our 2 elderly characters for today – Simeon and Anna.

So it seems God has not finished with us oldies yet! In fact we are to be “the midwives of the new thing God is doing” ¹ , getting alongside the younger generation and enabling the birthing of what God wants to do next.

Simeon and Anna by Jan Van't Hoff

Simeon

Let’s see if we can discover how these two old folks did that. First Simeon:

He was “righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.” What does that mean? Well I’m sure it didn’t mean (put hands together and look pious!) It did not mean he was so religious he was no earthly good.

It’s a bit like this:² 

Simeon, I think, was the sort of man you wanted to be with, to hear talk about the God he prayed to, because his faith was infectious; he made your heart sing. Know some older people like that?

And then v 27 Simeon was sensitive to the Spirit. “Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came in to the Temple”. He was so used to saying when he woke up in the morning, “will it be today Lord that I’ll see what you’ve promised?” that he not only went to the Temple that day at the right time, but amongst the crowds of people who would be there, he spotted the ones God had chosen. When the parents brought in the child Jesus Simeon recognised him and took him in his arms.

What do you think was in his heart as he looked at that Child? Joy, gratitude, “at last”! And humility – in the opening words of his prayer you sense him saying: how could I have been the one to see this promise of the ages fulfilled? I can die happy now!

Simeon was also open-hearted to everyone. He didn’t see God’s plan as only for his own nation, the Jews. He saw the responsibility of God’s people to welcome the Gentiles – everyone else in the world; he saw that God loves all nations, all peoples, equally and that his Messiah who we know as Jesus, would open the gates of heaven to all.

Lastly, Simeon saw that living generously, open-heartedly like that would bring opposition from those who wanted to keep God for themselves. Those who were the religious elite would not take kindly to having their intensions and pretensions, their petty-mindedness and mean-spiritedness revealed. They would eventually crucify the One who lived like this. And this would mean immense suffering for his mother. Simeon saw it all and did not flinch from saying it as it was.

Are we older people like Simeon?

- the sort of people others want to be with, to hear talk about the God we pray to?
- the sort of people who are sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit so we go where he wants, when he wants?
- the sort of people who welcome everyone
- the sort of people who do not flinch at the suffering that comes as a result of following our Crucified Lord?


Anna

And then there’s Anna. We may not know Simeon’s age but we do know Anna’s. She was exceptionally old for that time in history, 84!

She’d been waiting a long time for God’s promise to Israel to be fulfilled. She wasn’t looking backward, she was looking forward to his redemption (v 38). It’s not clear whether, when it says ‘she never left the Temple’, it meant she lived there. Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem was a vast complex – maybe she did have a room there. But she didn’t spend time feeling sorry for herself in her old age.

This was one extraordinary woman. She not only prayed, but she fasted. She took prayer very seriously – you have to if you are prepared to fast as well. It’s not easy fasting, especially when you are older, but there are different ways of doing it.

I was talking to someone from another church, not in Morecambe, the other day and they are fasting for several weeks so that they can pray in a more concentrated way for their community.

It doesn’t mean for them that they abstain from food altogether, but they are eating more simply, and that is helping them listen for what God has called them to do at this time.

Another thing about Anna is that she talked to everybody she met about: “this Child”. She had learned while she spent time in the presence of God praying, to articulate her faith.

Many of us find that difficult – but as we get older and don’t care quite so much what other people think, perhaps we can spend more time in praying and thinking and reading about what aspects of the message will make sense to the people we know so that we can share it more meaningfully.


Conclusion

So let’s believe God has not finished with us oldies yet! We are called with Simeon and Anna to be ready, waiting, available, open to being the midwives of the new thing God is doing, enabling the birthing of what God wants to do next.


- Sue Kiernan


Notes:


1 John Bell

2 Illustration taken from Frederick Buechner