Saint Luke 2:22-40
Whenever I go into a home where I know the couple to be grandparents I always look for one picture. It never fails, try it. Somewhere on the mantle or framed on a wall there is a picture of one of the grandparents holding one of their grandchildren while the other looks on and smiles.
Sometimes, when there are more than three generations present I can find a picture of a great-grandparent holding the baby.
You can see this at baptisms when the pictures are being take and the baby is passed around the relatives like a football at Northwestern or Ohio State game. Maybe this is because as Mary Ann Evans who, because of the times in which she lived, is better known as George Eliot observed, “We older human beings feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in earth or sky.”1
There is a strong sense of this in today’s gospel where
“Seemingly by chance, Mary and Joseph bumped into an old man named Simeon, and then a woman named Anna who had been a widow for decades. The aged inevitably turn and gaze at an infant, as if the chances to glimpse such precious beauty are numbered.”2
It leaves one to wonder what that picture would have looked like.
In only there had been a photographer there that day! Imagine a close up: Simeon’s hands, gnarled with arthritis, age spots, boney fingers gently cradling the infant’s head; eyes meeting; smile unfolding across the wise elder’s face – a beautiful exchange under any circumstances, made even more wonderous because of those involved and the Spirit’s presence guiding them all.
This is a picture of generations coming together. “Past, present, and future meet in one intimate, brief moment in the temple.”3
Anna and Simeon had been waiting for this moment for a very long time. We don’t know how old Simeon is but Anna is one of the few people in the New Testament who has her age mentioned in exact years, she’s 84.
They have been hanging around the temple in what must have seemed to them a perpetual waiting room. There must have been moments in their lives when they thought they couldn’t wait any longer.
It has to be a little like it is for us as we wait for our group to be named so that we can get the vaccine. Tell us where we need to go and what time to be there! The Doctor’s office? Walgreen’s? CVS? The sushi counter at the 7/11? Tell us where we need to be and we’ll be there.
Frustrating as this whole waiting business is for us Anna and Simeon didn’t have the faintest notion about who to see, where to go, or what to do. So they waited in the temple and prayed.
Until a couple walked in, Mary and Joseph, just fulfilling the law. It is then that Simeon and Anna “see things about the baby that perhaps even the baby’s parents ... can’t see. By the grace of God, they publically, hopefully testify about tomorrow. Those with many years behind them are able to perceptively see all the way into the distant future.”4
What they see is a mixed bag. This child will upset the apple cart of those who thought they had it all together. This child will grow up to be a man who does not roll over in the face of those who think they are the absolute authority over everything and everybody. This tenacity may bring him to the point where it costs him his life and breaks his mother’s heart.
Yet, the two prophets continue, those who allow themselves to be touched be him will know a peace that carries them to the end of their days.
An unfortunate consequence of the first line of Simeon’s chant: “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, According to Your word...”5 is that we have made it into his swan song. We have used it – I have used it – as if it were sung with his dying breath.
That is sometimes why it is sung when the casket is recessed down the aisle at the conclusion of a funeral sermon. Pastor McGuire and I always used to do that with his lush baritone lofting over the congregation like a sad saxophone. It was beautiful. It was meaningful. It was touching.
But what if those weren’t the last notes Simeon and Anna ever sung? What if it was not of not only about an end to their waiting but a song about new beginnings? What if they marched out of the temple arm and arm, into the streets singing that they their eyes had seen their salvation and the light for all people?
Perhaps they shared a song of joy, pure joy.
Perhaps, as we stand on the verge of a new year after one that has been very bad indeed we too can glimpse some joy. It won’t be a joy of our own devising.
It is a joy that comes when prayers have been heard and answered, when hope is fulfilled, and dreams are made reality. It is a joy that can only come as a gift of God, not something of our making. Joy comes to us as a baby, a child given to us, with our face. God with us. God come to stand beside us and be for us.6
That is the picture we have before us in the faces of Simeon and Anna looking at the baby as his parents watch in wonder.
It’s a great picture to have in our hearts. “For now,” with all that we have been through this year, “it is good to pause and admire the picture Luke offers, and, like Simeon and Anna, to give God our praise.”7
Don’t you think?
__________
1. Shirley Isherwood, Chris Molan, and George Eliot, Silas Marner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
2. James D Howell, “What Can We Say? December 27 1st of Christmas” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notations (blog) (Myers Park United Methodist Church, July 1, 2020), http://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.
3. Julie Peeples, “Luke 2:22-40. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 131-133.
4. William H Willamon, “Two Old Prophets and a Baby,” Pulpit Resource 48, no. 4 (2020): pp. 39-41.
5. Saint Luke 2:29. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]
6. William H Willamon, “The Fullness of Time,” Pulpit Resource 30, no. 4 (2002): pp. 59-61.
7. Peepers, loc.cit.
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