First Sunday After Christmas
Speaking of
Christmas songs, there is this one song that I always hear at least a few times
during the months leading up to Christmas.
It’s not a funny song, but it makes me chuckle to myself every time I
hear it. I laugh because, when it is
played, I think, “Somewhere out there, there are people like me arguing about over
this song.” The song is “Mary Did You
know?” A song that essentially asks
Mary, the mother of Jesus, if she knew that her baby boy would grow up to be
the Savior of the world.
Now, I want
to make it clear: I think it’s a great song; it’s a pretty song, it’s a touching
song, and I think we’ve even had it sung for us in worship before. But I also know the debate it stirs because
I’ve had this debate in my own head. On
the one hand, of course she knew! If you
were here last Sunday morning, we heard from the first chapter of Luke, where
the Angel Gabriel visits her and tells her that she is going to give birth to
the Son of God. Christmas Eve, we heard
how shepherds told them what their angels said.
Now this morning, two prophets tell her about her baby boy. Mary did you know? Of course she knew! Read your Bible.
On the other
hand, if you’re familiar with the song, you know that this is not the only
question that was posed to Mary. The way
the song goes is, Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day do things
like walk on water and save our sons and daughters. And if you’ll recall from last Sunday
morning, Gabriel didn’t say anything about things like that. She heard from some shepherds on the night
Jesus was born that he would be the Messiah or something, but you know
shepherds. Best just to take the things
they say and ponder them in your heart. And
although these prophets today proclaim the greatness of Jesus, they’re not
terribly specific.
So did Mary
know? She knew some. She knew enough. She knew to keep on the lookout because God
was up to something and this child was in the middle of it. And most days, that’s all any of us really
need to know: God is up to something in this world and in us, and we need to
learn to see it in one another.
As I was
preparing for this message, I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before: I
noticed how intergenerational this encounter was. Between baby Jesus, his parents, and Simeon
and Anna, there are three generations of people represented in this story. I mention this because, as I see it, this
story teaches us different things as a church depending on where we fall,
generationally.
I have had
elders confide in me that they think, what our church needs most, is more young
people; that we ought to be investing our time, and energy, and even our money
into attracting and caring for the young people in our community. I have had other elders confide in me that
they think, what our church needs most, is to take better care of our older
population; that we ought to be investing our time, and energy, and even our money
into attracting and caring for the elderly in our community. I think the Bible story before us today
points out that they’re all right. Our
church is better off when everyone is here; when all generations are welcomed
and cared for. I don’t just make sure my
kids are at church every Sunday because I know they need church; I make sure
they’re here because I know the church needs them too.
Last Monday
ranked among my favorite Christmases ever.
A lot of things went right at my house on Christmas Day. One of the best parts for me was having a
three-year-old around. It’s been a while
since I had a three-year-old over for Christmas; if you have the means, I
highly recommend it. He’s old enough to
get the excitement of it all. I’m not
saying that the rest of us don’t get excited for Christmas, but you can’t
compete with the level of excitement that a three-year-old brings. A three-year-old doesn’t quite know where
reality leaves off and their imagination takes over, so everything is already
magical. A three-year-old is completely
on board with getting presents, even though it’s the birthday of Jesus; to a
three-year-old a mystical creature with flying reindeer makes complete sense;
and he was pumped for it all. So his
excitement for Christmas morning made it more fun for the rest of us, less
excitable people.
We need that
kind of excitement in our church: children show us things that we may not
remember to notice. Children remind us
that we have reason to be joyful.
Children remind us that we have hope; that God has a plan for us, for
our church, and for our world. In our
Scripture lesson today, baby Jesus doesn’t say a word because he doesn’t have
to: he is, just in his little, baby self, the joy of new life and of new
beginnings; he is the future. He is also
the Messiah and the Savior of the world—we don’t need to put that kind of
responsibility on our children—but we can certainly see in them the work that
God will certainly do through them in their lifetimes. But more on that in a moment.
Before we
get there, I want us to look at the next oldest generation in this story. Mary and Joseph don’t really have a very large
role in our lesson today, but generationally, they have a lot to teach us and
remind us of. They come to the temple to
fulfill a couple of religious obligations; neither of which will likely make much
sense to us, and that’s okay; they may not have made much sense to them either. In the Law of Moses, bodily fluids were seen
as “ceremonially unclean.” If the stuff
inside your body comes out of your body, it makes the things around it dirty
both physically and spiritually. So you
can imagine how Moses felt about the mess that childbirth makes. So one of the obligations they were at the
temple to fulfill was to make an offering to make Mary “clean” again. Yes, Mary the mother of Jesus the Messiah and
Savior of the world, was considered “unclean” under Mosaic Law; but here they
were, doing their duty.
But this
trip to the temple had a secondary purpose: it was to commit, as the Law
required, their firstborn son to the Lord.
One might wonder, wouldn’t you commit all of your children to the
Lord? Of course you would, this was a
different sort of thing. This was a
reminder, a reminder of something awful.
When Moses gave this “committing of the firstborn” rule, he said that
when your firstborn asks what this is about, say, “By strength of hand the Lord
brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery. When Pharaoh stubbornly
refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt,
from human firstborn to the firstborn of animals.” So Mary and Joseph also went to the temple
that day to celebrate how God killed all those people to help the Israelites
escape from Egypt. Not exactly a fun
celebration, but there they were, doing their religious duty.
I’m going to
let you in on a little secret, a secret I’ve shared with my own children when
they’ve told me, on the occasional Sunday, that they don’t feel like going to
church: I told them, “Sometimes I don’t feel like going either.” The thing about religious duty is that it’s
meant to lead us to deepening faith.
Deepening faith is the goal, but religious duty is the process. Sometimes the Spirit meets us in the practice
of our religion and we experience ecstatic, joy-filled faith; and some days
we’re just putting in time. But it’s
those religious practices, even when it feels like work, that open the door for
the Spirit to make them so much more.
Mary and
Joseph went to the temple to fulfil obligations that we might find kind of
weird. But let’s not diminish the fact
that they were doing it anyway. Let’s
not diminish a faith that does its duty, even when it doesn’t quite make sense. Let’s not diminish a faith that is worked on
regularly, so that the power of God might meet it when the power of God chooses. We talk about our need to care for young
people in our church; we talk about our need to care for older folks as well;
but what about all those folks the middle?
What about the parents who know to do their duty; who know to wake up
teenagers in order to get them to the house of God? Hats off to the parents who know to model for
their children a faith that practices the religion even when they don’t feel
like it. We need that generation here
too.
But of
course, central to this story isn’t baby Jesus; this story isn’t centrally
about Mary and Joseph; this story is mostly about two old prophets. Dare I say it: these two older prophets are
the “greatest generation” in this story.
Occasionally, people will ask me, “What is a prophet?” It is a very good question because doesn’t
seem like we see prophets in the world today like we did in the Bible. It’s also a good question because, the Bible,
they come in all shapes and sizes: their messages and proclamations come in a
variety of forms; even the ways God calls them to be prophets don’t follow any
one pattern. All this has led me to look
at what the biblical prophets did have in common: simply put, they spoke what
God told them to speak. So by that
measure, the office of prophet is alive and well in the church; prophets are
around us every day. I’m a prophet. You’re a prophet. Whenever we speak a word to one another that
comes from God—whether it’s a word of healing and hope, or of correction and
rebuke—we are speaking as prophets. We
are all called, by the power of the Spirit, speak the Word of God, to be
prophets; but I’ve found that those words carry a bit more weight as we get
older.
When the
receptionist at my new eye doctor was getting my information, she asked me
where I worked. I told her, “Calvary
Presbyterian Church,” and she didn’t ask me how to spell it. I laughed and said, “Yours may be the only
profession, other than mine, that doesn’t need to have ‘Presbyterian’ spelled
for them.” The “presby” part of the word
means “elder.” “Presbyopia” literally
means “old eyes.” There’s a reason our
church’s leadership are called “elders.”
You don’t necessarily need to be old to be an elder, but it certainly
doesn’t hurt. Age brings experience; the
experience of practicing your religion even when you don’t feel like it. Age brings wisdom; the wisdom of doing the
work of faith, until it’s met by the Spirit.
Ironically, often I think that the older the eyes, the more they
see. Not literally, of course; but age
can bring a different sort of vision.
Our church needs this generation too.
We
need the Simeons and Annas in our church.
Those who are looking for and who can, by the Spirit, see what God is
doing in us. We need the energetic hope
that the young people bring to our church.
And we need the faithful hard work of everyone in between. Let us all, in every generation, remember our
part in what God is doing. May we each
take our part and celebrate in one another, the gift of God born in us as the
Body of Christ.
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