"IS THIS STUFF TRUE?"

“IS THIS STUFF TRUE?”

            I preached at Hillside Presbyterian Church yesterday as part of “B” team ministers all over the country preaching on the Sunday after Christmas, known as the First Sunday After Christmas.  I used the Epiphany text in Luke 2, where two old people, Anna and Simeon, are struck by lightning when Mary and Joseph bring the baby Jesus to the Temple to be dedicated to God.  Mary and Joseph have also come so that Mary can be cleansed from the “unclean” blood of the birth of Jesus. 

            Jewish law required that women giving birth go through a ritual of purification because all the blood flowing in childbirth has made them unclean.  From a literary point of view, we know that this is at least 33 days after the birth of Jesus, because the law required that.  If Jesus had been a girl (and that would have really changed things, wouldn’t it!), Mary would have had to wait 66 days to come for purification, meaning that the uncleanliness of women was much deeper than the uncleanliness of men.  That same old song of inequity continues to the present day.

            They also come to dedicate Jesus to God, but they do not intend to leave Jesus to be raised in the Temple, as Hannah did with her Samuel (I Samuel 1).   The law requires that they buy a sheep from the Temple and sacrifice it to God there.  That will satisfy the requirement.  Luke’s story tells us that they buy two birds instead, a sign that they are poor and have very little money.  While they are going through this process, lightning strikes two old people who are in the Temple that day:  Anna and Simeon.  Simeon’s story comes first, and he has been waiting to see the Messiah.  He takes the baby Jesus in his arms and blesses him and gives thanks that he has been allowed to see the Messiah: “our eyes have seen Your salvation.”  He has several surprising parts in his prophecy about this baby:  he will offend many people;  he will reveal the hearts of many; and perhaps most surprising of all in this center of Judaism:  this baby will be a light to the Gentiles, to the unclean ones.  He closes out his prophecy with an acknowledgment of the price of this baby’s witness – a sword will pierce the heart of his mother.

            Also in the Temple that day is an aged, widow woman named Anna.  Anna is marginalized in several ways:  she is a woman;  she is old;  she is a widow.  Because she lives at the margins, she is able to see who this baby is, and she begins to tell everybody she meets about this message from God.   Luke’s story lifts her up as the first named evangelist in his Gospel.  The shepherds in the fields precede her in sharing the story of Jesus, but none of them are named.  It is highly unusual for women to be named in the Bible, but here she is:  Anna the evangelist.

            As we stand on the cusp of a new year, rounding out Christmas and heading for 2019, let us remember these two old folks who are the first named people to recognize this revelation from God.  We long for this story to be true – whether the details are exactly like this does not matter as much as the central theme:  at the heart of the universe is the power of love and justice and equity, at the heart of our lives are love and justice and mercy.  Is this true?  Most of us do not experience it as true, so we tend to box up the Christmas story and put it back in the attic, just like we do the decorations.  At best it is a nice diversion from this crazy world.  At worst, it is sentimental slop which we use to sell a lot of products.  And we do live in a crazy and chaotic world!  The stock market seems to be correcting and perhaps collapsing.  The Trump presidency IS collapsing, and we wonder what is next:  will Trump be indicted?  Will he resign?  Will he start a war overseas as a diversion?  Will he encourage a civil war here in order to hold on to the presidency?  We all tremble at these prospects, but we know that something is coming in this year.

            In the midst of this kind of world, we are asked to hear this Christmas story again and keep it with us.  Let us have hearts to see as Simeon did, and let our hearts dance, as did Anna’s, so that we too can share this good news of love and justice and equity.  Let us too be evangelists of this view of the new reality in the world.  I’ll close with my final Howard Thurman poem from his book on Christmas (“The Mood of Christmas”):

“Christmas Is the Season of the Heart”

The Time of Forgiveness for injuries past,

The Sacrament of sharing without balancing the deed,

The Moment of remembrance of graces forgotten,

The Poem of joy making light the spirit,

The Sense of renewal restoring the soul,

The Day of thanksgiving for the goodness of God,

CHRISTMAS IS THE SEASON OF THE HEART.