1 January 2006

Rev. Dr. Duncan D. Newcomer

Church of the Redeemer

New Haven, Conn.

Scripture: Luke 2: 21-32

Simeon and Anna

If there ever is a still point for us in our Christian religion, it’s candlelight—silent night Christmas Eve.  If there is for us a time when time holds almost still it is that breathless moment.  In our visual image a halo of light backdrops a motionless moment.  On Christmas Eve for a moment everybody is a meditator!  It’s the one part of Christian Christmas that a Buddhist could feel at home in.

In our spiritual life we have a few somewhat similar stand-still moments.  When we take the bread and the wine in communion, even with intinction, we sit in stillness.  There’s that old saying which pipe smokers are fond of:  “sometimes I just sit and think and sometimes I just sit.”

Another such time of stillness, less well recognized, in our religion is at a funeral service when a minister may say the prayer-like words of Simeon we heard today in scripture.

Called the “Nunc Dimitis,” the first words in Latin for the old man with the Holy Spirit upon him saying, “now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace…”  Simeon shows us how to let go, how to let go in peace.  There is obvious spiritual wisdom in allowing the moment of fulfillment “have its way” with you.  When there is nothing more to do or can be done, but only “let it be.”  The Indian chief in the movie “Little Big Man” has such a poised and spiritual moment when he lies down on a hillside and says, “today is a good day to die.”

But that still moment doesn’t last for the living.  Rapid-fire moments return, and return quickly.  The “theological co-incidence” between our religion and our culture shows up again in eight days:  not only was there great busyness for us, and for Mary and Joseph, before Christmas Eve, there is great busyness for us and for Mary and Joseph after Christmas Eve.

Now only two of the four Gospels deal with the birth of Jesus.  One, Matthew, has the wise men come and then the Holy Family escapes rapidly to Egypt until King Herod dies;  and in Luke eight days go by and then Jesus is circumcised and taken up to the temple in Jerusalem for the holy legal requirements, Mary’s rituals and the sacrifice of two turtle doves.

Whatever time we had for imagination and innocence seems over.  And with action and activity come burdens and anxiety.

Within eight days of the shepherds leaving in Luke or the wise men leaving in Matthew, stuff begins to happen again, just like with us!

Sometimes the future seems a long way off.  Other times it seems to rush in like a flood.  They say “be careful what you wish for, it just might come!”

If we spent four weeks in Advent wishing and waiting for the event, Emmanuel, God-with-us, we’d better be careful and watch out, because “God with us” is not just a still-point moment.  God-with-us is action-and-passion history.

I never really “got” the wisdom of the last line in “Gone with the Wind,” where the stoic loser, Scarlett O’Hara,” says “tomorrow’s another day.”  That’s not a solution, that’s the problem!  Tomorrow is another day with all the anxieties and uncertainties of choices and responsibilities.

I understood better the stopping of time in the movie “Ground Hog Day” when tomorrow was not another day, tomorrow was yesterday!  Because whatever the future brings us it brings us uncertainty.  We don’t really know how we are going to get there from here—get to the future, and we—more—don’t know how it’s going to turn out.

Now you may like the leap of faith.  And actually that was a theological idea before it was a movie title and I used to really like Soren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth century Danish theologian who came up with this bright, existential idea of the leap of faith.  Reading Hegel in a little traditional, totally predictable Danish village, I might have wanted to go bezeerk a little myself (well actually I did!)  But Kierkegaard made some really dumb choices and some truly pathological leaps.  And now we have Presidents making leaps of faith all the time!

You know, I’ve encouraged the Search Committee here to make a leap of faith in their choices.  But what if they do?  And what if it’s the “wrong” leap?

Full of faith, but only faith.  Or how about the church budget?  Now there’s a place for a leap of faith, no?!  But what if we fall short?

We have, of course, real heart-stopping, heart-rending choices that come to us with the future.  One of you said to me last week, how do you like being in limbo?  In other words, recognizing my own future is up for grabs.  Well, it could be a high anxiety time for everyone.  And it is an odd time.  We look backwards to write annual reports.  It’s almost tedious and boring to know how it all turned out—last year.  We look forward to make big choices and it’s almost terrifying and burdensome to not know how it will all turn out.

Enter Simeon and Anna.  Simeon the old man who had the Holy Spirit upon him, and Anna who in the next verse, a prophetess, is a wild and eccentric woman if there ever was one.  We are just on the edges of the occult in this Bible passage.  These two ancients are straight out of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings—actually vice versa—those imaginations come out of the Bible!  And they serve the accidental function of fortune tellers and they are providential.  Simeon sees that this is Christ and Christ is the future.  Blessing givers in a coincidental meeting arranged by the intersection of the future and the Holy Spirit.  And therein, Scarlett, is our salvation and our way of faith into and through the uncertainties and burdens of the future:  Holy Spirit, accidents, coincidence, providence.

Mary and Joseph did not go up to the temple to meet these two people at all.  They went up to the temple to do their religious duty, to sacrifice two birds, and to fulfill the old laws of feminine sanctification.  They bump into Simeon and Anna bumps into them.

We are attracted to this kind of intervention especially as we go into New Year’s from Christmas.  Fortune cookies, fortune tellers, throwing the I Ching, consulting Celtic Runes, making resolutions (talk about leaps of faith!) and pretending that this year’s “to do” list is more real than last year’s.  We approach superstition as we seek the Holy Spirit.

Listen to what we can hope for in faith!  About Simeon who knew who Jesus was, who told all, and could die.  “And inspired by the Spirit, he came into the temple…” (vs. 27).  Now let us add to the seeming “magic” of this coincidental meeting the mystery of what he lives for and can see:  he lives for Christ and can see him when he comes.  And Christ is the future of humanity. 

We can live that way!  Christians can be at least as exotic as Tibetan Buddhists who look for the Dalai Lama and then find him!  We can live for seeing Christ and can live differently and then die when we have.  We don’t have to know how anything turns out if that kind of devotion is our goal.  (We could in fact worry less about how we will judge the outcome of our choices and more how we will be judged by the outcome and by God.  We could try replacing our worry over results with worrying over whether God will like what we do, and choose.)

Listen to vs. 38:  “And coming up at that very hour, she [Anna] gave thanks to God, and spoke of him [Jesus] to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”  At that very hour!  She’s the first Christian preacher!

We can live this way.  The shorthand code reminder could be something like “I follow the spirit.”  “I am looking to see Christ.”  “And I’m pretty random about it.”  It certainly beats, “tomorrow is another day,” or “what will be will be.”

Think of Jonathan Edwards:  got kicked out of his “primo” church in Northampton, went to work in the western frontier as a missionary to Indians.  Landed a great job—which he said he wasn’t worthy of—as the President of Princeton, and then died showing his community the value of the smallpox vaccination.   Was he happy he had job security?  Did his searchers feel successfully?  Did he solve Princeton’s budget problems?  Or did he just look for Christ until he was found?

I pray that Simeon and Anna and Christ, in the Holy Spirit, are with us now, now and forever.  And I pray we can live through the burdens and the choices of our futures in such a still faith, until we need look no longer.

Amen.