Walking Together

Luke 2:22-40

December 20, 2020 • Mount Pleasant UMC

It was many years ago, and for one of our anniversary trips, Cathy and I decided to go to Cumberland Gap, in the corner of Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. I love history and as a kid I had been fascinated by the story of Daniel Boone. I wanted to see the gap in the mountains that allowed him to bring people through, along the Wilderness Road, and settle in Kentucky, so we went and stayed for several days, hiking all over the area. One day, I had found a trail that went from the bottom of the gorge to the top of a nearby mountain. It didn’t look that long; how hard could it be? So first we ate at Shoney’s, a restaurant, by the way, I really miss. Anyway, we ate there and then we started out. And the hike, as you might imagine, was steeper and harder than I imagined. This was before my heart surgery, and though we knew I had some issues with my heart, we didn’t really understand the impact of those issues. As we went up, breathing got more challenging. But I wanted to keep going; I wanted to see what we could see from the top of the mountain. And it was wonderful. At the top, we had a beautiful view. But I can tell you that the journey was hard, and i would never have made it alone. Had I not had someone walking with me, I probably would have turned around and quit. But when someone walks by your side, you can face even the most challenging of circumstances.

We are nearing the end of Advent, the most challenging and unusual Advent I’ve ever been through. I’m sure it’s that way for most of you, too. I see the comments every Sunday that express a wish to be back together, and we will be, when we can do it safely. But regardless, Advent is coming to an end. This is the fourth Sunday of Advent, and just around the corner, so to speak, is the top of the mountain: Christmas and the birth of a baby boy. Advent is all about waiting, hoping, anticipating, and we can wait because we know the end is good. We can wait because we’re doing it together, even if we’re not physically together. And so, on this final Sunday of Advent, we turn to the story of a pair of faithful Jews who had been waiting—well, we don’t really know for how long, but they had both, in their own ways, been waiting for some time for God to keep his promises. Their names are Simeon and Anna; let’s hear their stories now.

So during this Advent season we have been talking about the people we welcome to our table, the ones we make room for. We’ve been focused on rediscovering the joy of community in the midst of a global pandemic that is challenging to our community.(Just as an aside, I want to say it’s okay to interact with each other in the chat during the service. That’s one way we can sort of connect during this season. I know if you’re watching on the TV that’s hard, but if you’re on a mobile device or computer, you can use the chat to discuss what you’re hearing. Community is vital, especially in these days when so much of our lives, including church, is virtual.)

So, we’ve talked about the ways we welcome the strangers, the outcasts and even those far away. But there’s another community we need even more, and that’s represented in our story by Simeon and Anna. If we know this story, we usually say their names in the same sentence, though they were not a couple. We don’t even know if they actually knew each other, though it’s likely they did since both of them spent a lot of time around the Temple. Luke tells us their stories back to back during one of the visits Mary and Joseph had to make to the Jerusalem Temple after Jesus’ birth. Luke also assumes you know the Jewish rituals involved here and moves rather quickly through them. The first one is when they took Jesus for his circumcision, eight days after his birth. Usually also at this time, a baby would be named, but we know that Jesus received his name even before he was born. The angel had told Mary and Joseph both to give the baby the name “Jesus” (Luke 1:31; Matthew 1:21), though it would have actually been Joseph’s responsibility to confirm that at his circumcision (2:21). Then, thirty-two days after the circumcision, they would have come back to the Temple to take care of two more pieces of business. First, Mary would have to make an offering for her purification, as I mentioned last week (2:22). Childbirth made a woman ritually unclean for forty days, which meant she really hadn’t been out of her house since the birth. Sort of like a quarantine or a lockdown! The other thing that happens at this point is the presentation of the firstborn. Early in Israel’s history, as an act of gratitude to God for rescuing them from slavery in Egypt, Israel offered every firstborn child to God. The parents would then present a sacrifice to, in essence, “buy him back.” This act declaring him to be part of the family of faith and “inducts” him into the faith of the larger community. (Kalas, Christmas from the Backside, pg. 66-67; Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pg. 51; Bock, Luke [IVP], pg. 58). In that setting, Joseph and Mary meet two elderly people who have been waiting for them—or, more accurately, waiting for Jesus.

I want you to get a sense of how Spirit-driven this whole incident is. The Temple complex at this time is about thirty-five acres (cf. Card 51), and it was busy and crowded most of the time. People were hustling about, busy doing what they needed to do. Picture a shopping mall in its heyday; there are lots of people. It sort of reminds me of a Christmas concert Cathy and I went to many years ago at Market Square Arena (and several of you have no idea what I’m talking about, so that tells you how long ago it was). I said, half-jokingly, “I wonder if we’ll see anyone we know.” And the words were barely out of my mouth when we came around the circle and ran into a friend from college. I’m sure we said something to the effect of, “What are the chances?” Well, that’s sort of what happens here in the Temple, only Simeon and Mary and Joseph didn’t know each other before. Simeon, you see, has been praying, and God has told him he won’t die until he has seen the Messiah. He knows this in the depths of his soul, and while we always picture him as an old man, Luke doesn’t actually tell us Simeon’s age. But he has literally staked his life on the hope and the promise that things are about to change. The old way is passing away; a new way is arriving.

So Simeon sees Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus and he knows who they are. He then holds the child and sings a blessing over him; it is, in fact the last song in the book of Luke (Card 51). And then Simeon speaks some hard words; one author has said Simeon would probably have rather bitten his tongue than speak these words to these new parents (Card 52), but speak them he does, directed by the Holy Spirit. He prophesies that the child will cause the falling and rising of many in Israel; he will be disruptive to the old way of doing things. And then those penetrating, powerful words that Mary, I’m sure, never forget: “A sword will pierce your own soul too” (2:35). Thirty-three years later, as Jesus was dying on the cross and her mother’s heart was broken, did she hear again the words of Simeon in her heart and mind? That day may not have pierced her with a literal sword, but the pain in her heart had to be more than we could imagine as she watched her son die for the sins of the human race. Simeon told her it would be so.

No sooner is that encounter over than these parents who probably just want to get done what they need to get done—run into another Spirit-driven person, an elderly woman named Anna. Again, we’re not sure how old Anna is, and part of that is due to a translation problem. We know she was married for seven years, but then verse 37 either says she was widowed until she was 84 (which is what the NIV says) or it says she was widowed for 84 years. Scholars are divided. Either way, she’s up there in years and she has taken up residence in the Temple. We don’t know exactly what her role there was, though Luke tells us she never quit worshipping by fasting and praying. It made me think of the medieval practice in England of churches who had someone who bound themselves to a church to pray for it day and night. Most often, they would be enclosed permanently in a small room and their only job was to pray for the church and its people. What most pastors would’t give for someone to pray for the church day and night! That’s the sort of person Anna is, extremely sensitive to the moving and the work of the Holy Spirit. Interestingly, Luke doesn’t tell us anything she says (cf. Card 52), but she is another sign, right there in the Temple court, that God is up to something in this baby.

And here’s the critical point I want us to see this morning, something Luke takes great pains to point out. Joseph and Mary, Simeon and Anna, are all there at the Temple because of their faithfulness to God and their desire to do what God requires. Of the nine times Luke mentions “the law” (meaning the Jewish law) in his Gospel, five of them are in this passage (cf. Card 51). Mary and Joseph are at the Temple to fulfill the law so that they can be full participants in the community of faith, and while the old ways of “the law” are passing away through the person of this baby, the importance of and need for community is not. Every bit as much as Mary and Joseph, we need the community of the people of God to be able to faithfully live the life the baby of Bethlehem calls us to.

There are undoubtedly many things with we have learned in this crazy year, and I’m sure analysts and historians will be sorting it all out for many years to come. But I believe one of the biggest things we have learned is that our sense of community is broken. Now, the pandemic did not break our national community; that was already broken and has been broken for quite some time. But the pandemic has brought the brokenness out into the open. As have the issues surrounding the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing racial struggles. I’ve been reading a book written nearly 100 years ago, a book by an advisor of Martin Luther King, Jr., Howard Thurman, and while I don’t agree theologically with Thurman on several things, I couldn’t help but note that his description of the struggle with racism in his time could have been written today. It’s because of broken community; it’s failing to love our neighbor. The pandemic didn’t cause any of this, but the pandemic has brought it all painfully out into the open.

The brokenness isn’t just in the culture at large. It’s in the church as well. Every week, pastors gather in our chapel for prayer, and we usually have 10-15 churches represented. I think there are about that many that gather in the northern end of town to pray, too. We’ll have 20 or 25 churches represented at our monthly ministerial association meetings, and I celebrate that. I am thankful for the unity and the camaraderie God has brought among pastors and churches here in Vigo County, for the larger community that exists. But I also grieve that there are so many churches missing. I grieve when I hear of pastors who won’t pray with so-and-so or who won’t enter the building of “that” denomination. This past summer, you remember, several churches got together to put on an event at the fairgrounds, and a few weeks out from that, I learned that a church in town (and I don’t know who) had said they wouldn’t be a part of it if “those Methodists” were going to be there. I approached Billy Joe Henry, who was heading the event up, and offered to drop out if we were causing problems. He told me, in his way, that the problem is those who want to divide. But it’s just a reminder that the beloved community, the community Jesus came and lived and died for, is broken, as broken as the rest of the world. As I reminded you this fall, Jesus’ prayer for the church to be one hasn’t yet been answered.

The world is broken. The church is broken. And yet, we need community. We crave community. The baby of Bethlehem calls us to community. As we’ve seen throughout Advent, even in his birth, he was bringing people together. Shepherds and outcasts, wise men from the east come alongside a day laborer and his wife. As he grew, he continued to bring people together. He modeled community when he asked twelve men to be his disciples, and even on the last night he spent with them before his crucifixion, he was reminding them that they would need each other. When Peter promises that he will never turn his back on Jesus, Jesus tells him he knows that’s not true. “You will deny me tonight,” he tells Peter, but he also knows Peter will come back. And he tells Peter—when you do, strengthen your brothers. Come back together, strengthen each other. You need each other (cf. Luke 22:32). In the midst of good times and bad, struggles and days of ease, plenty and want, we need each other. Mary and Joseph came to the Temple because they needed the beloved community. You and I are part of this broadcast this morning and part of this church because the same thing is true for us: we need each other.

From the very beginning, we were not meant to be alone. At creation, God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:16). I don’t think that’s just because left by ourselves we’ll get into trouble, and though that verse is often used to refer to marriage, I don’t think it refers to just marriage. Over and over again God pronounced the creation “good,” but aloneness he pronounces “not good” because he created us for each other. We need others; we need community. The last year has shown us that. I am an introvert by nature, and even I have missed people! What is it we get from community that we can’t get on our own? Well, let me share a few things; you may be able to think of more and you can add them in the chat. First of all, community brings us welcome. This time of year, there are so many songs (and Hallmark movies) about going home for Christmas, and I think the reason that theme looms so large is that we know we’ll be welcome at home. We may put up with being shut out or rejected or ignored the rest of the year, but as long as we know that, at Christmastime, we can go home where we are welcomed and wanted, we can make it through those other times. The church ought to be like that. The church, God’s family, ought to be a place where everyone is welcome. And those of us who are already part of the family ought to be busy welcoming those who aren’t yet. It’s awfully easy, when we’re meeting in person, to get wrapped up in talking with friends or family members. When we see someone who is looking for welcome, do we break away and offer them that welcome? Welcoming is not just the job of the greeters; it’s a task for everyone. 

Beyond that, community gives us identity, a place where we belong. Being part of a church does not get you any “perks.” Instead, it gets you a group of people who are going to care about the health and state of your soul. The genius of the early Methodist movement was small groups. Well, John Wesley called them “bands” and “class meetings,” but today we call them small groups or LifeGroups. Wesley took the Scripture seriously; he called the early Methodists to live out Hebrews 10:24-25: “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another.” He took seriously 1 Thessalonians 5:11: “Encourage one another and build each other up.” He took seriously Galatians 6:2, where Paul tells us to “carry each other’s burdens” (cf. Robb, Making Room, pg. 78). The goal of the early Methodist small groups was to “watch over one another in love,” and they didn’t shy away from asking hard questions of each other. They loved each other by helping them walk the Christian path better. They watched over one another so that when one was weak, another could be strong for them. In a lot of ways, those early groups were much more like 12-step groups that our modern small groups are. But, whatever the structure, small groups are the community that our soul needs to survive. They were the genius of the early Methodist movement and I’m convinced they need to become the genius of our movement again.

So are you in a small group of some sort? I know I miss our LifeGroup gatherings; we haven’t been together since this latest round of COVID hit, though we keep in touch through texting and such. Now more than ever, I need to be connected a group of people whom I know will care for me in good times and in bad. You need that too, and so do a whole lot of other folks. We’re looking for some people to step up right now, to start new groups—probably, for now, on Zoom or another connection platform. Right now, even with the vaccine rolling out, it doesn’t look like this pandemic will definitively end in the very near future, yet we still need connection. We need someone to walk with us, people who are beloved community to us. So we need some of you to step up and agree to take on leadership or coordination of new groups. If you’re willing to do that, to be trained and helped along the way, to gather a group together, send me an email or leave a message in the chat this morning. Will you answer the call to help folks find the community they need?

There’s another way people can walk alongside you or you can walk alongside someone else. For many people, Advent is always a difficult time, but this year, like never before, Advent is hard. Maybe someone you love is no longer here. Maybe you’ve gone through a job loss or job change this year. Maybe your financial situation is not as stable as it once was. Maybe a relationship is teetering on the brink. And for some, just the fact that it’s so dark this time of year can be a challenge to their mental health. Tomorrow night, on the longest night of the year, we’re going to have our annual Longest Night Service, a time of gentle prayers and Scripture, a time when you can lift up your struggles and brokenness to God, a time to acknowledge that this time of year is hard. Now, this year, due to COVID, the service will be on Zoom; the link for that is on Facebook and on your screen right now. But one thing I love about the tradition of the longest night—aside from the fact that the days start getting longer on Tuesday—is the way a community comes together to help one another, to walk alongside one another, and to encourage each other that we can make it through the darkness. If that’s something you need, especially this year, please join us tomorrow night.

There’s one other thing community helps us do, and that both connects to what I’ve just said and leads us back to Simeon. Simeon, remember, had been given a promise from God, a promise that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. When he holds the baby Jesus, he is overwhelmed with praise and he sings, “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation…” (2:29-30). Do you hear the deep, deep trust Simeon has in God in this part of his song? He places his trust in a God who he knows will bring him home. He trusts a God who is working for his good. He trusts that, no matter what else happens, God will bring him home safely. And I don’t believe that the setting where he sings this is any accident. He’s part of the community, the worshipping community. This baby that he holds is the culmination of everything this community has believed. For Simeon, whether the end of his life is today or ten years or more from now, he will continue to be part of the community because it is the faith community that is walking him home.

John Wesley used to say that “Methodists die well.” That sounds a little strange to our ears today, but what he meant is that we live and die with confidence in the baby of Bethlehem, so we go into the future without fear, with confidence, with hope. We know the worst thing is never the last thing, and that hope sustains us in life and in death. And we experience that hope when our brothers and sisters in faith surround us, walk with us. Simeon only found that confidence in God because of the community of faith. When our family went through the loss of my mother-in-law just a little over a year ago, we were so very thankful to have the community who surrounded us, loved us, and made sure we had food! Some of you even made the long trip to the visitation, just to let us know someone was walking with us. The community is strong for us when we can’t be; I know many of you have experienced that yourselves, some even this past week, this past month. I honestly don’t know how people get through such difficult times if they are not part of such a community. Which takes us back to this word: “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another” (Hebrews 10:24-25).

When I take groups to the Holy Land (did I mention that I’m planning a trip for 2022?), one of the places we go is called Nazareth Village. One of our travelers called it a “good tourist trap,” and I supposed it is. It’s a recreation, based on archaeological research, of what first-century Nazareth might have been like, the Nazareth the Jesus knew, the place Luke reminds us in verse 39 Joseph and Mary took Jesus to grow up. One of the things I’ve noticed when I’ve been there is the centrality of the synagogue, the place of worship and study for first-century Jews. In the recreation it doesn’t sit physically central, but it is on top of the small hill and looks over the rest of the village. But more than that, it was the central part of the community’s life. The Nazareth community found its identity and its hope and its confidence in the faith community rooted in the synagogue. Luke describes Mary and Joseph as doing everything required by God, and then raising Jesus in such a way that he was “filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him” (2:40). They didn’t do that alone; they relied on the village and the synagogue. As people of God, who want to be filled with wisdom and surrounded by the grace of God, we need that same sort of influence. We need each other because it is through each other the grace of Jesus flows to us and that enables us to walk life’s road confidently, each day of our lives, until he calls us home. Thanks be to God for the beloved community! Let’s pray.