Christmas Day has come and gone, and we gather together on Christmas Sunday. Advent comes to its conclusion today in this place, and we enter the season of Epiphany (the time when we mark the coming of the Magi). Our final word for the season is “Rejoicing”. We travel the road of redemption to its destination, the joy of receiving the Messiah, the one who brings life and hope to all people in our world. We consider our Scripture passages together and examine the shape and nature of this overwhelming joy.
Isaiah 61-62
The last chapters of Isaiah have an eschatological focus. They point to the way things will be at the end of all things, encouraging us to live today with the hope of ultimate salvation. The passage assures us that in the end God will make all things right. Isaiah was writing to people who saw how bad things were. They had been carried off into exile in Babylon. They had experienced restoration, but the new reality was not much better than the old. Although they were back home in Judah, life was hard and uncertain. In their distress, Isaiah says clearly, “God will make everything right, and the whole world will see it.”
We live in times that “try our souls”. We see things going wrong. I hear regularly from people who think that our world is doomed and that we can to nothing to save ourselves. God speaks to us also: “For as the soil makes the young plant come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.” He adds: “The nations will see your vindication, and all kings your glory; … You will be a crown of splendour in the Lord’s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.”
In these times, we see God’s salvation. In these times, we rejoice that God is with us. In these times, we celebrate God’s grace and goodness in our lives.
Luke 2
Luke 2 tells how two more people who had been waiting for God’s salvation recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Simeon was “righteous and devout” and spent much time in the temple. When Jesus was taken to the temple for circumcising, Simeon was there. He saw the baby and him in his arms and prophesied over him. He identified Jesus as the salvation of God’s people, and he told Mary that opposition to Jesus would pierce her soul as well. (One wonders what about Joseph; perhaps his words indicate that Joseph would die before the events he was prophesying.)
Then we meet Anna, a woman 84 years old, who had lived in the temple since her husband died – perhaps 60 years earlier. She also prophesied over the child, calling him “the redemption of Israel.” What is going on in these prophecies? They identify Jesus as the coming Messiah, and they point to his future ministry as the Messiah. Is there anything else?
I think that there is. Simeon is an old man (his age is not stated, but it is implied). Anna is an old woman. Both had spent their lives waiting for God to redeem Israel. Both are confident that Jesus is the Messiah who will bring salvation to God’s people. They join the growing crowd of witnesses in the text to Jesus’ identity. In Luke 2, we meet the shepherds and the angels. In Matthew 2, we meet the magi from the East. Here we meet representatives of the temple. They complete the crowd of witnesses, making the point that Jesus came for everyone – young and old, Jew and Gentile, men and women, rich and poor, educated and uneducated. Jesus comes with salvation for everyone. We rejoice, because Jesus came for each one of us. Nobody stands outside of Jesus’ saving embrace, except by their own choice.
The Shape of Celebration
One observes that the conditions of Jesus’ day looked no more hopeful than the conditions of the passage in Isaiah 61. We can expect, then, that the conditions of our day are equally the context in which God comes to us with salvation and a context that appears almost hopeless. The reason that we have hope is twofold: One, God is here, whatever our circumstances look like; and two the end of all things is certain. Remember that the season of Advent always prepares for the birth of Jesus and anticipates the return of Jesus at the end of all things. As someone has put the message of the book of Revelation, “God wins in the End.” That truth permeates everything we do now, and so we can rejoice.
Consider our theme song with which we have started each service this Advent. We began with it today as well. “We come,” anticipating what lies ahead. Why did we sing it today? We might have sung instead, “We’ve arrived.” But you see, we do not sing that final song of arrival until we stand in God’s presence in the New Heavens and New Earth. Our destination this Christmas is really just a way stop on the journey of our lives. We sing this truth in a Zulu song, “Singabahambayo thina kolumhlaba; siyekhaya ezulwini – we are pilgrims on this earth; we are on our way to Heaven.” We sing this truth in the old song, “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through. … If Heaven is not my home, Then Lord, what will I do?”
In my own field of mission studies, we call this truth “the Pilgrim Principle” of Christian living. We balance it with something else called “the Indigenous Principle”, which tells us that God lives fully in every culture and every people on earth. Both principles are true: God lives with us wherever we are, fully at home in our culture; and God calls us to our final home in the New Heavens and Earth.
The importance of these two truths is that they make us able to live with joy here and now, even when the situation around us is falling apart. We belong to God, and we live with the joy of the Lord wherever we are and whatever is happening.
Have you ever met someone who seems to rise above the troubles around them? Have you wondered what their secret was? Sometimes it is simply a matter of personality. Some people have a good digestion and nothing they eat ever seems to bother them. Some people have a good disposition and respond equably and calmly when trouble is bubbling all around them. Is that all there is to it? Can we learn to live out of the depths of God’s goodness and love, even when our external situation is hard?
Living for Heaven
Basic to the gospel is that we are called to live by the standards of God’s Reign on earth. That is, we live on the basis of the New Heaven and Earth, promised in Isaiah and reaffirmed in the New Testament. The Sermon on the Mount (in Matthew’s Gospel with parallels in Luke’s Gospel) is the clearest exposition of what it means to live this way. How do we move in this direction, when everything around us conspires to “press us into the world’s mould”?
Romans 12 (from which I took the phrase above) says that we offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God. The two people in today’s reading from Luke had their own way of doing just this. Simeon was moved by the Spirit to go into the temple. We can assume that this movement was not unusual in his life: He lived a life of worship. Anna “never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying.” She lived a life of worship. I suggest that this stance in their personal lives prepared them to recognize Jesus when he came. They could live by the end of all things in their own context, because they lived in the presence of God, who sees the end from the beginning.
How can we do the same? We participate in communal worship, and we engage in personal and private worship. We pray together, and we pray when we are alone. We spend time hearing God’s Written Word read aloud, and we spend time reading alone. The world is telling us its story all the time – a story of injustice and distress, a story of unfairness and darkness, a story intended to drive us to despair and to act selfishly and greedily in our own lives. We respond by spending time dwelling in God’s story, learning to recognize God’s presence in every situation, even in “this present darkness”. When we see God, we can rejoice.
We know this truth well enough. Let me illustrate with a simple example from my own life. Lois and I have been married for over 43 years. Even before we were married, we knew that we both loved to play Scrabble. We have been playing games of Scrabble – one after the other – for over 43 years now! When we finish one game, the tiles go back in the bag and we draw to start a new game. The board is open on our dining room table as I speak this morning.
Sometimes I draw good tiles, making it easy to find high scoring plays. Sometimes I draw bad tiles, making it hard to find anything to play. When I draw good tiles, all is sweetness and light. When I draw bad tiles, I may complain ever so slightly for just a moment. Well … maybe for more than a moment and maybe not so slightly. Once in a while, Lois suggests that we just stop playing while I calm down.
I don’t want to complain about difficult tiles – it detracts from the pleasure of playing the game, but it has become a deeply ingrained habit. How do I change that habit? Not by saying, “Stop it!” Not by complaining that I complain too much! The only way I know to break a pattern of acting or feeling that I don’t want is to replace it with a new and better pattern. The only to break a bad habit is to replace it with a new good habit. If you have similar struggles, you know what I mean. You can’t stop losing your temper with a driver who cuts you off by telling yourself to be nice, but you can learn new ways to respond when something happens that you don’t like. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes God’s Spirit working in you to give you the ability to keep going. But you and I can change; we can become people who live by God’s standards all the time.
Some Examples
I think of communities that have tried to incarnate God’s Reign in their lives together on earth. Reba Place Fellowship in Chicago is one such. Since 1957, a number of people have gathered together in intentional communities to encourage and support each other. In the process, they have experienced social struggles and personality conflicts and charismatic revival. What marks them, in my estimation, is their persistence in seeking to create new patterns of kingdom behaviour in place of the patterns that characterize Chicago as a whole.
I think of revival movements (as we sometimes call them) such as one that broke out at Asbury College and Seminary in the 1970. It lasted for several years and transformed lives quite remarkably. I was able to see the effects of the revival in my own student experience at Asbury Seminary over 20 years later. What marked the revival most, in my estimation, is the way that God moved in the hearts and lives of those who were waiting for God to enter their lives.
[As a sidelight, I would add that you cannot “plan” a revival. I have been in many such services, when people have tried to coerce God’s Spirit into doing what they think they need. It doesn’t work that way. We wait for God to move in our lives – and like Anna and Simeon we rejoice when God comes down.]
I think of a missionary friend who grew up in a broken home and left home to join the navy. He lived a rough and difficult life, rebelling against all that we would see as good. His lifestyle led him to the end of his own resources, and through a Christian friend he found new life in Christ. I knew him in Zimbabwe as an adult. He was unfailingly cheerful, facing difficult situation with grace and humour. I only discovered how difficult his early life was when I read his life story, written by his wife. What marked him, in my estimation, was the way that new patterns and new life were so deeply ingrained in him that the old ways were completely squeezed out.
What’s the point? We are on the road to God’s Kingdom. This Christmas Sunday, we have come to the end of Advent, from where we can see our destination. We see Jesus, the baby and the Son of God. Jesus is the Messiah, the Saviour of Israel. Jesus is also our Messiah, our redemption. We give ourselves to Jesus individually and corporately. We worship him together and individually. And we work out the implications of this corporate and individual relationship by living out God’s Reign in our lives.
As C.S. Lewis puts, “Aim for Heaven, and you will get earth thrown in. Aim for earth, and you will get neither.” Jesus brings Heaven down to us, and we embrace him and his reign on this earth.
Christmas Sunday Steinbach Mennonite Church 27 December 2020
Focus: Walking the road of revelation results in overwhelming joy. The waiting is over. Jesus has come! We rejoice in the incarnation—God in the flesh—God with us!
Going Deeper Questions:
· How do we celebrate “God With Us”? Which celebrations mean the most to you?
· How can we connect our Christmas celebration with daily life?
· How can we keep the good things we say at Christmas from becoming bromides, nice things that we say but they don’t really mean anything?
· How can we help those who simply cannot rejoice in this season?
Texts
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
10 I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the soil makes the young plant come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.
62 For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet, till her vindication shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch. 2 The nations will see your vindication, and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow. 3 You will be a crown of splendour in the Lord’s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
Luke 2:22-40
Jesus presented in the temple
22 When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord’), 24 and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: ‘a pair of doves or two young pigeons’.
25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:
29 ‘Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. 30 For my eyes have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.’
33 The child’s father and mother marvelled at what was said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: ‘This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.’
36 There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37 and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying. 38 Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.
39 When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. 40 And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.
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