Passage: Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Passage 2: Luke 2:22-40
Preacher: Dr. Jim Standiford
Series: Who is This Shaping our Future?
The elderly Anna and Simeon are anticipating some new experience of God and joyfully find it in Jesus.
Come, Lord Jesus, fill our minds with your word fill our hearts with your love, and fill our lives with your light. Come, Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen.
If we could go back in time and ask a citizen of the first century, “Who is shaping your future?” the answer would almost universally be, “Caesar.” To a great extent that was true. Caesar and the laws of the Roman Empire determined much of the current and future life of the people. For most of the people that future was not terribly bright or appealing.
The biblical witness projected a different scenario. It says there is a new sheriff in town, a new shaper of life and the future. Over the last few weeks we have been considering how the different gospel writers have pointed to this new shaper of the future. First, we looked at Luke’s initial witnesses to Jesus, two women, Mary and Elizabeth. Since women had no public voice in that time, for Luke to highlight two women was a way of saying this one coming is going to bring a new future. Matthew makes the same kind of statement by having foreign, non-Jewish seekers, whom we know as the magi follow a star, and when they find the infant Jesus they worship him. This points to the belief that Jesus is not only the Jewish Messiah but the Savior of the world. Matthew is saying Jesus will have a new effect on everyone. In Mark’s gospel Jesus goes to be baptized by the free-lance, rebel baptizer, John, who is working way outside the religious system of his day and God says to Jesus, “You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”
All these accounts say a new future, a new world order, is coming because of Jesus. Once again today, in Luke’s story of Jesus’ presentation in the Temple we have this same emphasis on Jesus bringing a new future to all people. However, before we consider that story let us look at the passage from Isaiah.
Among the people and certainly in the witness of the prophets, there was a long-standing hope for a new kind of leader who would bring a new future. The portion of Isaiah we heard this morning was written for people coming out of exile, out of a long grueling, extremely difficult time. We could say about this time, it was a confirmation experience. The passage begins as a hymn of thanksgiving using the imagery of putting on wedding garments and jewels in joyful gratitude for what they have already experienced of God’s salvation. They realize that though their life has been very hard and brutal, God has nonetheless been working and they are grateful. Then, the passage turns to springtime images of nature, of new shoots in the garden, in anticipation of something more, that they will know a new future, the great joy of an even greater relationship with God. The prophet states he cannot be quiet, but will proclaim this good news to all. At the time of this passage the people are standing at a mid-point. There is all around them many evidences of heartache, yet they have experienced some joy, and are looking forward to even greater joy. Their experience has not been as glorious as some had envisioned. Perhaps it was something like those who went back to Joplin, Missouri, after the tornado. Much of what they saw was sickening, but at least they were still alive, and slowly began again to look to the future with hope.
If we have faith in a compassionate God, regardless of what we have been through, we live in hope toward a future we anticipate will give us a richer more complete experience of God. Remember this confirmation experience of the people of Israel took forty long, hard years, but in this passage we hear their faith has been firmed up, strengthened, toward an abiding trust in God for a new future.
Some of you in the confirmation class may have thought it was a long time, you wondered would it ever end, you knew all this stuff you were being taught. You had to sacrifice other, perhaps more fun experiences, sports, weekend trips, time with other friends. There were times when I was a confirmand and later when I taught confirmation I had the same feelings. One of the things I did learn long ago is that in issues of faith, and many other aspects of life as well, we are all works in progress. None of us has all the answers. But as we go through all kinds of experiences of life, our faith can be firmed up. We share with Isaiah a longing, a hope, deep in our bones for something new in the future.
Years ago a student named Andy was in my confirmation class. He goofed off the entire duration of the class. I was convinced he had learned nothing and was just glad the experience was over. Several years later Andy’s little sister was in confirmation and Andy was old enough to drive her to class. He sat in on a session one day and after class made several observations that told me he had not only listened before, and that day; but was able to articulate some of his own understanding of the faith. I was shocked and grateful. In Andy I saw new hope for the future.
In today’s passage from Luke we learn of an early experience of Jesus’ life. Mary and Joseph demonstrate their civil-sacred responsibility. Just as they had traveled to their family’s community to fulfill the requirements of being counted in the government census, so here in this passage they travel to the Temple to fulfill the religious requirement of presenting a newborn before God.
I fear sometimes I and other preachers have erred in overstating Jesus’ conflict with the law. His tension with the law was never as an outsider, but as one who faithfully went to synagogue and observed the holy days. What Jesus found unacceptable was practices of the law that subverted God’s command to love God and neighbor. He said, “I come to fulfill the law” but he repeatedly condemned those who would flaunt their own holiness and especially those who were not hospitable to their neighbor.
In the passage today we are told the family arrives at the Temple after Jesus has been circumcised. Now they are tending to Mary’s ritual purification and Jesus’ dedication as their firstborn as required in Exodus 13:4. They offered the prescribed sacrifice for his redemption, two turtle doves. This was the amount determined for the poorest of people, and they did it faithfully. This payment to the religious authorities was a custom which expressed the idea that children really belong to God as soon as born and had to be, in a sense, bought back by the parents, though they are never really ours. Here is the one who will redeem the world with the offering of his life being redeemed before God.
There is in the Temple an elderly, righteous, man, Simeon, and the woman prophet, Anna. They are not related but both are described as those to whom honor and respect should be shown as older and holy people. Yet, they give witness to God’s presence in the infant Jesus. Here is another great reversal. The old, whom the young are to revere, instead see and praise the new, the young. This entire scene of the parents and the community of faith is beautiful in its depiction of love and support for the nourishing and flourishing of children.
In the next story in Luke’s gospel (2:41-52) Jesus’ parents lose him in the Temple when he is twelve years old. Every normal youth wants this kind of separation. It is a part of human development. Three days later they find him. He has gone through the biblical “three days” and died and risen into a new dimension and now speaks about a new relationship with God. He has begun his own spiritual life.
So to our confirmation class today and to any new Christians regardless of their age, we pray you will continue to be nourished by this community of faith so your faith will continue to grow and flourish. We pray that as we all continue to grow that our lives and our love will nourish others to come and know Christ. To you in the confirmation class, you are on the threshold of wonderful adventures of faith as you get lost from childhood and enter adolescence and begin to make the faith your own. On this Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend we would say we too have a dream, a dream for you to find the great joy and the greatest sense of fulfillment because of your faith in Christ. May it be that because of you we who are old shall see new.
Thanks be to God.[i]
[i] Note: Some of the ideas in this sermon have been sparked by J. Neville Ward, a British Methodist scholar, in his book of meditations on the rosary and the life-stage events in Jesus’ life, entitled, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy.
“WHO IS THIS SHAPING OUR FUTURE:
3. THE OLD SHALL SEE NEW”
by Dr. Jim Standiford
January 15, 2012
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Luke 2:22-40
Come, Lord Jesus, fill our minds with your word,
fill our hearts with your love, and fill our lives with
your light. Come, Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen.
If we could go back in time and ask a citizen of the first century, “Who is shaping your future?” the answer would almost universally be, “Caesar.” To a great extent that was true. Caesar and the laws of the Roman Empire determined much of the current and future life of the people. For most of the people that future was not terribly bright or appealing.
The biblical witness projected a different scenario. It says there is a new sheriff in town, a new shaper of life and the future. Over the last few weeks we have been considering how the different gospel writers have pointed to this new shaper of the future. First, we looked at Luke’s initial witnesses to Jesus, two women, Mary and Elizabeth. Since women had no public voice in that time, for Luke to highlight two women was a way of saying this one coming is going to bring a new future. Matthew makes the same kind of statement by having foreign, non-Jewish seekers, whom we know as the magi follow a star, and when they find the infant Jesus they worship him. This points to the belief that Jesus is not only the Jewish Messiah but the Savior of the world. Matthew is saying Jesus will have a new effect on everyone. In Mark’s gospel Jesus goes to be baptized by the free-lance, rebel baptizer, John, who is working way outside the religious system of his day and God says to Jesus, “You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”
All these accounts say a new future, a new world order, is coming because of Jesus. Once again today, in Luke’s story of Jesus’ presentation in the Temple we have this same emphasis on Jesus bringing a new future to all people. However, before we consider that story let us look at the passage from Isaiah.
Among the people and certainly in the witness of the prophets, there was a long-standing hope for a new kind of leader who would bring a new future. The portion of Isaiah we heard this morning was written for people coming out of exile, out of a long grueling, extremely difficult time. We could say about this time, it was a confirmation experience. The passage begins as a hymn of thanksgiving using the imagery of putting on wedding garments and jewels in joyful gratitude for what they have already experienced of God’s salvation. They realize that though their life has been very hard and brutal, God has nonetheless been working and they are grateful. Then, the passage turns to springtime images of nature, of new shoots in the garden, in anticipation of something more, that they will know a new future, the great joy of an even greater relationship with God. The prophet states he cannot be quiet, but will proclaim this good news to all. At the time of this passage the people are standing at a mid-point. There is all around them many evidences of heartache, yet they have experienced some joy, and are looking forward to even greater joy. Their experience has not been as glorious as some had envisioned. Perhaps it was something like those who went back to Joplin, Missouri, after the tornado. Much of what they saw was sickening, but at least they were still alive, and slowly began again to look to the future with hope.
If we have faith in a compassionate God, regardless of what we have been through, we live in hope toward a future we anticipate will give us a richer more complete experience of God. Remember this confirmation experience of the people of Israel took forty long, hard years, but in this passage we hear their faith has been firmed up, strengthened, toward an abiding trust in God for a new future.
Some of you in the confirmation class may have thought it was a long time, you wondered would it ever end, you knew all this stuff you were being taught. You had to sacrifice other, perhaps more fun experiences, sports, weekend trips, time with other friends. There were times when I was a confirmand and later when I taught confirmation I had the same feelings. One of the things I did learn long ago is that in issues of faith, and many other aspects of life as well, we are all works in progress. None of us has all the answers. But as we go through all kinds of experiences of life, our faith can be firmed up. We share with Isaiah a longing, a hope, deep in our bones for something new in the future.
Years ago a student named Andy was in my confirmation class. He goofed off the entire duration of the class. I was convinced he had learned nothing and was just glad the experience was over. Several years later Andy’s little sister was in confirmation and Andy was old enough to drive her to class. He sat in on a session one day and after class made several observations that told me he had not only listened before, and that day; but was able to articulate some of his own understanding of the faith. I was shocked and grateful. In Andy I saw new hope for the future.
In today’s passage from Luke we learn of an early experience of Jesus’ life. Mary and Joseph demonstrate their civil-sacred responsibility. Just as they had traveled to their family’s community to fulfill the requirements of being counted in the government census, so here in this passage they travel to the Temple to fulfill the religious requirement of presenting a newborn before God.
I fear sometimes I and other preachers have erred in overstating Jesus’ conflict with the law. His tension with the law was never as an outsider, but as one who faithfully went to synagogue and observed the holy days. What Jesus found unacceptable was practices of the law that subverted God’s command to love God and neighbor. He said, “I come to fulfill the law” but he repeatedly condemned those who would flaunt their own holiness and especially those who were not hospitable to their neighbor.
In the passage today we are told the family arrives at the Temple after Jesus has been circumcised. Now they are tending to Mary’s ritual purification and Jesus’ dedication as their firstborn as required in Exodus 13:4. They offered the prescribed sacrifice for his redemption, two turtle doves. This was the amount determined for the poorest of people, and they did it faithfully. This payment to the religious authorities was a custom which expressed the idea that children really belong to God as soon as born and had to be, in a sense, bought back by the parents, though they are never really ours. Here is the one who will redeem the world with the offering of his life being redeemed before God.
There is in the Temple an elderly, righteous, man, Simeon, and the woman prophet, Anna. They are not related but both are described as those to whom honor and respect should be shown as older and holy people. Yet, they give witness to God’s presence in the infant Jesus. Here is another great reversal. The old, whom the young are to revere, instead see and praise the new, the young. This entire scene of the parents and the community of faith is beautiful in its depiction of love and support for the nourishing and flourishing of children.
In the next story in Luke’s gospel (2:41-52) Jesus’ parents lose him in the Temple when he is twelve years old. Every normal youth wants this kind of separation. It is a part of human development. Three days later they find him. He has gone through the biblical “three days” and died and risen into a new dimension and now speaks about a new relationship with God. He has begun his own spiritual life.
So to our confirmation class today and to any new Christians regardless of their age, we pray you will continue to be nourished by this community of faith so your faith will continue to grow and flourish. We pray that as we all continue to grow that our lives and our love will nourish others to come and know Christ. To you in the confirmation class, you are on the threshold of wonderful adventures of faith as you get lost from childhood and enter adolescence and begin to make the faith your own. On this Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend we would say we too have a dream, a dream for you to find the great joy and the greatest sense of fulfillment because of your faith in Christ. May it be that because of you we who are old shall see new.
Thanks be to God.[i]
[i] Note: Some of the ideas in this sermon have been sparked by J. Neville Ward, a British Methodist scholar, in his book of meditations on the rosary and the life-stage events in Jesus’ life, entitled, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy.
