(Luke 2:21-40) – J G White
11 am, Xmas 1, Sun, Dec 30, 2018 – UBC Digby

We looked forward to Christmas. Now what?  New Year? 2 days away. Looking forward to spring?  About 80 days. Christmas? 360 days from now!

So many dates and timelines and moments are things we have created to celebrate; a bit artificial.

It is December 30th.  Time to look back, of course.  Time to celebrate now, yes.  And time to look forward.  To plan. To prepare. To get reoriented.

The early stories of Jesus continue, today.  Joseph and Mary dedicate their child in Jerusalem. “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”  This was a worship sacrifice for those unable to afford the usual.

What does looking forward mean to those who are poor?  Poor in things? Is looking forward simply about survival: hoping and planning to survive another year?  Wishing for some windfall, some luck, some unlikely blessing to come along? Sharon and I watched a 1938 film version of A Christmas Carol the other day.  The story is told over and over of the Cratchits, the working poor: how they live, how they hope, how they survive.  

Mother Teresa said, “The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted.” What could Christ have for an unwanted person to look forward to in a new year?

What about for those poor in health?  What does it mean to be forward looking when you might be in your last years of life?  Less able to do many things?

Let me tell again the story of Doug and Gertrude.  Seniors, in their little house in Wolfville, thirty years ago.  Looking around their living room, Gertrude says, “I think we could use a chair right here. We should get a chair.”  
“Just how long do you think we are going to live?” asks Doug.
“I don’t know,” says Gertrude, “But I know this: I’m going to live as long as I live!”
She took the advice of Jonathan Swift: “May you live all the days of your life.”  Such is the attitude of those who look forward. Life built upon the past, growing into the future.  

The future is, of course, uncertain for everyone.  Yet what we do today, in the now, inspires and helps many people, not just ourselves.  

If found quite a few poignant moments in our Christmas music here this past week.  Jean Brittain joins the Ladies Ensemble to sing, amid her cancer treatments. Bonne and Pete and Linda reunite to sing together, with as great a spirit, and volume, and harmony as ever.  Peter Dickie comes forward to offer a solo, taking off his gloves and mask, and putting a new, germ-free, foam cover on the microphone.

And then, as a counterpoint, quiet little Mason clings to his grandmother Margo as she sings a solo.  

The people who are seniors, and the people who are children, each has an unknown future, but with great joy and beauty to give today, and with a measure of hopefulness.  Each one, inspiring us.

Speaking of a little one brightening life for us, we heard those stories of infant Jesus brought to the Temple of Jerusalem.  At that time, a complete stranger comes forward. Simeon, a man who was looking forward to the Christ, the Messiah… ‘the consolation of Israel.’  Perhaps, two thousand years ago, there were as many ideas about what the Messiah would be like, among the Jews, as there are Biblical theories about Jesus coming the second time, among Christians in the world now.  

Whatever he expected, this man in Jerusalem is drawn to Joseph and Mary & the Child. Traditionally Simeon is thought of as an old man, though he was not necessarily so.

Our text tells us he was Spirit guided.  Promised to see the Anointed One before his death.  Then, he recognized this one child as the One.  How the Spirit and Simeon did these two things we are not told.  We simply find this future-oriented man appearing on the scene in Luke chapter 2.

Gazing at the Simeon story, I think about this:  the Spirit-filled life as a way of looking forward.  Makes sense. Be closely in touch with God, and get pointed into the future.  It’s not about living in the future. And Simeon does not live thirty more years to hear Jesus preach, see him heal, or be sacrificed and raised up.  Glimpsing the Saviour is enough.

Simeon speaks a poetic blessing.
Lord, now let your servant depart in peace,
according to your word.
For my eyes have seen your salvation…

It gets called the Song of Simeon, or the Nunc Dimittis.  Simeon’s song gets recited (or sung) in evening services by Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and many other groups.

Anna was there too, and speaks prophetically.  She is old: 84. She speaks of the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

Notice that of her we are told she was devoted to prayer and fasting.  She spent her life this way. Many years. We get this brief glimpse of her in Luke 2.   We see spiritual discipline as a path to looking forward and having a message to share.

Bible people like Anna inspire me to take up things like prayer, meditation, worship, fasting, Bible memorization.  For instance, I believe in adults memorizing Bible verses.  Hence our monthly practice of learning scripture verses.  Getting the Word ingrained in us as a way to open a door for the Spirit.  For the Spirit of God to do more with us. To point us to the real and true future.

On the cusp of a New Year, a friend, who will be turning fifty years old, has decided to memorize fifty poems. Talk about a New Year’s resolution!  Hmmm. What goals could I have in 2019? Sharon and I talked about this quite a bit last week. I could try the same as my friend, fifty poems. But what about something else?  I could memorize twelve chapters of the Bible over the next twelve months.  

A radio program on spirituality played an interesting song the other day, the song of a musician and comedian I’d never heard of before.  A strong critic of religion, he sang:
I don’t go in for ancient wisdom
I don’t believe just ‘cause ideas are tenacious
it means they are worthy
(Tim Minchin, White Wine in the Sun)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CeY0VdhXK8

Me, I am hooked on some ancient wisdom.  I do go in for it. Certainly this Bible.  Memorizing some good-sized chunks of it can help me on the path to, well, being on the right path.

A spiritual discipline, a focal practice, whatever you call it: what might U take time for next year that will make a difference to you, to God, to the world?

Anna and Simeon, a couple very minor Bible characters.  Their cameo appearances inspire. Of course, you go to church, you meet the real churchy people.  You go to temple two thousand years ago, you meet the most devout Jews of all, this man and this woman who are there every day the doors are open, so to speak.

There are other days we meet the people out there who guide us.  John the Baptist, say, who left the life of city and temple and priesthood for the wildness of the palestinian desert. John was all about acting now for an important future.  Prepare the way.

I’m also looking forward to meeting those sorts of people.

(Micah 5:2-5a; Luke 1:46-55) – J G White
11 am, Advent 4, Sun, Dec 23, 2018 – UBC Digby

Welcome to Christian worship of God, and at Christmastime, even.  We have a magnificent Gospel to proclaim! What kind of Good News do we tell now?  How do we put the Good Tidings into words? Into our own words?  For our people? Today?

Sure, we like to quote Francis of Assisi, who is credited with saying: ‘Preach the gospel at all times; use words when necessary.”  In our lives words will be necessary.  There is a time to keep silence and a time to speak.

This month I have been talking with you about The Good News of Jesus.  It’s my own project I’m sharing, really: how to understand salvation better, and how to say it better.  Every age in Christian history has to do this.  Every Church and every individual believer must work it out.  Not only do we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12), we work out how to express it, how to share it, afresh.  

To tell the News, the Good News of God, is to tell a story.  Tell God’s story – the Bible story. And tell our story. We often wander from one to the other, and back again.  We use Bible words in personal ways.

Together here, we recited Mary’s whole song of praise.  The Magnificat, it gets called, from it’s old title in Latin.  My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour!  For He has looked with favour on the lowliness of His servant. (Luke 1:46-48)  And so on. She was expecting a special child, and at this point she was visiting her old relative, Elizabeth, who was expecting a special baby of her own.  Together they rejoice.

When Mary sings out these words, she is echoing Bible words, reworking an old lyric.  In particular, the words of the song of Hannah, from one thousand years earlier, when Hannah was happily expecting a baby, who would be named Samuel.  

Mary, in her praises, is telling what she expected about God’s salvation.  She does it by celebrating the kinds of things her Lord does.

So Mary says: God takes people’s souls to heaven, after they die.  God brings people together to build church buildings with steeples and pulpits and pews.  God reunites loved ones in heaven if they do not end up in hell. Ah… No, she doesn’t!

Mary says things like: God scatters proud people.  God wrecks powerful people and lifts up weak people.  God fills up hungry people, and gives nothing to the rich ones.

It is very practical stuff Mary and Elizabeth celebrate about the Saviour who is about to be born.  It seems to be very earthly minded, not so heavenly.

I have one of those magnetic images of a nativity to stick on my car that reads: KEEP CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS.  I read this posting on social media:
Want to keep “Christ” in Christmas?  
Feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted, love the outcast,
forgive the wrongdoer, inspire the hopeless.

There are plenty of options when it comes to putting the Gospel of Jesus into words. Some proclaiming of it has been what gets called ‘the social gospel,’ a movement that was at its peak about a hundred years ago.

In our lives, South African Bishop, Desmond Tutu, said, “I don’t preach a social gospel; I preach the gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person.  When people were hungry, Jesus didn’t say, ‘Now is that political or social?’ He said, ‘I feed you.’ Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.” (Claiborne, Shane, et al, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, c 2010, p. 71)

Other ways of explaining the Gospel are focused upon individuals and their souls, which could end up in eternal bliss or eternal torment, after death here.  

Church planter and author, Brian McLaren, tells of a multi-faith gathering outside of Washington, DC, just a few months after the attacks of September 11, 2001.  It was awful, McLaren says. Held at a local mosque, the first speaker, a Sikh from India, insulted the host imam with his first sentence. Next, a Catholic priest was dull, long-winded & academically complicated.  A protestant minister was just as monotone, but said that Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw Christ even in Hitler! McLaren wanted to crawl down into a crack in the floor.

Then a Pentecostal pastor spoke, who was very emotional and energetic.  He ended up saying: “I love you! I love you all! And because I love you, it is my duty to you, my neighbours, be you Muslims, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, or Buddhist, to tell you that you are all going straight to hell unless you repent and receive Jesus Christ as your personal Lord, Saviour, Healer, and Deliverer!”

The pastor went on for about thirty minutes like this.  Then, to Brian McLaren’s shock, he got tremendous applause from when he finished.  

McLaren concluded: for him to be himself, to pour out his heart, to unleash his emotion… and to do so in the presence of others of different faiths… that was just the gift people needed in the aftermath of Sept. 11.  People needed to cry and shout and vent… And in that very human connection, he communicated real love for the people in the room. (Why Did Jesus, Moses, Mohammed and the Buddha Cross the Road?, 2012, p. )

The communication of real love for others is what Christmas is all about. What the Cross is all about.  What Resurrection is all about. You and I find our ways to love others when we tell our stories of God.  Our Good Tidings of great joy must be authentic.  Real. Genuine. Personal. I don’t recommend ‘fire and brimstone’ unless that is your only way to speak love.  

So, I tell people that this Jesus being born is the story of how loved and valuable we are. It is about what’s wrong with me and how God comes to me.  It is about what’s wrong in the whole world, and how God loves the whole world. It is also about the fears I have, and can get through with God. It is about pain and suffering, for it is the story of a God who comes deep into pain and suffering. It is a story about making things right, and setting things at peace here. It is about finding my path to take in this life, with a Guide who walks right beside me, not far ahead.  It is about belonging in this world, being in community, with a God who is on my side, who is for us, all the way.

How do you tell about the Christ of Christmas?

GO, tell it on the mountain!