With Our Own Eyes - Jan 1, 2006

Luke 2: 22-40

As much as it seems Scripture asks of us to believe in things that we can't see, and call that faith, sometimes we are asked to recognize things that are right in front of our faces. Today we read one of those stories from Luke's gospel. To understand the scene that Luke paints for us, one must understand what is going on here. Just one verse prior, Jesus had been circumcised and named according to the traditions of the covenant with God going back to Abraham. This was enough to make him a full-fledged Jew under the law. But for his parents to continue to worship at the temple, more was required. For giving birth to a son, a mother's ritual includes staying away from the temple for 40 days, while she is considered ritually impure. At the end of 40 days for a son (and 80 days for a daughter) she is allowed to come to the temple, make an animal sacrifice, which was conveniently determined on a sliding scale according to her family's financial situation, and at that point the whole family may return to temple worship. So even though Jesus has been circumcised, and brought into the covenant, this scene at the temple is one that must have been played out by families every day.

That's precisely why we find Simeon there. Simeon is one of those Biblical characters that come out of nowhere. We haven't met him before in the story, and he leaves the biblical story just as quickly as he enters it. But Simeon, you see, has been sitting at the temple, waiting for this moment. He has watched as family after family stream into the temple square, has watched as mother after mother was purified, and smelled the smoke as animal sacrifices have been made. Has waited day after day for the One whom he was promised he would see with his own eyes. Inspired by the Spirit, he sits there, literally growing old waiting to see this miracle: the redeemer of the world.

We don't get an account of how Simeon recognizes Jesus. He just does. Somehow he knows that this baby is different. I can imagine this from Mary's point of view, here she was, 40 days post-partum, still recovering from sleep-deprivation, still getting her days slightly mixed up - still far from home. Still maybe uncertain about who this baby is that she has given birth to.

But she's doing what she needs to do for her family. She's doing what she needs to do to be a good Jewish mother. When suddenly an old man walks up to her, takes the baby in his arms and starts declaring right there, in the temple court, that this baby is the consolation for all Israel. And we aren't told that Mary puts up a fuss, and asks Simeon a bunch of questions: "I should hand over my son to you?" We are simply told that she does. There must have been something about Simeon that would prompt Mary to do this. As a mother of a firstborn son, some 18.5 years ago, I would have practically asked for an FBI profile on this old man before handing my baby off to a stranger in a public place. But she does.

So I ask of you to imagine what it was like to be Simeon that day at the temple.

Picture the old man with the baby in his arms. He stands chuckling with giddy joy, or perhaps he gazes with streaming tears on his cheeks, or is lost in transfixed wonder; in whatever way, he is so very happy. Then he says that this is enough now, he is ready to be dismissed from this job of looking out for the Savior. He has seen salvation and he can depart in peace.

But what has he seen, really? It's just a little child in his arms, a powerless, speechless newcomer to the world. Whatever salvation this baby might work is still only a promise and a hope; whatever teaching he might offer will remain hidden for many years. Nothing has happened yet. But Simeon stands there in grateful wonder. It is the future he holds in his hands. He has seen and touched it. He is satisfied. It is, as he said, enough.

By the time a mature Jesus comes onto the stage of history, Simeon will be long dead. So will most of those shepherds who came to see the child in the manger, and possibly Joseph, who watched over him, and some or all of the magi who feature in the other nativity story. Thirty years or more will pass before the gospel story recommences in the ministry of Jesus. In the meantime they who saw the baby, knelt at the stable or laid their tributes before him would not know what became of him. They would know only what they had heard and seen back then.

What we have, in a sense, is hardly more than they had. We have the scriptures that school us in hope and attentiveness. We have stories and covenants and signs. We have moments, or the memory of moments, when the tender compassion of our God has come close enough to see and feel. On this first day of a new year, it is natural for us to turn a fresh page, to start something new, but how to we do this? By looking backwards at what we have seen and heard and felt this past year.

I'll bet you either heard or sang "Auld Lang Syne" last night (or very early this morning). Just hearing those familiar strains of that song - and believe it or not, I'm old enough to remember when it was performed by Guy Lombardo's orchestra - is a signal to us, isn't it? That old things have passed on, and that all things are new, that there is a page to be turned and a fresh start for everyone. There is a song in our hymnal that is a kind of "Old Lang Syne", it is the song of Simeon, and believe it or not, it is the very last song in the hymnal, traditionally sung on this day. There are three settings of this hymn, this Nunc Dimittis. But the one common thread in each of these is the phrase, "My eyes have seen".

In the instant when Simeon sees, and recognizes the Comfort of Israel, the hope of the world right there in front of him in the form of a tiny, helpless, vulnerable infant - everything has changed. Every page has turned, every fresh start has arrived.

Simeon hasn't seen the whole story. Simeon doesn't even know that the story will continue with an arrest, a torture, a murder, a borrowed cave, a glorious resurrection. Simeon just sees the hope, with his own eyes. He was given just enough light to see what he needed to see to recognize Christ.

I've talked about my friend Chandler many times in this pulpit. He and I seem to have a flurry of e-mail conversations around preaching every couple of months, and we've been "talking" this week. On the subject of light and seeing, he had this to say to me the other day, "to get from January 1 to December 31 or wherever we're going in the coming year, you don't need to see all the way there. Just like driving from Oakland (First) to Jerusalem. You just need to see far enough ahead to get to the next turn or hill or tunnel. Like headlights only light up a few yards out in front of the car. They don't light up the road, the way, all the way to New York, (or even Wisconsin) just to the corner of Roosevelt and Allston. And that's far enough. I suppose the Light - though ideally Christ's Light, which condescends to our limited way of working and seeing and will illuminate each piece of the roadway as we move along, is not just "Christ" - writ large, but also the grace of Scripture."

We're really lucky-blessed I guess I should say, since luck has nothing to do with it. We are given just enough light to see with our own eye to the next place that God has been directing us. Simeon was given just enough information to know who Jesus was.

A couple of weeks ago Pete, Allison and I went to see the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. As we were getting settled, Pete whispered over to Allison, "I'll be you ten bucks Mom is going to use this movie in a sermon." I whispered to Allison, "Save your money. I'll probably use it in ten sermons." Consider this the first of many.

If you do not know the story, there is a family of four children who have been sent out to the country to avoid the blitz in wartorn London. Early in the film, the youngest daughter Lucy finds herself hiding in a wardrobe during a game of Hide and Seek. What she doesn't know when she enters the wardrobe is that sometimes there is no back to it. As she scoots backwards in the wardrobe in an effort to hide, eventually she travels through a bunch of fur coats and ends up on the other side of the wardrobe in a very snowy wood. She soon meets a friend in this mysterious place, and learns that she is in a land called Narnia.

Lucy returns to her family, back through the wardrobe, and attempts to explain to her three siblings where she has been. Of course, they don't believe her, don't listen to her protestation that she was gone for hours; because to Edmund, Peter and Susan, only a few moments have passed. To the three older children, the magical land of Narnia is nothing more than a childish fantasy - perhaps a way for a troubled and homesick little girl to escape from the horrors of what is happening in the real world: war, separation from her parents and her home, with no one but a cold and dismissive housekeeper to watch over them.

But to Lucy it is real, for she has seen it with her own eyes. She describes Narnia to her brothers and sister. She makes it as real to them as she can. Eventually, the three make their own way to Narnia, and when they do, it only takes a glimpse of what they've heard about from Lucy for them to know where they are. It's as if they've known Narnia all along through their sister's story, but now they've seen it with their own eyes, and it is suddenly real to them.

For us today, the birth of a Savior is as real to us as if we've seen it with our own eyes. We have been given a glimpse of how powerful, how grace-filled, how wondrous the salvation of Jesus Christ is. We see it all around us - in the hope of a new baby brought by parents to this font to be joined with us in the life of the church. When I hold such a child in my arms, what I am holding and seeing is not the whole story, but the hopefulness of the whole story that will unfold.

We see it this day in the feast, which Christ has prepared for his church. That morsel we eat and mouthful we drink this morning are as real to us as the feast we will enjoy with God in glory. We can see it as real, even though it has yet to happen, because we have seen it, and heard it and felt it, and we know it to be true.

On this, the first day of the new year, we can know that God has a year of blessing and hope and miracles for this congregation, because we have seen things such as these with our own eyes. God has given us a light to see by - not all the way to Dec 31, but to the corner of Main and 83. And it's enough, brothers and sisters. It's enough.


Thanks be to God!