1 Chronicles 16:23-28; Luke 2:22-38
I cannot tell you
exactly how the glorious word about the 13th Amendment becoming the
constitutional law of the land came to our President’s ears. I’m going to keep researching that bit of
history. I can tell you, though, how
very powerful a moment it was for me while watching the way the word arrived in
Steven Spielberg’s new movie, which is simply, and sufficiently titled, “Lincoln.”
Let me pause and issue a spoiler alert
if you haven’t seen it! And
Spielberg’s depiction of it just may well be historically true.
Lincoln is shown in a
very quiet room at the White House. His
only company is his young son, Tad. He
paces, repeatedly glances out a window.
It’s all wonderfully, dramatically tense. And even though you, in the audience, know
the outcome of the congressional action, you don’t know exactly how it’s going
to be depicted. Given that Mr.
Spielberg has a solid record -- especially with historical, epic storytelling –
I was on the edge of my seat awaiting the announcement. I expected a presidential advisor to come
into the room. None came. Nor did anyone else. The definitive word, the redeeming, deeply consoling
word about freedom from the institution of slavery in our country instead
arrived when actor Daniel-Day Lewis’ Lincoln hears a particular sound. It’s a loud, joyful, inspirational sound
echoing, it seemed, throughout the whole nation. It is the sound of church bells.
On another glorious day in human history, now a couple thousand years ago,
the people waited for the definitive word to be delivered. He, especially, waited. So too had she. For Simeon and Anna, they had waited their
entire lives to receive the ultimate, consoling, redeeming word of God’s emancipation
proclamation and its power to deliver God’s children from all worldly
enslavements, from all sin, from all evil.
Many of their Hebrew
kinfolk waiting on this same word had spent their lives dreaming it would come
through powerful national warfare against enemies. But this
was not so for Simeon and Anna. They
instead belonged to a smaller grouping of their people identified as The Quite in the Land.[i] Theirs was a lifetime of quiet watchfulness
for God’s Messiah. They did not do so by
passively waiting for this word to arrive.
They instead lived with active, hopeful expectation through daily
rituals such as prayer, study, worship and humbly keeping aware of human suffering. As a result of all this preparation, Simeon,
through the power of the Holy Spirit, absolutely believed every single day of
his life that he would not die before receiving this gloriously definitive word
of God. So too, Anna -- regarded as a
prophetess in line with Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, and Isaiah’s wife – had daily
prepared and so never ceased to hope for this all her long years of living as a
widow in the shelter of the holy Temple.
Finally, one day, the long-expected,
well prepared for liberating Word arrived.
And it was not in the form of a violent warrior. It was instead carried into the Holy Temple
and heralded in the tiny cry of a vulnerable, peaceful infant boy born in
poverty and mystery and to very humble, faithful parents. Simeon and Anna got one of the first looks
and confirmations of the peaceful, redemptive work God had unveiled and
incarnated, not just for them and their historic faith community, but for the
entire world.
Simeon, Anna, Mary and
Joseph all needed one another in those holy moments, on that day when baby
Jesus was brought to the Temple and presented for the ritual of purification. The older folks needed to finally see God’s
salvation, and the younger folks needed their prophetic blessing. Each of them had a role in, and gave their
hearts to, God’s great plan of salvation.
The season of Advent
is upon us. It is the time of year
when all of us need to quietly but actively prepare to hear the bells on
Christmas day, chiming the Good News that the Savior of the World is here. These are emancipation bells, for they ring
the truth that in Jesus Christ the consoling, redeeming gift of forgiveness and
freedom from all our personal and institutional sin has arrived.
Advent, therefore not
to be a season of hectic hurry, of letting all kinds of stress isolate us from
our hearts, our loved ones, and our Lord.
It is a season of daily personal
and ongoing community preparation so that we, of every age, can joyfully see --
as if for the very first time --God’s arrival in Jesus. It is a season of striving to see the presence
of God in the ordinary, just as Simeon and Anna did in their daily lives,
without which they would never have recognized their Messiah.
Shifting into truly faithful
observance of this season, though, is a difficulty for many in this day and
age. A Bible commentary I studied this week
reminded us that for many people today, the “pressures of secularism and modern
life” have led to personal and family prayer time and Bible study happening in
fewer homes than even just a generation ago.
Religious ritual – such as prayers before meals and bed as well as early
morning devotional study of Scripture – have widely ceased to be practiced as
daily, faith strengthening spiritual disciplines. Ritual has instead been, in the words of the
commentary, “reduced to attendance at Christmas and Easter and to socially
required ceremonies at births, weddings, and funerals.” The result has been that for many, “God has
receded from the awareness and experience of everyday life” and that God is
assumed to be found “only in certain places, in sacred buildings, in holy
books, or in observances led by holy persons.”[ii]
The same commentary
suggests we instead need to reclaim effective rituals for celebrating the
presence of God. Greet every morning
with gratitude. Celebrate “the goodness of food, family and friendship at
meals.” Recognize mystery in beauty. Give love a voice. Make and keep promises that shape
relationships. Do as 1 Chronicles
instructs -- sing to the Lord and announce the advent of His salvation to all
anxiously, actively, quietly waiting and needing to hear it.
One person chiming the
importance of this season of Advent is popular forty-year old author and Pastor
Rob Bell. When asked why it’s so
important, he declared his belief that cynicism is the new religion of our
world. This religion teaches that
nothing is as good as it seems.
Whatever it is you put your hope in, it will let you down, betray
you. But for us Christians, he
preaches, “Advent confronts this corrosion of heart with the insistence that
God has not abandoned the world, hope is real,” and “is coming.” May we all find ourselves following his
faithful counsel to “ask God to into the deepest places of cynicism, bitterness
and hardness where we have stopped believing that tomorrow can be better than
today.” Amen.
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