Here is Sunday's sermon:
Malachi asks a leading question today. “who can
endure the day of his coming, who can stand when he appears?”
What was it about Simeon that made him so ready
and able to see the unfolding of salvation?
Was it because he had been waiting for so long
patiently? It was not because he was a man, because Anna was also able to
recognise the coming of God too..
Would we have been able to stand there and
recognise God as the parents carried the baby to the temple, or more likely I suspect
we would be looking over their shoulders for something a bit more obviously
comforting.
Anna and Simeon recognised God because they
trusted in him all their life. They were connected with generations of faithful
Jews before them who looked toward God and not just their faith tradition.
Our problem is that so often we find ourselves
looking to our faith tradition and put our hope and trust there, rather than in
God himself.
Who can endure to put faith in God, who is able to
remain standing strong when he comes?
To look at our faith tradition is often comfort
and even uplifting. The saints and teachers down the ages, those who have
inspired us and lifted us… the voices of affirmation.
To look to God we face many more uncomfortable
things. We see scary moments, moments of pain and failure, moments of doubt and
despair, we even perhaps look into the face of death and destruction itself.
That is not a nice place to look.
Can we endure the day of his coming?
As we look to God today we must lift our gaze a little
further than we are perhaps used to. Simeon and Anna were able to do this,
tradition also suggests Mary was able to do this too.
What have we to take on board to be able to do
this “star” gazing. Richard Rohr seeks to open up this question in a book I am
reading at present.
1.
We look at ourselves the person we
are. We see and recognise our own needs, the way we search for significance and
meaning. The desire for self affirmation, and even love. This is the private
self and we must recognise it, love it. Hold it. It is not all good we know
this, but it is probably not all bad either! We recognise our own private
struggles, our journey. This is my story
2.
Against my story we recognise “Our
story” the one where I find myself with others. The group I am part of, the
church and faith group. The culture I am part of, the people to whom I am
faithful too, the ideas I support. The church which has taught us so much about
God and prayer. About good and evil, right and wrong. Our concepts of
rightness.
3.
Against “Our story” we go further now
and see a bigger picture. “The whole story”. The truth and nothing but the
truth if you like…. In the real story the smallness of me is seen for what it
is, important yes but so small too. Did you know that fifteen people have died
to enable you to be here today …….(explain)
Against the real
truth we also put into perspective “our story”, the story that makes us who we
are too. The illusion that “us” is what matters. That our group is what
matters. Against the real truth the whole story that is where God is and it
God’s perspective.
Holding together
goodness and pain, things which we more naturally want to keep apart, indeed
some would say they were opposites, as if they were not connected.
As God see the world
goodness and pain are essential together. For Simeon and Anna and for Mary the
pain and sharpness of death was bound up in the life of the baby Jesus.
This is what enabled
them to endure the day.
As we behold our own
stories today let us also be able to see the pain and Joy being held within the
gaze of God. Let us feel stronger to recognise God holding us in entirety.
We take our own lives
more seriously and honestly when we hold good and bad together. We are not
trapped with a small view of ourselves or even the group we belong to, we are
lifted to see ourselves as God sees and holds us. It is this picture that the
Kingdom of God domes to dwell.
Simeon and Anna felt
fulfilled when holding the baby they declared a vision of the Kingdom, not just
for their people but for the whole world.
As the songs puts it
“he’s got the whole world in his hands, he has all of us in his hands, he has,
by being alongside us through the incarnation, drawn everything into God and
shown God to everything.
So we are enabled to
endure the day of his coming as Simeon and Anna were.
Thanks be to God
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