Old and New Acquaintances
John Wilkinson Third
Presbyterian Church
January 1, 2006
Luke 2:22-40
We stand at an unusual confluence – the last time it happened
this way was in 1994, I am told. Christmas Day, and therefore
New Year’s Day, falling on a Sunday. The liturgical calendar
and the chronological calendar coming into interesting connection,
raising all sorts of interesting topics. Giving and receiving
gifts. What we do with the time that we are given.
We will acknowledge a little bit of everything this morning
– we will sing Christmas carols and Epiphany hymns and
a glorious hymn about the passing of time. We will be led in
prayer by leaders of our boards as we begin a new year.
Looking back and looking ahead, and all of it done through
the gift of a profound story that will benefit us by its receipt,
a story of two faithful ones who lived to give and receive with
grace and gratitude.
Their names are Simeon and Anna. They are less familiar to
us than they should be – in fact, I read one opinion this
week that this portion of the story really should be added into
all of the pageants that churches offer on Christmas Eve. That
might cause too much pageant director angst, but I do know that
we should pay attention to these two faithful Jews, who spend
their days abiding by the law, at the temple.
Mary and Joseph demonstrate their fidelity to that same Jewish
law by bringing their eight-year-old son to Jerusalem to be
circumcised. They arrive. New parents and a baby. Simeon and
Anna, aged and wise, are present and ready.
Luke’s gospel tells us that Simeon had already received
a gift, a message from the Holy Spirit telling him that he would
not die until he saw the Messiah. Now he knows, and the promise
of a gift foretold comes home.
He literally sings a song, the “Nunc Dimitis,”
a version of which we have just sung, a piece of scripture that
has been woven into the centuries-old liturgical life of the
church. “Now you are dismissing your servant in peace.”
The baby brings the gift of peace, intertwined with Simeon’s
gift of a lifetime of faithfulness.
Simeon is ready to receive the gift, and now to depart, as
is Anna, an old woman, a prophetic woman, who worshipped at
the temple every day. She praised God that day, knowing –
perhaps more clearly than anyone else with eyes to see and ears
to hear – what was going on, the history that was being
made in the presence of a tiny, little baby.
Fred Craddock writes that the “two aged saints are Israel
in miniature, and Israel at its best: devout, obedient, constant
in prayer, led by the Holy Spirit, at home in the temple, longing
and hoping for the fulfillment of God’s promises. They
are old, ready to move offstage, ready to ‘depart in peace.’”
(Luke: Interpretation, pp. 39-40)
Writer Madeline L’Engle states it elegantly: “How
remarkable, how beyond the bounds of ordinary possibility, that
two old people should see a small baby and recognize that he
was the Light of the World! Was it perhaps because they were
so old, so near to the Beyond, that they were able to see what
people caught up in the cares of the world could not see?”
(Imaging the Word, Volume I)
Imagine those people we know who are open to wonder, open to
childlike inquisitiveness, open to mystery, to grace. Like Simeon
and Anna, they sense instinctively the presence and move toward
Jesus, move toward God.
It is not all instinct, of course. It is awareness and constant
prayer and hope and wisdom. Gifts, each of them, gifts from
the Holy Spirit that surpass any Christmas gift we could ever
receive.
We give feebly and receive awkwardly, as people who walk in
great darkness. Anna and Simeon would teach us that how we receive
and how we give relies entirely on our openness to the Christmas
story and the one whom shepherds guard and angels sing.
We turn to two ancient saints who receive the gift by giving
it away and therefore remind each of us of our role in the divine
drama that God authors each new day. Like Simeon, we scan the
horizon for the promise, so that when the two parents walk through
the doors of the temple, the years and decades of vigilance
and steadfast devotion blossom like a rose in the desert.
With gratitude Simeon sings of peace and offers a simple “thank
you.” With his comrade Anna he understands that all he
can give to God in return is a grateful response. At that point,
and at this point, old and new meet and peace is recognized
and blessing is received.
T.S. Eliot’s brilliant, piercing poem “A Song for
Simeon” serves as a kind of Christmas card and New Year’s
resolution for all who would hear it:
“Lord, thy Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and/The
winter sun creeps by the snow hills;/The stubborn season has
made stand./My life is light, waiting for the death wind,/Like
a feather on the back of my hand./Dust in sunlight and memory
in corners/
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land./
Grant us thy peace./I have walked many years in this city,/Kept
faith and fast, provided for the poor,/have given and taken
honour and ease./There went never any rejected from my door./Who
shall remember my house, where shall live my children's children?/
When the time of sorrow is come?/They will take to the goat's
path, and the fox's home,/
Fleeing from foreign faces and the foreign swords./
Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation/Grant
us thy peace./Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,/Before
the certain hour of maternal sorrow,/
Now at this birth season of decease,/Let the Infant, the still
unspeaking and unspoken Word,/Grant Israel's consolation/To
one who has eighty years and no to-morrow./
According to thy word./They shall praise Thee and suffer in
every generation/With glory and derision,/Light upon light,
mounting the saints' stair./Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy
of thought and prayer,/Not for me the ultimate vision./Grant
me thy peace./
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,/Thine also)./I am tired
with my own life and the lives of those after me,/I am dying
in my own death and the deaths of those after me./
Let they servant depart,/Having seen thy salvation.”
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. In the spirit of giving
and receiving made real for us today in the witness of Anna
and Simeon. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. In the name
of the infant, the still unspoken and unspeaking word, and all
that he will become. May God’s richest blessings and grandest
challenges await us all. Amen.
