Luke 2:21-40, Galatians 4:4-7
Do you know anyone who has had a new baby?
These days it is common practice to send a card to congratulate the parents and wish their baby well. Greeting cards were not around when Jesus was born but there were several people who might have sent one if there had been such cards. We meet a couple of them in our reading from Luke’s gospel. Their names are Simeon and Anna. As far as we know, Mary and Joseph didn’t know Simeon or Anna before they went to the temple to carry out a ceremony which was required by the Jewish Law.
Simeon’s greetings
As Joseph and Mary came into the temple they were met by Simeon. Simeon was an old man who really loved God and he was longing for the arrival of the Person God had promised to send – the one called the Messiah. Simeon had been told that he would not die until he had seen this Person. I had a friend who got very old and he used to say, “Every day above ground is a good day.” He would wake in the morning and think, “God has given me another day to enjoy.” I picture Simeon waking and thinking, “I’m still alive so the Messiah hasn’t come. Maybe he will come today.”
Imagine his joy when he saw this young family and God’s Spirit told him that here was the Messiah. What sort of greeting did he give Joseph and Mary? We could sum it up in the phrase, ‘hope and light’. Simeon knew that Jesus was going to bring the light of God to the whole world, including those who were not Jewish.
A greetings card for a new baby is not really for the child but for the parents and other family members. Simeon had a message for Jesus’ parents too but it was not all sweetness and light. We can sum it up in the phrase, ‘pain and sadness’. What an extraordinary thing to say, that Mary would suffer through being Jesus’ mother. Of course, what he said was quite true. We are told that Mary thought deeply in her heart about what she had been told about Jesus. God was preparing her for what was to come.
The Holy Spirit
“Simeon was able to see Christ in this ordinary, plain, common baby because he was inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. It was the same Spirit that had, earlier in his life, enabled him to believe and trust that God would fulfill God’s promise to him. The Spirit gave him the strength and the fortitude to keep looking, keep waiting, keep expecting, and always stay ready to meet the Messiah. The Holy Spirit of God transformed his life. It changed him so much that he no longer viewed the world the same.
“The same thing happens to every person whom the Holy Spirit of God falls upon. It transforms them. It enables them to see things in a new and different way.
“The Holy Spirit reveals to us the wonders of God all the time and inspires us to be able to see the face of Christ and the love of the Lord everywhere. It is the Holy Spirit that transforms us and makes us able to see what we couldn’t see without the grace of God revealing the promised One to us. The wonder of the Christ child is all around us, every day, in simple and ordinary people and places. We have only to, by the grace of God, be able to recognize them.” [Dawn Chesser, GBOD (altd.).]
Anna’s greeting
We live in a world of instant everything. If we can’t have it now, we don’t want it. How different this is from what we have seen about waiting and expectation over the last few weeks. God works to a different timetable. Jesus came after many centuries of promise and waiting. God knows what he is doing – the time was right.
Anna was an old lady and she, too, was listening to God’s Holy Spirit. She, too, was very pleased to hear the Spirit say, “This is the One.” Anna and Simeon might have said the same thing after waiting so long for the promised One from God to come. When you have been waiting a long time and eventually what you’ve been waiting for arrives, you are very inclined to say, ‘At last’. They knew that God had a plan for his whole world that would bring people back into a close relationship with him. Jesus’ birth was no accident but the means by which God’s plan for us to become his children could become reality.
Our year
We come to the end of the year singing carols, proclaiming great joy and spreading good will. The year 2014 hasn’t necessarily been a happy one. For some there has been and still is sadness. For others there is much to rejoice about. For some milestone events have occurred and for others there has been humdrum monotony. Yet Jesus’ birth is time out from the sad and the bad and the boring. It is joy and health and good cheer – it is shalom, it is salvation – for Christ has come, God has broken into our world – and he is still here.
This time of year is also a time to review and see where God has been involved in our lives and rejoice in his intervention as he works his loving purposes out in all of us and in this world he made and loves. What has the Holy Spirit revealed to you – this year, and about this year?