Candlemas

Luke 2:22-40

First Presbyterian Church, Batavia NY

December 28, 2014

Luke 2:22-40

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord - - (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”

And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day.  At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

I have to admit that the pressure of preaching this morning feels much more intense than it has been on the previous occasions I have led worship here. 

As many of you already know I have spent the last four months as a first year student at Princeton Theological Seminary studying Systematic Theology, Old Testament Scripture, Worship Leadership, Early and Medieval History of the Church, and Hebrew.

- I have the opportunity to attend chapel services at 11:30am five days a week that offer experiences from the breadth and depth of the Christian tradition ranging from drama experiences of the Gospel to high Episcopal style liturgy 

- I have read entire bodies of work about sin, the resurrection and the nature of Jesus Christ

- I have had the extreme privilege of studying the Bible as my current vocation

- My proximity to Philadelphia allowed me to go to a book signing and lecture by Presbyterian author Anne Lammott in November 

- I have been able to research papers and study in the second largest theological library in the world 

- Steve and I live in intentional community surrounded by other students, spouses, children, and pets from different backgrounds, denominations, theological perspectives, and countries. Every day we endeavor to be good neighbors to one another.

- I have also been blessed to attend temple services with Steve on a regular basis, and I have benefited from the perspective of both our Rabbi’s on the Torah portion for each week, which often coincided with what we were covering in my Old Testament class

All of that being said, I should have newfound wisdom and knowledge of the Bible and faith that I didn’t have when I left Batavia on August 24th, shouldn’t I? Well friends, I wish I could say that I was 100 times smarter, wiser, or more eloquent than I was when I left, but that simply isn’t the case. 

I CAN name all the books of the Old Testament in order, and there are a great deal of names from the Old Testament whose origin and story I have permanently committed to memory; as an aside, if you haven’t read the stories of Ruth, Moses, Joseph, Daniel, Amos, or Hosea lately, I would highly recommend giving them a second look. I am grateful for our freedom to worship as we choose after learning about the persecution of the early church (especially since that means Reform Jewish Temple on Fridays, and Presbyterian Reformed Worship on Sundays for Steve and I). I AM humbled by how much I DO NOT know about what I am studying; which I have generally found to be the most impactful takeaway of all higher education. I know that Hebrew is an extremely complicated language that I am no where near mastering, but I do know enough about it to know that there are many different ways to translate and interpret it into English, and that the interpretation makes an enormous difference in our understanding of the text. 

So, no I have no divine message from God for you this morning that I received in a mystical vision, BUT I can tell you one thing that I know for sure. God is faithful still. 

The story from Luke this morning is a powerful reminder of God’s faithfulness; a God that keeps promises made even when those he makes the promises to give up hope. What makes Simeon such an amazing example of this faithfulness is that he believed the promise God made to him would be fulfilled. There are plenty of other Biblical stories that highlight those that give up on God’s promise only to be proven wrong when God came through. Sarah sends her slave Hagar to give Abraham a son because she doesn’t believe that God will fulfill the promise to give her a son of her own. In spite of all the evidence they had of God’s faithfulness to them, the Israelites questioned God and Moses every step of the way.

Jesus’ presentation and Mary’s purification in the temple took place forty days after his birth. This is celebrated on February 2nd in many Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Christian traditions as the holiday Candlemas that officially ends the season of Epiphany. The Roman Catholic Church renamed Candlemas the Feast of Presentation of the Lord during the Second Vatican Council. 

According to a tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Simeon had been one of the seventy-two translators of the Septuagint (which is a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek). As Simeon hesitated over the translation of Isaiah 7:14 that now reads, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive...", an angel appeared to him and told him that he would not die until he had seen the Christ born of a virgin. According to the timing of the legend, this would make Simeon over 200 years old at the time of Jesus’ birth.

We are provided such a brief snap shot of Simeon in Luke that we are left to imagine what his life must have been like for decades waiting to see the Messiah; trusting he would KNOW the messiah when he saw the child. 

As Christians in a modern, fast paced world, how do we remain as faithful as Simeon? Simeon waited well over eighty years by most accounts to see the Messiah before his death. We get annoyed if it takes longer than 45 seconds after check out to get our morning coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. YouTube overnight hits, and reality TV gives the impression that one needs to do just one thing right, one or two times and be able to be “set for life”. Faithfulness to God, and belief that God will be faithful to us requires thousands and thousands of small acts of faithfulness in our daily lives.

Our role models in this should be our fifty plus year church members that we celebrate each year. Those born in the early 20th century have a much better understanding of faithfulness in small things. For instance, 99 year old Lillian Weber makes a dress from scratch every single day so that a child in need will have something beautiful to wear. Throughout the last few years, Weber has made more than 840 dresses for Little Dresses for Africa, a Christian nonprofit that distributes dresses to impoverished young girls in Africa and beyond. Weber, who lives in Iowa, starts on a new dress every single morning, and after a lunch break, finishes the dress in the afternoon. "It is just what I like to do," Weber told the Quad-City Times earlier this year. Even though she's fast, Weber still finds the time and takes the effort to make each dress extra special.

Weber has been sewing the garments for Little Dresses for Africa since 2011, when she and a group of women -- most of whom are over the age of 80 -- decided to come together to support the organization. Little Dresses for Africa distributes dresses to orphanages, churches and schools in Africa. According to the organization's website, the goal of the nonprofit is to provide clothing to some of the world's most vulnerable children and "to plant in the hearts of little girls that they are worthy." So far, the organization says it's collected more than 2.5 million dresses, which have been distributed to 47 countries in Africa, as well as to children in need in countries like Haiti, Honduras, Thailand, Mexico and even parts of the United States. This coming May, Weber will celebrate her 100th birthday, but she says she has no intention of slowing down. “When I get to that thousandth dress, if I’m able to, I won’t quit, I’ll go at it again."

I’ll end this morning with a news story written by Danny Westneat of the Seattle Times, about a 76 year old man in Seatlle: 

Leon Delong sure wasn’t aiming to become king of an underground empire. But now that he’s bowing out, people are noticing there’s a rip in the fabric, if you will, that for years has kept this city, uh, going. “We sure miss him,” says Anthony Brown, manager of the state’s largest food bank, Northwest Harvest’s Cherry Street Food Bank in Seattle. “People come by all the time and ask: ‘Where’s the Toilet Paper Guy?’ ” 

This story begins 15 years ago, when Delong retired from his cable-splicer job at Seattle City Light. Like a lot of new retirees, he instantly got restless. At the same moment his daughter Allison Delong, a manager for downtown high-rises, was puzzling over a toilet-paper conundrum that — who knew? — has bedeviled prime office buildings for decades. “It’s the ‘can you spare a square’ problem, like with Elaine in ‘Seinfeld,’ ” Allison told me. “These are Class A buildings. They absolutely do not want what happened to Elaine to happen to any of their tenants.” To make sure no white-shoe lawyer or bank executive ever draws a blank, many of Seattle’s premier office towers instruct the janitorial crews to install full, fresh rolls every night, whether the ones in use are finished or not. “It creates a huge supply of what they call stub rolls,” Allison says. “They’re rolls with a half-inch or more of paper left on them. They were chucking them in the trash. It drove me crazy.” Ditto Leon. He was raised on a farm, where “we were taught to use every single thing we had,” he says. “Some of this toilet paper they were throwing out, it was pretty fancy, quilted stuff.” So the two hatched a plan: Ask the janitors to save the stub rolls, and Leon-who-needed-something-to-do would pick them up and drive them to a food bank.

“Pretty mundane, right?” Leon says.

Except mundane doesn’t usually snowball like this.

By the time he got pneumonia last month and called it quits at age 76, Leon was collecting partial rolls of toilet paper from high-rises totaling 7 million square feet of offices — nearly one-quarter of the Class A office space in downtown Seattle. Every other week he hauled three heaping pickup loads of toilet-paper stubbies out of Seattle’s top business addresses. Packed in plastic in groups of four or five rolls, the item became the hottest in the food bank’s history. “I’m telling you, putting out Leon’s toilet paper is no different than putting out T-bone steaks,” says Brown, the food bank’s manager. “If we don’t hold some of it back, it’s gone in an hour.”

Leon collected 2,000 to 3,000 stub rolls every other week. Across 15 years that means the Toilet Paper Guy moved on the order of a million rolls. What was a trivial annoyance to one part of Seattle society, Leon spun into gold for another.

I know, it’s just TP. But as someone who once substituted coffee filters in an emergency, I can attest: It’s like gold when you don’t have it. “I’m amazed how much this mattered to people,” Leon says. “To me it was just a nice thing to do. Now it’s my claim to fame. You know, I’m sort of proud of it.” The food bank vows to keep the program going, with other drivers. But Leon may be irreplaceable. Brown said some volunteers who package the stubbies ask “why are we doing this, it’s just old toilet paper.” Not Leon. At one point I referred to his product as “rolls that are three-quarters empty.” He corrected me. They’re one-quarter full, he said.

So take it from the Toilet Paper Guy. Life is a toilet-paper roll. What you do with what you’ve got left is up to you.

Friends, before we die, may we all see the Messiah as Simeon did… while it won’t happen in the temple, may it be in Little Dresses for Africa, Toilet Paper stubbies, or the eyes of those we care for.  Amen.