Sermon Notes for Jan 1/12 Lk.2;22-40, Is. 61:10-62:3

Anna and Simeon.we say that Christmas is for children. This wonderful story makes it clear it includes all ages, including the elderly. Ana is elderly, and I picture Simeon as elderly as well, so this story frames the season well. we picture the new year coming in as an happy infant and the old year tottering away on a cane. they both are inspired with a sense that a new Spirit was to blow through, but they had no idea where or when. They live as the perfect Advent characters alert, eyes wide open to the answer to their prayers. They lived in hope, even though day after day the fulfillment of that hope had not appeared. had they missed it? they did not make a resolution as much as one was made for them.

Jesus goes through the ancient ritual of circumcision. We claim infant baptism in part though this act. Our New year’s Day as Christians is the day of our baptism, our initiation into the christian community, our citizenship papers for the kingdom of God, our passport into the reaches of heaven.
While many have taken down their decorations to keep up with the stores, our reading from Isaiah is filled with decorations. Life with god is a decorated life. The decorative elements and the need for salvation show a decorate lie with real pain. How could Simeon’s words not come back to haunt Mary in the days before Easter. What sharper sword could have pierced her own heart, even as he echos her own prophecy about the rising and falling of many.

As we start another calendar year, I do admit that I love the idea that Anna is constantly in prayer. As we grow older, time changes its aspect. when we are younger, especially now it seems to me, we are in such a hurry, trying to keep all the plates spinning,as those of us old enough to remember Ed Sullivan would remember. Especially for people in nursing homes, time becomes a burden, something that begs to be filled, that weighs down on them. When time seems to stretch endlessly but mercilessly, of crushing boredom, pray. Take a newspaper and pray for the articles on the front page. Pray the TV news. Better grab a Bible and pray it. I found it hard ot believe that we were asked to read sections of the book of Order this way, but the method for bible reading is called holy reading, lectio divina. Read a passage through three times and note what strikes you each time you go through it. As our liturgy for funerals says, God is always more willing to hear us praying, than we are to pray.

Anna and Simeon may have been old, but a new day dawned for them there in the temple. One or two of us are getting a tiny bit older, and today a new year dawns for us. In Jesus Christ, through the Spirit’s breath of new life, every day is open to being fresh and new, limitations and energy deficits can flee away. As we were reminded some weeks ago. January is Janus faced, two-faced, one to the future, one to the past. As we look at First Presbyterian Church of Alton, we do well to be Janus-faced this month: to look ot the past at what we treasure and toward a new future that may well transform us.with God’s help and the discernment processes of the spirit, where do we want to go from here? What do we need to do for a new future? I do know this. For a while let’s put the business plans on the back burner and follow the path of prayer of Anna and Simeon, answered prayers that allowed them see the newborn Light of the world come into being. Know this. That same newborn light shines for each one of us.