Sermon: “Weary”
December 27th, 2020 Rev. Betsy Perkins
Scripture passage: Luke 2:21-40 First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
I’m going to sit down today to speak with you. I guess I just feel a bit weary. Maybe you do too. Christmas is over and there is always a bit of a let-down, but this year I feel it more deeply. There is the sadness of not having been with the wider family in the way I would have wished, with all the generations together. The live nativity was special, but it was darn cold and I still missed having a service of candles and carols. There is the weariness with this 2020 year that just won’t quit bringing bad news and new challenges! This year’s suffering and death is only getting worse. The reality checks of racism, of hunger and homelessness only get more real. The scandals only more disgraceful and outrageous. The storms and fires have been unprecedented, the bugs – murder hornets and locust clouds – unprecedented. Unprecedented! – it feels like we have worn that word out. To share with you honestly, I also have a physical weariness that recent lab tests indicate may be the result of a relapse in my autoimmune illness. I’m feeling let down that remission didn’t last longer – and it’s yet to be seen what can be done to get it back.
So this morning I bring all that weariness with me to the text of our scripture reading. So I wonder…
Were Mary and Joseph weary? I certainly imagine that they were! Aren’t all parents of newborns weary from not getting enough sleep, from round the clock feeding and changing? For them, there is additional stress of not being in their own home, staying in a stable, guests in someone else’s household, trying to find and prepare food while traveling, cooking over a campfire, no mother or mother-in-law to help.
Were Mary and Joseph weary? Yes, but nevertheless they faithfully and obediently did what the Law of God required, what the care of a precious baby required. They went about fulfilling what God had entrusted them to do. When Jesus was 8 days old, they took him to a priest, probably there in Bethlehem, to be circumcised and to be named. Circumcision was a practice unique to the Jewish people, a sign of God’s promise that the Lord was their God and they were God’s people. At the time of Jesus’ birth it was also a counter-cultural practice for in many parts of the Roman world it had been forbidden. Yet Joseph and Mary take that risk to ensure that Jesus is marked out and named as God’s child.
About a month and a half after the birth of a first-born son, it was also important to offer a sacrifice for the cleansing of the mother and for the dedication of the child. Since Bethlehem was only 6 miles from Jerusalem, Joseph and Mary made the choice to go there (walking!) for this special service recognizing that the baby belonged first to God and was given to them on trust. It’s not unlike the practice of infant dedication in our Baptist tradition, when parents stand up in a worship service to promise to train up the child in the ways of God, to teach him or her about Jesus, to love God and know they are loved by God.
Were Joseph and Mary weary? The two turtle doves they bring to the Temple as the offering would indicate that they experienced the weariness of poverty first hand. Normally, the offering would be a lamb and a dove, but there was a provision in the Law so even the poorest could participate. If a family could not afford a lamb, they could bring 2 doves or 2 pigeons. When Mary sang about good news for the poor and the Lord filling the hungry with good things, it wasn’t just nice words, it was a deep prayer. When Jesus grew up he didn’t advocate for the poor from a place of comfort, he experienced that weariness himself.
Mary and Joseph may have been weary, but they show up to worship God, to practice their faith, to care for the one God had entrusted to them. While they are there in the Temple, they meet the two other characters highlighted in our story today – Simeon and Anna. So I also wonder: were Simeon and Anna weary? I can imagine so. Each of them had spent hours and hours in the Temple in their life-times. They had watched hundreds, maybe even thousands of families come, bringing the offerings required after the birth of a baby, after the birth of a first-born son. Baby Jesus could have been just one more.
We are told only a few things about Simeon – he was righteous, he was devout in his faith, he was waiting for the consolation of Israel. We assume Simeon was a priest in a line of generations of priests who had read and reread the prophesies of Isaiah and other Hebrew scriptures that shared God’s promise of a Savior, a Messiah. But hundreds of years had passed since those promises had been made, and many were weary of waiting. Luke tells us Simeon was looking for the consolation of Israel – consolation means comfort, relief. You only look for relief if you are hard-pressed and weary. Yet Simeon had been assured by the Holy Spirit that he would see the Lord’s Messiah with his own eyes, so he keeps looking, he keeps getting up and going to the Temple, he keeps watching and waiting.
We know a few more details about Anna: she was a prophet, living in the Temple in Jerusalem. The world of the Jewish temple was generally a man’s world of priests, most prophets were men. Was she weary of being lonely, discriminated against, overlooked? Was she weary of being vulnerable and dependent on handouts? Did people regard her as eccentric, that kooky old lady at the Temple? Anna came from the tribe of Asher, a tribe known at that time as one of the lost tribes of Israel, decimated by people who took their land and their livelihoods. She had lost her husband, her source of love and security and family. Yet despite her losses, Anna does not look back in regret, but looks forward in hope, fasting and praying, night and day.
Were Simeon and Anna weary? Perhaps, but nevertheless they watched and waited, expectant, even eager. As Simeon and Anna hold baby Jesus, as they feel the Holy Spirit inspiring them, our excitement and expectancy grows with them. The shadow of struggle is not removed; it is there in the scene – the weariness, the difficulties, the evil thoughts of many hearts to be revealed, the coming rejection of Jesus’ message, the coming cross that would pierce a mother’s soul. The bright light of God entering the world makes even more apparent the shadowy world of forces opposed to the way of Love. And yet, and yet,… Simeon praises God! Anna gives thanks to God! Mary and Joseph marvel!
We are weary; the shadow of death and disease loom over us, the shadow of racism and sexism, of poverty and suffering, of conflict and corruption. And yet, you are here, faithfully showing up to worship God and to hear again the story of consolation, the story of God’s comfort and relief, of God’s rescue and salvation that has come in Jesus and will come in full with His promised return. Like Joseph and Mary, we can continue on faithfully – doing what we know our faith directs us to do – to worship, to teach, encourage, practice discipleship, following Jesus. We can continue on eagerly expectant because like Simeon and Anna, we too are watching and waiting for the promised return of Jesus, for the final consolation of a world set right – when evil will be defeated forever, when death and disease and tears will be no more. Like the song Chuck sang about the saints of God – who lived in the past and who live today – we are invited to respond “and I mean to be one too!”
Keep watching and waiting, my friends. Keep praising and thanking and marveling. For when we do, then we too will recognize God-With-Us. We too will hear the Holy Spirit speak. And we too, like Anna, can tell others about Jesus, tell other of God’s redemption – of being rescued out of the broken weariness of this world and claimed by God as beloved. We too will see God’s salvation revealed for all people with our own eyes.
God has come! God is with us! God will come again! Hallelujah! Amen.
Closing Song: “God Be With You”
Add Your Comment