A Fourth Church Sermon by Keith C. Harris

January 1, 2006 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

In God’s Hands

Keith C. Harris
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Luke 2:22-40

The Christmas Spirit is that hope which tenaciously clings to the hearts of the faithful
and announces in the face of any Herod the world can produce
and all the inn doors slammed in our faces
and all the dark nights of our souls
that with God
all things are still possible,
that even now unto us
a Child is born!

Ann Weems
Kneeling in Bethlehem

This first day of 2006, I give God special thanks that I share worship leadership
with my friend and colleague in ministry, Nancy Baird,
who powerfully used the gift that God has given her in sharing poetry,
and for my new colleague in ministry,
Minister of Congregational Care, Elizabeth Andrews.

Let us pray: Holy and loving God, who comes to us in the Christ child,
we pray that by your Spirit again you would startle us with the news
that you love us so much that you sacrificed yourself for us.
Lord, we ask that you would open our hearts and our souls and our minds
and that, Lord, the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts
might be open and wholly acceptable to you, O Lord,
our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I have to confess to you this morning that I believe I am still in the midst of a Christmas hangover. I spent a lot of the week asking people what day it was. When Christmas and New Year’s Day fall on Sundays, it gets a bit hectic and harrowing, especially for those that work in the church—and rather confusing.

As I experienced this wonderful yet awful Christmas hangover, I was reminded that this is a time when, in the midst of Christmas and New Year’s, we look back at the year we have just been through—some of us would even say survived—and think about what really happened.

As I look back on 2005, it was a tough year. A lot of things happened in our world, in our country, in my life that needed to be weathered. Just as a quick review for us, the Associated Press says these are the top newsworthy items that happened in the past year (not in any particular order): Bush’s struggles; a CIA leak; the moral dilemma that we all shared, many vicariously, about Terri Schiavo and whether she should be on life support and how to answer the question of what is life and what is not; an Asian earthquake near the Pakistan-India border that killed more than 87,000 people and counting and left 3 million homeless. There were London bombings. There were oil prices that we felt not only in our country but in the world, where it hit a peak of almost $71 a barrel. There was a vacancy in the Supreme Court, which hadn’t happened since 1994, and then suddenly there were two of them and the matter of figuring out the best way to fill them, followed by a failed Supreme Court nomination. There were public doubts about the Iraq policy as we continued to be supportive of troops serving in that country and also tried to figure out the best way to be peacemakers in that place and whether we should be there in the first place; There was a papal transition, with the passing of the first non-Italian pope in 455 years, a transition that hadn’t happened for twenty-six years. And last, but certainly not least, what the Associated Press would say is the number one story that we continue to struggle with: the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, where we were slapped in the face with the reality of the classism that we all know and try to hide and live with. There were also two other hurricanes, Wilma and Rita, that inflicted severe damage.

It seemed that 2005 was a year of a lot of disasters, many natural, some human made. So in this time of evaluation, if you’re feeling tired, you have pastoral permission that it’s OK. It was a long year. The American Medical Association report in December said that depression is up by 15 percent in our country. As we think about what we would name as our own top ten significant events, for many of us that does indeed add to depression, some to joy, and certainly, too, to a sense of fatigue.

I say that our scripture today has some words of hope and challenge for us. As we look at this Gospel of Luke, the one Gospel that shares the most detail about the birth and the early years of Christ, we find that it picks up where Mary and Joseph, being good Jewish parents, are doing the things that all good Jewish parents do when their children are born. After eight days, Jesus is circumcised. Our text this morning picks up where Mary and Joseph go to the temple to do the other two of the three most important things that Jewish parents do. The first is the right of purification. The book of Leviticus states that after a woman has a child, she is unclean and within thirty-three days is to come to the temple to be purified. Mary, as a good Jewish mother, does that. But along with that, there’s also a dedication of the child. We might remember that in the Exodus, the firstborn were spared. Thus the firstborn of all families were subsequently brought to the temple and dedicated to God as a remembrance of God’s love and salvation for God’s people.

It is in this context that another Christmas miracle occurs. Simeon and Anna are the first to experience it. Now as I began to prepare for this sermon, I thought I’d find all sorts of wonderful things about Simeon and Anna, but there’s not too much about who they are. One thing is clear: they both were at the temple at the right time. At some point in his young adulthood, Simeon had receive a revelation, a message, that he would not see death until he had seen the Messiah.

As I looked, I was trying to see how old Simeon and Anna were. (I was that child in fifth-grade Sunday school who, having learned division, tried to figure out how each of the animals that I’d learned in my science class existed could have fit in the ark and how much room they would have had.) Scholars looking at this scripture suggest that Anna could have been anywhere from 84 to 103 years old. In her culture, a child could have been married as early as 12, and the scripture says that she lived with her husband for 70 years before he died and that she had been a widow a long time. They’re not really sure how old Simeon was. But the point is that both Simeon and Anna were advanced in age.

(For those that are advanced in age, I have good news for you. ABC News reports that the older edge of the baby boomers have made fifty the new thirty. That means that when you’re fifty, all the things that used to happen where you understood that your life might be close to half over don’t happen now until you’re fifty. The report said that whereas in the past a person forty or over appeared on the cover of a popular magazine only once every couple of months, now it happens close to four times a month. I appreciate you older baby boomers continuing to raise that bar so that I will never grow old!)

What I think we need to gather is first the good word that those of us who are advanced in age, those of us who are marginalized by what our culture says to us about what’s important and not important, are never too old for God to use. We are never too young or too poor or too whatever you would put in the blank. Two people, eighty-four plus, God chooses in a powerful way to remind Joseph and Mary and us all that this child is special, that indeed the will of God is happening and coming even if the circumstances seem rough and tough.

That’s a powerful reminder that we are not to put ourselves on the shelf. There’s a story in Reader’s Digest about Nicolo Paganini, a great Italian violinist who willed his fine instrument to his home city of Genoa. But his bequest carried one condition: the violin was never to be played. It would simply be placed on display in the museum. For those of you that play instruments, you know that that’s not good for an instrument, for a finely crafted violin especially. It needs to be used and handled regularly if its beauty and value are to be retained. As a result of Paganini’s request, his marvelous violin has become nothing more than a decaying form.

Don’t put yourself on the shelf. And even more so, I think this scripture tells us not to put others on the shelf. Even caring and good-knowing people sometimes tell others, “You know, you’re past your prime. You know there’s no way you could do that.” And in ways both big and small we push those that are marginalized even farther to the side.

Our text this morning reminds us that Simeon and Anna are proof positive that God can use anyone, anywhere, anytime. The second thing this text raises for us is a message about patience. I don’t know about you, but if I were Simeon and I were a young man who had this amazing experience during worship in which I clearly understood that I would not see death until I had seen the Messiah, I would have been like my children: “Is it tomorrow? Are we there yet? Is it here?” Come on—eight-four-plus years! Sometimes it’s confusing when God doesn’t answer our prayer right away. Sometimes it is painful when we don’t get the answer we seek right away. And so I believe Simeon and Anna ask us this question: “Are we willing to be patient for God’s timing?” It’s hard for us to be patient in our society today where we have instant coffee and instant meals and if we have to wait more than five minutes to be served at a restaurant, we call it a bad restaurant. We fight against the process of waiting. It’s not natural for us. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not good. Maybe Simeon and Anna remind us that if we change our perspective a bit, we can see waiting as a gift from God instead of a burden.

The Jewish scholar Karen Kadar says that as we live to embark on a spiritual journey, God calls us in this process to be engaged in two dances: one that lessens fear and one that expands moments of love and connectedness so that we don’t miss what God truly has for us. The third and final thing that I think Anna and Simeon have to say to us this morning from this text is to be expectant and trust in God’s promises.

Sometimes we get weird leadings that don’t make sense. Scholars believe it wasn’t Simeon’s turn to even be at the temple. But that morning as he got up and had breakfast, he had a strange leading, “Go to the temple.” He could have said, “I guess I had a bad dinner last night. I’m just going to sleep it off.” But no. He followed the leading that he understood from the Holy Spirit. And sometimes we indeed get leadings that don’t make sense right at first. Simeon goes to the temple. He’s looking for the Messiah. Will the Messiah be a strong, strapping, warrior-type person? Simeon didn’t know what to expect. But then this poor woman and man carrying a child for purification and dedication come forward. And something begins to stir in him. After all of that time, all of those years of waiting, he sees the child closer and closer and understands that, indeed, God has kept God’s promise. This is the Messiah. And Simeon proclaims aloud that this Messiah is for all people, for all nations, and gives God thanks.

I know that there’s a part of me, had I been Simeon, that would have also said, “It’s about time, God.” Anna, the prophetess, says the same thing. One who had been a widow, one who had had a life that was filled with pain and marginalization from being a widow, whose only means of support was what she could gather at and from the temple, she gives God thanks for the miracle of seeing what God had been doing and had promised in the world. Fred Craddock reminds us that God is always doing something new, but it’s not really new, because, in reality, hope is always joined to memory. And the new is God keeping old promises.

Are you expectant? Do you trust in God’s promises? I close with a story that happened several years ago when I was coming from my presbytery’s camp in Kansas City. I had both of our children with me in the car. And, as we know happens in the Midwest, a storm came up quickly. A cold wind came up from the north and changed rain into snow and ice. Luckily, I had fed my youngest, Joshua, a bottle, and he was in his car seat, asleep and happy. But my wonderful, never-go-to-sleep oldest son, Nathan, was in the back asking me questions, singing songs. As the weather got worse and worse, I realized that I was driving on what seemed to be black ice (that is, ice that you can’t see but you know is there). I was holding the wheel tighter and tighter, making my knuckles almost white—so you know that was pretty tight!—wondering whether we would make it home. And Nathan starts signing “Jesus Love Me” at the top of his lungs.

I’m thinking, “What’s wrong with that boy? We could die at any moment. Why is he singing ‘Jesus Loves Me?’” And I remember deciding I didn’t want to quell the spirit of God in him. So I just tried to focus my energy on keeping the car on the road. I remember thinking, “How can he be singing this song? Can’t he feel the car swerving? Doesn’t he see all the cars that are in the ditches?” I remember praying, “Lord, get us home. Lord, get us home. Lord, make Nathan stop singing so loud. Lord, get us home.”

As I focused, I realized that Nathan, indeed, stopped singing. And when I carefully looked back, I saw that he’d stopped singing because he’d fallen asleep. In the midst of us swerving on the road, in the midst of wind gusts, he somehow found the courage and faith and trust in his very fallible father to get him home safely. In ways more powerful, God has made promises to us. As Simeon and Anna held the Christ in their hands, they realized that in reality the same baby was the one that held them in God’s hands. Simeon and Anna remind us of a powerful paradigm shift. As we move into this new year, everything really depends on whose hands you’re in. Are you in your own? Or do you understand in powerful ways that you are in God’s hands, that there’s nothing in all of creation that can take you from God’s hands—not famine, nor poverty, nor stress, nor disasters can take use from God’s hands?

There’s reality that a basketball in my hands is worth about $15. But a basketball in Shaquille O’Neill’s hands is worth almost $28 million. It really depends on whose hands it’s in. A baseball in my hands in is worth about $3.50. But in Paul Kornerko’s hands, it’s worth more than $60 million over five years. You see the reality is it depends on whose hands it is. A tennis racket in my hands is basically almost useless. But in Serena Williams’s hands it’s a Wimbledon championship. It depends on whose hands it’s in.

A rod in my hand might keep away a wild animal. But a rod in Moses’ hands parts a mighty sea. It depends on whose hands it’s in. A slingshot in my hands is a dangerous child’s toy. A slingshot in David’s hands is a mighty weapon. Two fish and five loaves of bread is a couple of fish sandwiches for me. But two fish and five loaves in God’s hands feed thousands. It depends on whose hands it’s in.

You could ask my wife if nails in my hands might produce a bad spice rack or birdhouse or even shelving. Nails in the hands of Christ produce salvation for the entire world.

You see, the reality is as we move into this new world, as we understand the truths that Simeon and Anna tell us in our text, everything depends on whose hands it’s in. So we are called to put our worries, our fears, our hopes, our joys, our dreams, our families, and our relationships not in our own hands, but in the hands of the child who grew to be a man and died so that we might have fullness of life in this world and in the next.

When it comes down to it, it depends on whose hands it’s in. And we can rejoice this morning that we are in God’s. Amen.