Sunday, December 31, 2017

A Snapshot of the Kingdom (Sermon)


“A Snapshot of the Kingdom”
Luke 2:22-38
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
12/31/17

         From the days of Abraham, Jewish custom required circumcision of all boys. From the days of Moses, it required the “redemption” of all firstborn sons. The redemption, purchased for five shekels of silver, served as a reminder of the Exodus. Following childbirth, a mother had to observe a period of purification – 40 days for male children and 80 days for female children. In addition to being considered unclean for a prescribed time, the mother’s purification cost a lamb and either a turtledove or a pigeon. For the poor, the cost dropped to two turtledoves or two pigeons. 1
         Jesus has already been circumcised. And in today’s text, Joseph, Mary, Jesus, and a pair of hapless birds come to the temple for the rituals of redemption and purification. Their arrival is unremarkable. They’re just another poor Jewish couple bringing in just another Jewish baby for just another Jewish ritual according to the same old Jewish law. Only for Joseph and Mary would the event have been any more memorable than watching someone checking out at Food City with milk, bread, toilet paper, and a few other necessities.
         One thing that my relatively new-found interest in photography is teaching me is that the most extraordinary beauty lies not so much in the spectacular, but in the everyday comings and goings of life. So far, I’ve done mostly landscape photography, but I want to learn to capture moments in which human subjects are being themselves transparently, without pretense. Such moments happen all the time in places like grocery stores.
         The trouble with taking those pictures is that it feels invasive. The camera stares into and through other people in a profoundly intimate way. I feel the need to ask permission to take those photos and to show them to others saying, “Look! Do you see it? This is the face of joy or sorrow. This is what fear, or hope, or love, or despair looks like. This is the face of one who has just discovered faith, or one who has just lost it.”
         In the story of Simeon coming face-to-face with the infant Jesus, Luke takes a candid photograph for us. He captures the moment when an old priest cradles the fulfillment of two promises. For generations, the Messiah has been promised to Israel. In fact, the promise has been told and retold for so long that expectation has, for the most part, faded into rote and lifeless ritual. But Simeon is certain that the Holy Spirit has also promised him that, before he dies, he will see God’s Messiah revealed. So, somewhere beneath Simeon’s mechanical faithfulness to his priestly duties lies a still-simmering hope. And when he sees the extraordinary in this all-too-ordinary baby, the old holy man becomes overwhelmed with new faith and hope. In that breathtaking moment, clouds part, stars align, heaven and nature sing.
‘You can take me now, Lord,’ says Simeon. ‘You have fulfilled your promises. My life is complete. I’m ready to go!’
In that same photograph, Joseph and Mary stand to the side, agog at what they’re seeing and hearing. Their faces are a visual cocktail of wonder, confusion, and pride. Aware that the parents don’t understand the import of the situation, wise old Simeon quickly elucidates the moment for them. And he interprets the photograph for us.
Looking at Joseph and Mary Simeon says, ‘Bless your hearts. Your child is going to upset every apple cart imaginable. Neither Israel nor Rome will ever be the same. And in the process, this boy is going to make all the powerful people afraid and angry. So, in your son’s life, there will come days that will make you wish that you had never been born.’
I want to take photographs like that, photographs that awaken us to our own expectant souls which have just seen some holy, to-die-for truth. And such truths are always beautiful and terrible to behold.
This may sound overly optimistic, or even naïve, but I believe that within each of us lives an old Simeon, or an old Anna. Within each of us there lives a self who is ready to be surprised and overwhelmed by that which we long for in our heart of hearts, and which, somehow, in spite of relentless fears and disappointments, we still expect.
         I trust such expectations not because I believe that “if you just believe with all your heart,” God will do something unbelievable. I trust that kind of spiritual expectation because I trust that when we choose to act in ways that are gracious, generous, loving, and just, even when such actions appears foolish, we are dipping into to a vein of deep and timeless holiness flowing at the very heart of Creation. There’s a name for that vein of holiness.
         In Luke 17, as Jesus approaches Jerusalem, his teachings and his actions get bolder and more prophetic. “Once,” says Luke, “Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’” (Luke 17:20-21) Some translations read, “the kingdom of God is within you.”
         That deep vein of holiness coursing within us and among us is the Kingdom of God. It’s the reality from which and toward which all life flows. While we cannot be, ultimately, separated from the Kingdom, we often live unaware of it. And for reasons all too understandable and real, we often give up on it.
It seems to me that the role of the Church is to live and serve as a kind of photography studio, a place in which we choose to live as subjects in God’s lens of grace, a place in which we open ourselves to moments when the Kingdom of God may be revealed to us, and to others through us. It’s revealed in our interactions, in our celebrations and struggles, our successes and failures, our living and dying.
As we stand on the threshold of a brand new year, I challenge us all to live open and aware – open and aware that even the most routine, tired, and seemingly lifeless moments cradle the potential to reveal some new expression of the Kingdom of God. And I challenge us to live humbly and gratefully, because these gifts are not for ourselves alone. We are merely witnesses. You and I are vessels of blessing for each other’s sake, for the sake of our neighbors, and for the sake of the Creation. Living our faith and being the Church isn’t about getting to heaven in the future. It’s about inhabiting the Kingdom which is here-and-now, which is, as-yet, incomplete, and which Simeon holds in his frail, human arms.
Hold onto your apple carts, because when all is said and done, we don’t belong to any one country, or political party, or ideology, or even any one theology. We belong to Jesus. We belong to the Kingdom God, which, in all things and at all times, through the Incarnation of God in Christ, lives within us and among us.

1R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” The New Interpreter’s Bible: Volume 9: Luke and John, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1995. p 69ff.

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