My parents with our daughter Laila at the NC Botanical Gardens
When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him 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. (Luke 2:22-40)
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Five years ago, I was serving as a campus minister at American University in Washington, DC. During our weekly worship services, we always took time for something we called “God Sightings.” God Sightings was a chance for our students to name where they had seen God in their lives over the past week. Every year, one or two students would be particularly diligent in having a God Sighting to share every single week. They would keep an intentional eye out for little moments that reminded them of their faith, moments of wonder or compassion or restoration. The way sunlight reflected in a puddle on the campus quad; a fun conversation with roommates; something learned in class that unexpectedly resonated with their faith; they would report these sightings, faithfully, every week. Another group of students would participate if something particularly meaningful had occurred that past week – exciting news from family back home, perhaps, or a grad school acceptance letter.
And then there was a third group of students, perhaps a bit shyer, who rarely had something to share out loud. When members of that latter group did work up the courage to share, it was usually because other students in the community had come through for them in some simple yet beautiful way, delivering soup during a sick day, calming anxieties about final exam, providing a ride home for the holidays. These stories were often born out of an experience of difficulty, of pain, or of human need, need which was met by the care and compassion of a loving community of faith. Shared over the course of a year, the practice of God Sightings gifted us with a robust sense of the many and diverse ways that God can make God’s self known in the world, even and perhaps especially in difficult or scary times. Keep an eye out for God often enough, and you can’t help but catch a glimpse.
We are, of course, in the Christmas season. While I’ve never actually seen any lords a leapin’ the old song is correct in reminding us that there really are twelve days of the celebration of Christmas, beginning on the 25th of December and continuing until the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th. (By the way, did you notice two turtledoves meeting their not-so-glorious end Luke’s gospel?) So anyway, Merry Third Day of Christmas! In this season we pay particular attention to God with Us, Immanuel. We remind ourselves that God comes to us in the most unsuspecting places and ways – in the rugged open hills of Palestine, in celestial concurrences, in mysterious visitors from foreign lands, and of course, most centrally, in the fragile and dependent body of a baby.
We are newly familiar with the practice of noticing God in the sounds and movements of a newborn. Our daughter Laila is six weeks old, and we are delighting (mainly) in her newly discovered and surprisingly strong grip, the way her eyes are beginning to track motion and faces, her experiments with vocalization. Each day with Laila is a reminder of wonder and of the purpose found in caring for each other. If we were to offer God Sightings in worship, I would have many to share! But of course, there’s an ease to noticing God’s grace present in an infant when we are safe, warm, at home in our relatively privileged household. It is a more difficult task, or at least one requiring a bit more discipline, to keep an eye out for God when things are not so safe or comfortable. Sharing God Sightings each week in worship is just one way to hone that discipline so that it is well-practiced for the harder times.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus’s parents bring him to the Temple for his dedication, fulfilling the sacred traditions of their faith, and are surprised by not one but two strangers who offer prophecies and praise of their newborn child. Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Simeon and Anna are both deeply attuned to the presence of God in unsuspecting places. Their encounters with the baby Jesus are a form of sharing God Sightings. Their words remind us to pay attention, to be on the lookout, for the Christ who is God with Us, hiding often in plain sight.
Simeon and Anna have something to teach us, I think, about our calling as Christians. We also, guided by the Holy Spirit, are meant to keep our eyes out for the Christ Child. And while our collective images of Christmas often gravitate toward the cozy and the comfortable, these two prophets remind us Jesus is born right into all the contingency and challenges of life – life which, in first-century Palestine under imperial Roman rule, had its share of suffering, of inequity, and of violence. These two prophet’s words do not shy away from this fact. Simeon speaks of falling and rising, of the upending of power which Mary had already predicted in song prior to Jesus’s birth, in her glorious Magnificat. He speaks, too, of the opposition and pain that this child and his mother will experience. And Anna’s words about the redemption – that is, the freedom or the liberation – of Jerusalem are dangerous words to cry aloud in the midst of Roman military rule. There is beauty here, in this story, in God’s very self revealed to us in this humble, helpless child, in God With Us. But there is risk, and danger, and pain, as well.
I won’t belabor the point too much, just to name out loud the palpable reality we are all aware of this Christmastide. If we are called to keep an eye out for God in this season, then we too are looking for Christ in the midst of all the pain and promise of a world in need. More than 330,000 Americans have now died as a result of COVID-19, my great-uncle Wendell White among them, with more than 1.75 million deaths worldwide, while millions more of our neighbors are out of work, fearing eviction, or lacking in adequate medical care. Political leaders seem unwilling or unable to take the necessary risks in order to care for the common good. Early Christmas morning, news of an explosion in Nashville, Tennessee ushered in even more uncertainty and, while little is yet known about the incident, it appears to be an intentional act of violence. With Simeon and Anna, we too look for redemption and healing in the midst of much rising and falling, of many hearts pierced by swords. Where could God possibly be in the midst of all of…this? Here, exactly here, we look for God With Us, in surprising places and unexpected ways. Here, exactly here, we look for Christ.
There is good news to be found here, even in the midst of a painful season for the church, our communities, and the world. Simeon and Anna live out their callings. They fulfill their vocations. Especially in the Anglo-Saxon, Protestant West, vocation and calling have often become associated with career and job. But Anna and Simeon show us a different understanding of vocation, one not simply tied to productivity or consumption. And they do this not with some great and heroic act, but rather with the simple act of paying attention, of noticing God when God shows up in the form of a tiny child. Simeon, we are told, asks God to “dismiss your servant in peace” – by sharing his God Sighting, he has fulfilled a deep sense of purpose and can now, in a sense, retire – not because of some imagined productivity or accomplishment, but simply because of the fulfillment that comes from noticing God With Us. Anna, the story tells us, is “of great age” – that is, she was pretty old. Her age does not in any way diminish her sense of purpose, of vocation, for she is called, just as we all are, in whatever situation we are in, at whatever stage of life we are in, to pay attention, to keep an eye out for the revelation of God even in the smallest of things.
Anna reminds me of the words of theologian Joyce Ann Mercer, who writes of calling in older adults as “the vocational experience of slowing down.” She says that she often worries about how she will “spend” her time, how she can “save” time. “But with older adults,” she writes, “time becomes re-storied, transformed from a commodity to be spent or saved, to a space of grace where relationships unfold….I have come to think of the vocation of older adults as offering time-gifts to people who need to slow down.”[i] This isn’t to romanticize anything – old age, no less than childhood or any other age, has its share of frustrations, of contingency, of challenge. But perhaps it takes the wisdom of a ready-for-retirement Simeon or an elderly Anna to remind us to slow down, to be mindful, to see God here with us. To re-story time so that we understand our calling not in terms of commodity and productivity but in terms of the quality of attention.
Let this be good news for us during Christmas: that our calling as Christians is first and foremost not to produce or to achieve but rather to pay attention, to look and to listen, to notice and to share our God Sightings with one another. Don’t get me wrong. There is plenty of work to be done, plenty of what that great theologian and mystic Howard Thurman calls “the work of Christmas” in his poem of the same name:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.[ii]
Indeed, there is plenty of work to be done. Plenty of finding, of healing, of releasing, of rebuilding. But Simeon and Anna teach us that this work does not find its source in hectic striving or competition or busy-ness-for-busy-ness-sake. Rather, it begins with keeping an eye out for God. With noticing Christ. And with sharing what we have seen. This is our calling, a calling made possible by the Holy Spirit which rests on us. It is a weary world which rejoices this year, my friends. May we rejoice with it – for our eyes have seen our salvation, prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the world and for glory to God’s people.
Look at God!
Amen.
[i] Joyce Ann Mercer, “Older Adulthood,” in Calling All Years Good: Christian Vocation throughout Life’s Seasons, edited by Kathleen A. Cahalan and Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 188.
[ii] Howard Thurman, “The Work of Christmas,” from The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations (Friends United Press).