Sunday, December 28

Today’s Readings: Psalm 148; Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Luke 2:22-40; Galatians 4:4-7

Some of my parishioners have been asking me to post my sermons (I call them my reflections) on line. In order to meet their request, I’ll now make a habit of posting my reflections under my Sunday postings. Here is my reflection for December 28, 2008.

Sometimes I get myself in trouble when I forget to remember what a huge difference my faith makes in terms of the way in which I view the world. Let me tell you a story about something that happened to me recently that reminded me of that.

There’s a group of six friends that I have that gets together every two weeks for coffee and conversation. We’ve been doing so for quite a while now. Every one of us in the group is fairly outspoken about our opinions - so we are never short of things to talk about.

Well, last Fall there was one topic that seemed to dominate our conversations more than any other. Anyone want to take a guess what that topic was?

That’s right, the presidential election.

And there were two of us in particular who tended to dominate the discussion: my friend who I’ll call Mark – an ardent Democrat; and myself, a member of a third party who sees things much differently than most.

Mark and I would go round and round about the election, and I swear that he made it is sole purpose in life to win me over to his views. At times he acted as though I had committed the ultimate heresy when I would criticize the person at the top of his party’s ticket: Barack Obama.
After a heated Fall where the other four members of our group had to listen to our heated exchanges, things finally started to settle back into their normal routine as we started talking about our usual topics: fantasy football and upcoming vacation plans.

Then – out of the blue - two weeks ago Mark decided to have the group over to his house for a Christmas brunch. And it just so happened that the morning of his gathering was on the day when it was announced President-elect Obama had asked Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration.

I arrived at the brunch a little late so the others were already seated at the table. The other four group members did their very best to make sure that our conversation everything BUT politics. I’d never heard so many enthusiastic comments made about a person’s napkin holders and scrambled eggs before!

Finally, about 15 minutes into our time together, the moment we all knew had to happen – happened. Mark said, “So you probably heard that Barack asked Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. Go ahead and get it over with. Start gloating about how your concerns were validated,” Mark said as he hunkered himself down in his chair – preparing to be lambasted by myself.

The other four members of the group flinched and started scoping out the room for emergency exists.

I casually finished my sip of coffee, and then uttered six words the folks in that room least expected to hear: “I have no problem with it.”

There was complete silence in the room for what seemed like hours as people tried to wrap their minds around what had just taken place.

“You,” Mark began, “a person who disagrees with Rick Warren on a variety of issues ranging from stem cell research to gay marriage – are okay with Warren’s inclusion?!”

“Yep,” I said as I reached for a scone.

Needless to say, the conversation that followed was lively as we had a chance to process things on a deeper level.

As I look back on the conversation, there was one resource that I wish I would have used that morning that would have helped me better articulate my position.

That resource?

This morning’s passage from the Gospel of Luke.

“This morning’s gospel reading from Luke?! What does that have to do with the topic?” you might wonder.

“Yes, this morning’s passage from Luke.” Let me tell you why I think it would have been a helpful one.

As the text was working on me this week, I happened to stumble across a wonderful commentary on the passage that helped totally reframe my understanding of the story of Simeon’s encounter with Mary, Joseph, and little baby Jesus. It was a commentary done by R Alan Culpepper – Dean of The School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia in the New Interpreter’s Bible.

One of the many things that Culpepper pointed out in his commentary is what brought each of the people in this morning’s story to that pivotal moment in the Temple.

“Devout Simeon,” Culpepper wrote, “was in the Temple because he was prompted to be there by the Spirit.”

“So how about Mary and Joseph?” you might wonder. “What brought them?”

Well, Mary and Joseph’s reasons for being there were much different. It wasn’t the Spirit that brought them there to that moment, Culpepper notes. “Jesus’ parents were there because they were fulfilling the requirements of the Law” (New Interpreter’s Bible 71).

Now if the rest of today’s narrative from Luke’s Gospel had unfolded the way things tend to unfold today, Simeon would have spent all of his time and energy arguing with Mary and Joseph about whose motivations for being in the Temple were the most pure. They would have separated themselves into ideological and/or theological camps, attacked the other side, and purged the Temple of those who saw things differently than themselves.

Thankfully, Simeon, Joseph, and Mary had much more sense than we have today. They refused to allow their differences to divide them. Instead, they chose to focus on what had brought them to that moment in the first place: the experience of God contained in that baby.

As I sat with Culpepper’s words, I realized that that – in a nutshell – is what continues to amaze me about that baby, Jesus. Two thousand years ago, that baby had the power to unite the Spirit led faction and the tradition-led faction so that they could stand together in the common stream that swept them toward the redemption of all creation. In a similar way, on January 20th followers of that baby will stand together on a stage in Washington, DC – those who support stem cell research and those who oppose it, those who support gay marriage and those who oppose it, those who defend a woman’s right to make reproductive decisions for herself and those who oppose it – and humbly ask for God’s blessing on their individual and collective lives.

The secular world will tell us that people who have substantive differences have no business hanging out together on the same stage. It will tell us that our time and our energy would be spent denigrating those who are different from us. That our goal should be to obtain political power so that we can silence – or better yet crush - those who would have the gall to see things differently.

And yet that baby born 2,000 years ago in that lowly manger would tell us something different. As the song that guided our 11:00 o’clock Christmas Eve service last Wednesday reminded us: that baby changed everything!

And so friends, as we go out into a world who would have us act one way, my prayer is that the followers of that baby never lose sight of the ways that he calls us to be so that one day we may find ourselves claiming Simeon’s words for ourselves as we say together: “release me in peace as you promised. With my own eyes I've seen your salvation; it's now out in the open for everyone to see.”

Amen