Luke
2:21-38
“Seeing
God”
01 January 2017 St. Andrew’s
Military Chapel Singapore
I just
spent the past week in Bali with my fiance's family. It was a wonderful week getting
to know my future in laws. In particular, I got to know the most amazing 14
month old on the planet. This isn’t just a proud uncle to be talking, I’m just
reporting my conclusion based on the reactions of everyone who met him this
week.
Everywhere
we went, everyone wanted to stop and talk to him, tickle him, make faces at
him, wave to him. We’d go out to a restaurant and the staff would ask if they
could carry him for a bit and the next thing we knew Marlon was getting a
personal tour of the restaurant and being introduced to every customer as if he
was the owner. It felt as if I was traveling in Bali with a well-known
celebrity. It helped that he acknowledged every attempt to get his attention
with a wave, or what people most wanted to see, a million watt smile.
Has anyone else gone out of their
way to be silly in the hopes of getting a child to smile? What in the world
drives such behavior with children? Well, like any good preacher, I have a
theory: Deep down when we make a child smile we know we are seeing a glimpse of
God.
We spend a month each year
contemplating the meaning of Christ’s birth. Two thousand years ago people
spent their entire lives looking forward to the coming of one person. People of
great learning poured over scripture looking for clues that would describe the
individual to come and save not just a nation, but the world. Today we heard
the story of Simeon and Anna, two people waiting for the Messiah. We are not
told Simeon’s age, but we can infer he had spent a long time waiting to see the
Messiah. Anna was 84 years old, and if she got married around 20 (which would
be a late age for marriage) then her husband would have passed when she was 27 leaving
her praying and fasting in the temple for the past 57 years. I have trouble
comprehending the magnitude of this kind of devotion.
When I read scripture I always
attempt to put myself into the story to make it come alive. However for this
story, I can’t really put myself in anyone’s shoes. I don’t remember my infancy
so I can’t see the story from Jesus’ perspective. Not having spent decades in
the same parish I have trouble seeing the story from the perspective of Simeon
or Anna. I don’t have children, so I can’t really relate to Joseph or Mary as
parents in this story. For me to make the story come alive, I think about performing
a baptism.
Imagine an infant baptism in this chapel.
The parents hand me their precious child so I can put the water on the child’s
head but I stop. I look at that child and say out loud “my life is now
complete.” Everything I’ve ever studied and lived for is in that child. I am
holding the meaning of my life in my hands. When this happens a wizened elder
of the church praises the child and goes outside to evangelize and tell
everyone the world’s redemption is at hand.
I have to smile because I can just
imagine the looks on people’s faces, including my own, if that occurred right
here. That is why I love this story. In my mind it challenges and forces us to
ask some questions. Would I recognize
God in my own hands? Since my answer is most likely no, why not? If I saw God
in everyone, how would my behavior change?
John Calvin wrote,[1] “Wherever you cast your
eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some
spark of [God’s] glory.” He wanted us to see God all around us, in every part
of creation. Looking at creation should inspire wonder and awe towards God.
Occasionally I will stop and look
at a sunset or look up at the stars in awe. Sometimes I will make funny faces
at an infant to elicit a bright smile or an infectious laugh. But, I don’t do that near as often as I
should. Simeon and Anna convict me of my inability to see God all around me. If
I can’t see God in all of creation, I am not sure I would even recognize God
face to face. In fact, maybe we see God face to face everyday, but just don’t
realize what is right before our eyes.
We live in a fast moving world. We
spend Advent shopping. Traveling. Dealing with traffic. Worrying about the
bills. Trying to finish projects so we can have a vacation. Bickering with
family and many other things that prevent us from stopping, if only for a
moment, to take in creation. To take in God. We are not alone in this busyness,
everyone struggles to slow down. We don’t want to be left in last place in the
rat race. Children don’t worry about any of this until we teach them to live
busy lives. Maybe that is why Jesus said that we needed to be like children to
enter the kingdom. Children look at everything in wonder and slowly take it all
in. They get it.
Have you ever walked past a busker?
If you are like me you hear the music but don’t take the time to really listen.
In January of 2007 the Washington Post did a little experiment. They placed a
man wearing a T-shirt and a ball cap beside a trashcan in a DC subway station
and let him play his violin for 43 minutes during rush hour while recording the
entire performance. While he played, about 1100 people passed him. Of those
1100, 7 stopped to listen for some amount of time and 27 put money into his
violin case for a whopping 32 dollars and 17 cents. Forty dollars an hour isn’t
that bad, but he is no ordinary street performer. (Play Video)
Suddenly, a three year old hears a
beautiful melody echoing off the station walls and stops, forcing his mother to
listen with him. Mom has other ideas and keeps going to her next scheduled
event. He resists, so she moves to block his line of sight to keep them on
schedule. Oddly, it wasn’t just one three year old trying to pull others out of
the rat race to hear something beautiful. Every single child that walked by
noticed the music and attempted to bask in the musical beauty while every one
of their parents scooted the children away.
What did those who stopped notice
that others missed? They heard violin prodigy Joshua Bell playing beautiful masterpieces
on a 3.5 million dollar Stradivari violin. Sometimes beauty is all around us
and we fail to stop and breathe it in. Children feel and want to bask in beauty.
This could be the reason that only children can enter Narnia. Perhaps that is
why we stop to play with children. Deep down we are trying to understand how to
enjoy God through them.
Why do Simeon
and Anna see God in Jesus when many of the people around them could not even
after Jesus was performing miracles? They dedicated their lives to seeking
God’s presence. Not just reading scripture for the answers. They read the
scriptures to show them what to look for but spent time in prayer to learn how
to see God. They made a commitment of
their lives to look for God in everyone. Had they not been looking for God in
everyone they would have missed God in the infant before them. These two saints looked at the world both
with the wisdom of adults and the eyes of expectant and awe struck children.
In this way
we are all like Simeon and Anna. We have Scriptures describing what to look
for. We need to commit to truly reading Scripture as a way to find God in the
world. But we can’t focus on just Scripture
and ignore the world around us. It is a two way street: Scripture informs our
lives and our lives help interpret Scripture.
So what would the world look like
if, like children, we saw God all around us? If we saw God in all of the land
would we take better care of our resources? Would we work to manage them
instead of deplete what we have been given? Stewardship would take on a new meaning.
What about our relationships with
each other? What would the world look like if we treated each other as one
would treat God? Would you treat the driver who cut you off any differently? What
about the rude customer service agent? How about the homeless guy on the street
asking you to spare a dime? The pregnant teenager? The alcoholic?
On Christmas we celebrate the miracle
of God becoming human. Because we believe in the incarnation, is it that much
of a stretch to believe that Immanuel is with all of us and everyone should
receive the same love and respect as we give God? Looking at people this way
also deepens the meaning of Matthew 25:40; what you do to the least of these
you do also to God. The name Immanuel means God is with everyone.
Now I don’t want to discuss a
theory without providing an example of what this may look like. A few years ago,
I was flying to Los Angeles for ordination interviews. Of my four flights, one
was cancelled, one was stuck at the gate for two hours because the luggage got
stuck in the snow and one had a 90-minute delay in the terminal. On Friday
morning, I arrived at the airport, found out my flight was cancelled, and had
to wait in line for over an hour to talk with a ticket agent. People were
stressed and one of the customer service agents was not helping matters. As my
frustration level rose, the theme of this sermon kept rattling in my head.
With great difficulty, I fought the
urge to get worked up like everyone else. I struck up conversations with those
around me and when I finally got to the counter I didn’t ask about my flight, I
asked how the agent was doing and joked about how this was his worst nightmare.
I did my best to treat him as if I were talking to God. I am not trying to brag
on my behavior because, believe me, I have had less stellar moments in my life.
Was this small and insignificant? Yes, but it is a small stepping-stone to
seeing God in everyone all the time.
Why do we play with infants and try
to get them to smile in lines? Perhaps we are working on seeing God in
everyone. I know that for the most part, it is easier with children because
they usually don’t reject smiles and attention. If we can work on seeing God in
one group of humans, then maybe it will be easier to learn how to see God in
everyone else. So find a group of people in whom you see God every single time
you encounter them. It can be children at the supermarket line, your family,
the homeless, your small group at church, or the maniac drivers in rush hour.
Well, maybe not the crazy drivers just yet.
Work to love a small slice of
people knowing God is with them and then you can extend that love farther and
farther into other groups of people building meaningful relationships centered
on God. Imagine if all Christians were to go out and see God in everyone we
encounter. Everyone would see God in
Christians and would come to God in the church. This is vital in improving
relationships with all kinds of people. But if I am wrong, at least we are
having fun getting children to laugh and smile whenever we
meet them.
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