Enough already

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Sermon for the Feast of the Presentation1 2 February 2014

Emmanuel Church, Greenwood Parish (The Rev.) Christopher Garcia

Enough already Enough already. Most of us have had enough of the snow and the cold. Christmas Day was forty days ago and the wonder and warmth and bright lights already seem a distant memory. This is the time of the year when we get tired of just about everything. We get tired of getting up and going to work. We get tired of saying our prayers. We get tired of going to church. We get tired of going to school, and then we get tired of snow days. We get tired of the drab colors of a seemingly dead world outside, and we get tired of long, cold nights. Enough already. We get tired of just being tired. Isn’t there more to life than this? Two thousand winters ago a young couple must have been asking similar questions. They had come down from the Galilee to Bethlehem for a Roman census. You know the story. No room at the inn; you can live out back, in the barn. At least you’ll be out of the cold, and you’ll have a sort of privacy that you won’t find in a crowded inn. Surely Mary and Joseph got tired of those conditions. The custom at the time was for Jewish women to live in semi-seclusion for a period of time after giving birth. The Leviticus holiness code required it. At a purely practical level, Mary needed some time to recover, after giving birth far from home, after many days walk down from the Galilee. Some privacy and quiet and rest would have been welcome, but eventually the smells and dirt and isolation and boredom must have become excruciating. Enough already. Let me out. I want to see people. I want to go to Jerusalem. And so, on the fortieth day, the day demanded by Leviticus 12, Joseph and Mary went to the temple. Leviticus puts the requirement in terms of purity that seem strange, even repugnant to our modern sensibilities. But these birth (All years, RCL. One of three feasts of our Lord (along with the Feast of the Holy Name, 1 January, and the Feast of the Transfiguration, 6 August) that takes precedence over Sunday propers.) Malachi 3:1-4; Psalm 84; Hebrews 2:14-18; ; Luke 2:22-40. Almighty and everliving God, we humbly pray that, as your only-begotten Son was this day presented in the temple, so we may be presented to you with pure and clean hearts by Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. 1

2 purification rituals fulfilled an even more ancient understanding of what it meant to be a Jew. In Exodus we read that when God led his people out of bondage in Egypt, The Lord said to Moses: 2 Consecrate to me all the firstborn; whatever is the first to open the womb among the Israelites, of human beings and animals, is mine. . . . . 11 ‘When the Lord has brought you into the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to you and your ancestors, and has given it to you, 12 you shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb. All the firstborn of your livestock that are males shall be the Lord’s. 13 . . . . Every firstborn male among your children you shall redeem. 14 When in the future your child asks you, “What does this mean?” you shall answer, “By strength of hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery. 15 When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human firstborn to the firstborn of animals. Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord every male that first opens the womb, but every firstborn of my sons I redeem.”

It was this understanding – that the firstborn belong to God, either to be sacrificed, or to be redeemed from sacrifice – that Joseph and Mary were observing. Firstborn baby boys were to be redeemed, bought back, with the sacrifice of a young lamb, or if the family was poor, of a pigeon or a dove. And when this young couple made the walk from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, Mary’s first public outing since the birth 40 days before, they have two amazing encounters. First with Simeon, and then with Anna. An old man, and an old woman, strangers to the family, but to whom each is given the grace to recognize that this child, this baby boy whom Mary and Joseph came to redeem, is himself the perfect Lamb of God that would redeem not only Israel, but the whole world. A light for revelation to all nations, and for glory to your people Israel. This child, this baby boy whom Mary and Joseph came to redeem, is himself the perfect Lamb of God that would redeem not only Israel, but the whole world. Why did this encounter happen? Why is this prophetic moment possible? Mary, and Joseph, and Simeon, and Anna came together at this time and this place because each of them kept on keeping on. Each of them followed the customs and ordinances and practices of their faith. Simeon was righteous and devout. Simeon cultivated the practices of faith that let him discern the Holy Spirit’s guidance to go to the temple to encounter Jesus that day. Anna never left the temple, but

3 worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. Anna dedicated herself to seeking God. Joseph and Mary saved their silver coins, faithfully counted the days, and obediently made the trek to the temple. They purchased the required sacrificial birds to redeem their little baby boy, as the law demanded. In all of these lives – in Anna’s and Simeon’s and Joseph’s and Mary’s – I am sure that there were plenty of days when each said to herself or himself, “Enough already.” Why do I bother? Why do I pray night and day? Why do I struggle to follow the demands of the law? Enough already. I am sick and tired of all this. How can I keep on keeping on? These moments of quiet desperation and horrible resignation come to all of us, without exception. Yet I want to challenge our thinking this morning by suggesting that it is precisely when we are feeling most discouraged, most down in the dumps, most gray, that God is with us. For God is always with us. God never ceases to reach out to us, to call to us, to love us. We may turn away, we may forget that truth, that God is with us, but God never fails. Many of you have been given the gift of a time when you felt close to God, when you felt God’s presence in your life. At times like that, prayer comes easily and our spirits soar. Yet it is precisely in the gray days, the enough-already times, when God seems distant or uncaring, and our hearts feel cold, that prayer and the other spiritual disciplines are the greatest gift we can give ourselves. When we feel cold and broken and lonely is when we need to feed ourselves at that table on the tangible Body and Blood of Jesus and feel him in our hands and mouths, feel someone else’s hands on ours, and hear the words, “the Peace of the Lord be always with you,” as our neighbor looks into our eyes. When the lie worms its way into our hearts that God isn’t listening, and prayer feels flat, that is when prayer has its greatest power to sustain us. When our lives are too full of busyness and other false idols, we most need even a few seconds of silence before the majesty of the one who made the universe, yet cares for you and me intimately, and longs passionately to be near us. You and I no longer offer a lamb and a dove, or two turtle doves, as Joseph and Mary did. Instead, we offer our hearts and our fears. You and I cannot be like Anna, spending all day and night in God’s temple, praying and fasting there for years on end, never leaving, for God calls us out into the world. Yet we can cultivate a constant inner spirit of prayer and humility and an awareness of God’s

4 presence no matter where we are. We need to hold on to the truth that we are like Simeon, for our eyes have seen our salvation. In that salvation we can find peace, and the strength and courage to go on about our lives, even on days when it is cold and gray.