Speaker: Kate André
Text: Luke 2:21-40
Good morning, Columbus Mennonite Church!
Thanks, for inviting me to speak on this first Sunday in the Christmas season!
My name is Kate André. I’m the pastor of the Mennonite Congregation of Boston.
I’m also Susan André’s daughter.
I understand your Advent theme was “Visitations” — temporary but meaningful encounters.
It’s fitting, then, that I, a visitor to your church, am the last person to sermonize about visitations.
So far in your Narrative Lectionary journey this month,
angels have visited, family members have (Mary and Elizabeth)…
But in today’s Gospel story, as Jesus first crosses the threshold into the Temple–
an intentionally sacred space not entirely unlike this one–
a visitation occurs between intergenerational strangers.
Before we dive into the story, let’s take a few deep breaths,
calling our hearts and minds to the Spirit of Life in our midst.
As you breathe, notice what words from the following Jan Richardson meditation resonate with you today:
I am still fascinated by thresholds–
those places that lie between the life we have known and the life ahead of us.
I am continually intrigued – and eager, and fearful, and amazed, and mystified –
to enter into those spaces where we have left the landscape of the familiar, the habitual,
and stand poised at the edge of a terrain whose contours we can hardly see or imagine…
A threshold invites and calls us to stop. To take a look around. To imagine. To dream. To question. To pray.
“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God,
our strength and our redeemer.”
Here’s a fun fact: In the late 2000s, I was unfamiliar with the Mennonite tradition.
But my mother was a new member of CMC, so I came with her to worship whenever I visited from out of town.
On Christmas Eve 2009, I sat right there at your piano,
played selections from Charlie Brown’s Christmas, and sang a song I’d written for my mom as a gift.
I never would have believed, then, that I would return fifteen years later
to preach from your pulpit as a Mennonite pastor.
Now here we are, poised on the threshold of 2025.
The countdown to New Year invites us to consider what we wish to release and what we want to renew,
and it often reminds me of New Years past:
I recall the many New Years throughout my childhood and young adulthood
when we carried on my grandmother’s ritual of making Zozobra dolls.
Their name, Zozobra, derives from a Spanish word meaning “a strong feeling of anxiety or gloom.”
We wrote our worries and fears on a paper towel,
twisted it to resemble a Halloween ghost, and burned it at midnight,
leaving our troubles in the year past, hoping for a fresh start…
No doubt some of you remember, too, the eve of the year 2000, Y2K:
Amidst predictions of total computer failure and the collapse of civilization,
many survivalists moved off the grid, only to find on January 1st (with relief and disappointment)
a continuation of life and business as usual…
I recall New Year’s 2014, when instead of popping champagne
I went to a yoga studio and did 108 sun salutations in a circle of complete strangers,
(then spent the first days of January popping ibuprofen);
and New Year’s 2015, when I watched fireworks over Vegas, unaware that less than a month later
I would meet the man who would become my husband.
And do you remember the countdown to 2020– a year that connoted perfect vision?
We didn’t see the coronavirus coming (well, I didn’t),
and with it a not-so-temporary suspension of the ways we gather, intergenerationally:
our rituals, our rites, the customs we hold sacred in good times and bad.
2020 was a year of illumination after all,
but it illuminated inequities in our healthcare system, racial prejudice in our policing,
extreme wealth gaps, and our real, human vulnerability.
2020 pierced the souls of many, and it was also the year I gave birth to my beautiful son.
Time unfurls in surprising ways.
And now we gather in the waning days of 2024:
our world groans from war,
our country reels from inflation, braces for mass deportations, worries about artificial intelligence,
and struggles to keep up with the devastating impact of extreme weather,
even as some billionaires pour their wealth not into public assistance or green energy
but into privatized space travel and the dream of colonizing Mars.
Each December, the music app Spotify compiles a playlist of users’ most-listened-to songs
from the previous year.
Because my son listens to music during his afternoon naps,
my most-listened-to song this year was “The Creek” from the TV show Bluey.
Its opening lyric echoes the longings of our historical moment: “I know a place where the grass is greener…”
What are you longing for in this new year?
Imagine that you are Mary, or Joseph.
You have just welcomed your firstborn son into a world of imperial oppression.
Many in your community hope for a military Messiah, who will vanquish your enemies and free your people.
Angels have proclaimed that someday your son will be this light in the darkness.
But for now he’s an infant like any other,
and you, like your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents before you,
are facing the relentless responsibilities of new parenthood. So what do you do?
You faithfully uphold the religious rituals your ancestors upheld,
no matter what was happening in the world.
As psychological anthropologist Brad Shore notes, “So much of our lives is dictated by forces –
economic, political, physiological, ecological – over which we have little control.
Ritual, on the other hand,” helps us “to shape and reshape our lives,”
adding meaningful “structure” to the passage of time.
Though there is a reliable rhythm to the rising and setting sun, to our breaths and beating hearts,
if every day is the same– feed the baby, wash the diapers, rinse the dishes, and repeat–
our dynamic, miraculous existence begins to feel robotic.
Rituals combat such stultifying monotony. But they do more than this:
According to theologian Ronald Rolheiser, author of The Holy Longing,
whenever we enter into a new chapter or assume a new role in our human journey,
it can take time (and ritual!) to help us sense and embody the new spirit we will need for this new phase of life.
And so after the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph follow the rituals laid out in Torah law:
Leviticus 12 reads, “If a woman conceives and bears a male child,
she shall be unceremoniously unclean seven days… on the 8th day” the child will be circumcised.
Basically, there’s a full week of rest, bonding, and reorientation for both baby and mom before circumcision.
Then Leviticus specifies that the mother’s “time of blood purification shall be 33 more days,”
33 more days to rest and let her body and spirit catch up with this new life she is living as a parent–
a kind of biblical maternity leave!
On the fortieth day after a mother gives birth, she must make the slow pilgrimage to Jerusalem
and bring offerings to the Temple priest.
Leviticus mandates, “… If [the mother] cannot afford a sheep,” which Mary and Joseph cannot,
“she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons…”
Then, according to Exodus 13:2, she must “consecrate” her firstborn to God. The end! Rituals complete!
What might you like to hold sacred and dedicate to God this coming year?
Because the Gospel of Luke is all about subverting expectations,
today’s story doesn’t focus on the rituals, or the Temple priests who administer them,
but on two people whom this poor, holy family unexpectedly meets–
strangers bound to them by more than blood;
humans acting as angelic heralds;
elders with lessons to teach them, and us,
about the power of sight and prophecy, the wisdom of renewal and release.
Let’s start with Simeon:
The text says he is “righteous and devout,”
a man of deep faith, attuned to God’s promptings in his heart and in the world.
He feels the Spirit has guided him to the Temple to finally see the Messiah, after years of waiting.
Has the Holy Spirit rested on you like this?
Have there been moments when you felt guided by God in your life?
Imagine how Simeon might feel as he is led to the Temple, ready finally to see the savior of his people–
that mighty, military Messiah, perhaps!–
only to find someone small and vulnerable, with nothing yet to offer but the lessons of that vulnerability.
Jesus, dependent on Mary.
Mary, dependent on Joseph.
Joseph, dependent on the guidance of God through dreams.
And God, dependent on each of us to listen and respond.
Is Simeon disappointed? Does he stand aghast, doubting the Spirit’s wisdom?
No – Simeon literally embraces this forty-day-old child, a sprout unable even to hold up his own head,
and Simeon sings:
“my eyes have seen God’s salvation…
a light for revelation to the gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”
What if we could see in the stranger such potential to save the planet?
What if everyone greeted and treated each person of any age and earthly origin as what they truly are:
a beloved child of God?
Can Simeon know that Jesus will continue to embody the vulnerable open-heartedness of infancy
until the end of his short life,
extending love, forgiveness, and healing to everyone,
not just those within his own tribe, race, denomination, political party, or nation?
Does Simeon sense that Jesus’ teachings will inspire us still, 2,025 years later,
to pursue right relationships between God, neighbor, Self, and all Creation,
and thereby be agents of salvation– of spiritual and physical deliverance from harm?
Of course, not all of today’s Gospel story is sweet.
After words of light and blessing, Simeon, still holding Jesus,
tells Mary that her son is destined to “be opposed,” and that “a sword will pierce her soul too.”
If I was Mary, I might at this point say, “Okay, sir, give me back my baby please…”
But Simeon’s words aren’t wrong!
To be alive in the flesh brings the full spectrum of experience– from light and glory to pain and loss.
This is especially true for those who embody Jesus’ dogged, challenging pursuit of justice.
Consider Martin Luther King, Jr., who echoed Simeon when, in his final sermon,
he quoted lyrics from “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”:
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” MLK said.
MLK spoke of having seen the Promised Land shining not through one, messianic figure,
but through the ongoing struggle for Civil Rights:
“‘We’ve got some difficult days ahead,’ MLK told an overflowing crowd in Memphis, Tennessee,
on April 3, 1968, where the city’s sanitation workers were striking.
‘But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop …
I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you.
But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.’
Less than 24 hours after he spoke these prophetic words, King was assassinated.”
Jesus didn’t even begin his public ministry until he was thirty-three.
Before he turned 37, Jesus’ body would be crucified.
But his movement would find new life after his death and change the world.
Simeon wouldn’t live to see any of it.
Yet in today’s Gospel story, Simeon recognizes and affirms the seeds of salvation in a tiny stranger,
and it brings him peace,
allowing him to release the anxiety of a lifetime spent longing for all that is broken in the world to be mended.
The eighty-four-year-old Anna wouldn’t live to see Jesus’ ministry either.
Yet simply the mini-Messiah’s presence in the Temple inspires Anna
to emerge renewed from sixty years of secluded prayer, fasting, and grief,
and lift her prophetic voice to share the good news:
an elderly widow empowered in a world that neither valued nor protected widows.
This is the bittersweetness of being mortal,
of watching the years click by, bringing new generations with them.
We all become, to borrow from the prayer commonly misattributed to the martyr Oscar Romero,
“prophets of a future not our own.”
Perhaps when she leaves the Temple, Anna proclaims something like the words of this prayer.
Whether you’ve heard it hundreds of times or never before,
I invite you to hear the prayer today, on the cusp of a new year, in this intergenerational ritual gathering,
with new ears, ready for a divine visitation:
It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision. . . .
This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and to do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own…
Amen.
