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February 2:

The Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany – Monroe (Presentation)

This day

Superbowl

Superbowl Sunday in past years represented a competition with church attendance. It doesn’t any longer – except for those few places where a Sunday evening service is important.
I had a dear friend in the first congregation I served in after ordination who was frequently not in church on Sunday because he was an avid golfer. He ended up convincing me that there was an arguable case to be made that golf could be a deeply spiritual activity.
I have not yet been persuaded that either playing football or watching football was an equally spiritual activity. Did the NFL win by moving the game to evening? Or did the church?
I think probably NFL did, but …

This day is also the feast of the presentation.

Wikipedia “and to perform the redemption of the firstborn son, in obedience to the Torah (Leviticus 12, Exodus 13:12–15, etc.)”
With this day we leave behind the Christmas cycle and turn our eyes toward Easter. The account we hear in the gospel takes place 40 days after the birth of Jesus. Feb. 2 counts as 40 days from Christmas. Ash Wednesday is around the corner. That day is a kind of countdown to Easter.

Luke:

In the gospel readings for the Presentation we hear from 2 prophets – Simeon & Anna – who speak in the temple to proclaim Jesus to be the real deal – the expected one to come, the one to “redeem Jerusalem”.
Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

Lord you know that I have waited my whole life for just one thing. I’ve wanted to see the anointed one who is to come. And now he’s come. He’s right before me. And you can take me away. What you made me for I have accomplished.

Simeon’s life had been dedicated to the Messiah who was to come. It didn’t look like Messianic times around him, it looked like apocalyptic times. It seemed impossible, but he waited with expectation. And then he got to see the Messiah.
I thought of a similar story that a hero of mine told about his grandfather. Harry Chapin is my hero’s name. He died young, but his short life was dedicated to serving the hungry. He said this about his grandfather:

My grandfather was a painter. He died at age eighty-eight, he illustrated Robert Frost’s first two books of poetry, and he was looking at me and he said, “Harry, there’s two kinds of tired. There’s good tired and there’s bad tired.” He said, “Ironically enough, bad tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people’s battles; you lived other people’s days, other people’s agendas, other people’s dreams. And when it’s all over, there was very little you in there. And when you hit the hay at night, somehow you toss and turn; you don’t settle easy.

It’s that good tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost, but you don’t even have to tell yourself because you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days and when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy, you sleep the sleep of the just and you say ‘take me away’”. He said, “Harry, all my life I wanted to be a painter and I painted; God, I would have loved to have been more successful, but I painted and I painted and I’m good tired and they can take me away.” Harry Chapin’s grandfather

The gospel text includes also a woman, Anna, also a prophet, and she too recognized who Jesus was and announced it to the world in her prophetic voice.

"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."

These two prophets speak in effect of Jesus’ vocation, the one he was meant to be – as the gospel of John put it “from the beginning of time.”

Vocation

The gospel I hear today seems focused on the concept of vocation. One’s calling. Some years ago F. Buechner developed a powerful – and now well-known – algorithm or formula for identifying one’s vocation. He said:

IT COMES FROM the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God.

There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Super-ego, or Self-Interest.

By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your patients much either.

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. Originally published in Wishful Thinking

The world has a great need for redemption. Just look around and the need is very great. Jesus – as if to match that need – was made by God to have a heart for meeting that need. The place it met for Jesus was at the cross and the empty tomb. Easter.
One of the ways, it seems, that we can reflect Jesus’ light in the world is by living in our own intersection of the work that the world around us needs to have done and our own heart’s desire?
For me that place has for a long time been about what God has made us for. It’s the kind of question we ought all of us to be asking – asking every day.
How well am I living into that place? That intersection?

Concept of presenting, offering in Temple

Candlemas as the feast today is known leads me to wonder how we have been encouraged or discouraged from living into our heart’s desire?
Simeon and Anna had their part to play in putting a prophetic stamp on Jesus’ vocation or calling. Who has played that role in your life?

Confirmation of Vocation?

If I ask that of myself … Who confirmed for me the whatever it was that I was supposed to do with my life?
Who gave me the stamp of approval, the imprimatur to go forward with the task of becoming who I am today?
Who encouraged me, mentored me, yes? But more to the point, who gave that solemn sign, like Simeon & Anna gave to Jesus?
Interestingly two important people who played that role asked me similar questions. The questions were put to me about 35 years apart. In both cases the person had a simple question for me, “Why not?”
Those were the words that somehow set me free to find that intersection of my heart’s desire and the world’s great need.
I thought of a counter example of what I’m talking about. It came in the form of a trusted older person sitting down with my daughters and asking them what their dream was for their life. What did they want to do “when they grew up?” They were both in their early teens. And they poured their heart out to him – they trusted him.
And you know what he did? He proceeded to tell both of them what was wrong with their dreams.
He was the opposite of Simeon and Anna. How can we be Simeon and Anna for the world around us?

Vestry retreat

Does this have anything to do with St. Paul’s
This is a worthy question for the community to be asking. What is the need in the community of Monroe, NC? What is the heart’s desire of this place? And where is the intersection?
Are you doing what you were intended to do?
What lies ahead? God knows. God has made each of us for this time and this place. The need is very great. But your hearts are very big.

Notes:

lectionary

Praising the Temple (psalm genre)

Psalm 84
Quam dilecta!
1 How dear to me is your dwelling, O Lord of hosts! *
My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.
2 The sparrow has found her a house
and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young; *
by the side of your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.
3 Happy are they who dwell in your house! *
they will always be praising you.
4 Happy are the people whose strength is in you! *
whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way.
Malachi: “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple”