Wait, See, Worship, Tell the World

by Pastor Gina Johnson

As we come to our fourth week of Advent, I want to begin with just visiting our little friend, Josiah.

So, for those of you who haven't been with us, we've been following a story that goes with this lantern about a young boy named Josiah who was caught up in feeling a little bit gloomy and watching his mom and looking at to-do lists. One night, he decides to go and take a walk and he gets to the end of a street where he likes to sit and think. And the reason he likes it there is because the street light is burnt out.

So, he sits there and that's where he does some of his 10-year-old best thinking. Well, this particular night, he saw a lantern and something within him decided to pick it up and take it home. And as it sat on his bedside each and every night, he'd talked to it, he'd looked at the glow of it, but he still hasn't told anyone about it.

When we last left him, he was feeling this great joy in his heart as he went to bed that evening. Well, he woke up the next morning before everyone else and the sunlight was coming through the window and for just a second, he was laying there and he was listening and he thought the house was oddly quiet. And so he decided to go downstairs and do nothing special.

He ate some cereal and he sat there waiting and then he saw his mom sitting at the kitchen table with her coffee there, some papers all around her. She wasn't quite rushing yet, but she was holding her head in her ands and was just rubbing her forehead. He didn't say a word, he just went up behind her and he put his arms around her and he hugged her.

And she said, “That helped.” He did it one more time. He had nothing else to say and so he went and sat back down, but he noticed that she had a little smile on her face as she picked up her pen and continued to do what she was doing.

You know, Josiah was only 10. He didn't know how to explain what he was feeling. He just knew that somehow finding a lantern, a little glimmer of light, brought him back hope and peace and joy and love.

The lantern didn't fix all the noise and the busyness of the house. It didn't erase mom's to-do list that was on the fridge and it didn't necessarily make being a 10-year-old who is still trying to find his way any easier, but it did for some reason, keep him from bugging his mom, throwing fits or being down that things didn't seem the way he used to remember them. Instead, he just felt a peace and he just knew that that light was just like the light that's always been within him.

You know, that makes me think about this season of Advent and it makes me think about what love is about. Christmas and Advent, it's a time of preparation, it's a time of celebration. It doesn't necessarily fix everything.

If anything, for some of us, it makes things a little busier, a little noisier, and it's not till after Christmas where we're like, whew, praise God. But what we can recognize in all of that is there's nothing to rush towards. There's nothing that needs any fixing and it's just about letting love guide us like a beacon, like a light, something that can be soft and gentle or something that can be powerful in calling us forward. I pray that you let love and you let light continue to guide you as we move even closer to Christmas.

So let us get back into our story. We have been on this journey, this backwards journey to the manger and throughout that time, I think you all remember that we've been to the shoreline, we got to go to the tax collector's home, we met underneath a fig tree, and it continued on as we've been in the Jordan River, we've been in the temple and then today we are still in the temple, but this time I wanna give you a little bit of a different backstory before we jump too far into this.

Sometime ago, for those of you who might not be familiar, there is Zechariah. And Zechariah was one of the priests in the temple.

Now, I know most people, when they're about to give a message about Simeon and Anna, they start right there, but I'm gonna take you guys a little further back on the journey to the temple.

So, Zechariah, he was praying, he was doing his duty as a priest when an angel told him that his wife was pregnant with a boy who's going to prepare the way for Jesus. And Zechariah questioned the angel and ended up being mute.

He could no longer speak as he questioned God's provision. Three months later, there's a teenage girl named Mary who's engaged to a guy in the area named Joseph, and they're both visited by the same angel, except this time Mary is pregnant and she's going to have a son. This is going to be the son of God and she's going to name him Emmanuel, or should I say Jesus?

So, then we have Zechariah in the temple and we have Mary pregnant and we have Joseph getting visited by the same angel. Mary ends up telling Joseph, who didn't believe her, so it was a good thing the angel showed up to him as well. He decided not to divorce her quietly, but to go ahead and stay with her.

Then finally, after months of people doubting Mary and wondering what's going on, she is so excited to have this newborn baby that she sings a hymn of the birth of Jesus. After a visit that she has with her cousin Elizabeth about the baby, then she knows that this is definitely God-ordained, not that she was questioning it, but everything was lining up perfectly. And so now Mary is ready to give birth to this baby and what happens back in Nazareth? There is a census being called.

And so Mary's at home and it's time to pack up with her husband Joseph and go to their hometown. Mary and Joseph have to go back to a tiny little village called Bethlehem. And here, Mary and Joseph, they show up as she's going to have a baby and guess what? There's no room in the inn.

So, Mary and Joseph go to a stable and there they have their baby, Jesus. That same night, you know, there are some shepherds who happen to be out there watching their sheep and there's angels that show up and they tell them that the Messiah has been born in Bethlehem. And so the whole host of angels, they're singing a song of praise and the shepherds go running to tell the people and to make their way.

I think all of this is pretty familiar. Would everyone say that you're on the story? We all know where we're at? Well, great. Let's jump into the scripture.

We'll look at Luke chapter two, verses 21 through 40.

On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived. When the time came for the purification rites required by the law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord as it is written in the law of the Lord.

Every first born male is to be consecrated to the Lord and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of doves or two young pigeons. Now, there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel and the Holy Spirit was on him.

It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went to the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what was the custom of the law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God saying, Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.

The child's father and mother marveled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, this child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be spoken against so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed and a sword will pierce your own soul too. There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Peniel of the tribe of Asher.

She was very old. She had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage and then was a widow until she was 84. She never left the temple, but worship night and day, fasting and praying.

Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong.

He was filled with wisdom and the grace of God was on him. 

All right, now let's all take a break for just a moment there, okay. Isn't that beautiful? It's so funny how often that story in the Bible gets passed over.

You know, it's like we know it happened. We've heard of Simeon and Anna, but nobody really spends a lot of time talking about them and what it means that they were there. See, these were two people who reacted in the same way, slightly different, but they had a lot in common.

And one of the things that they had in common was that they were both devout. Or maybe I should use the word faithful. That's one of the things that we usually, in religion, in church, we use words like devout and faithful because someone who is devout is usually someone who is very faithful to God, faithful to the Spirit, faithful to following that leading.

Both of these people were very faithful. You have Simeon, who is described as good, he was godly, and he was waiting for the time when God would take away Israel's sorrow. See, he was waiting for the Messiah.

And you have to think about what that means. Some of you right now believe that Jesus is here, Jesus lives with us. Some of you are waiting for Christ's return. Some of you aren't sure what to think of it, although you may have been reading about it and studying it for years of your life. Well, the good thing is, in the meantime, we don't have to be concerned about it. We can continue to trust that God's plan is perfection and that everything will unfold beautifully.

When you hear verse 26, it said that Simeon prayed a prayer that he would not die until he saw the Lord's Messiah. And even though we don't have factual evidence, they say Simeon died when he was 113 years old. He waited that long to see the Messiah.

You know, good thing we don't have to count days and wait that long to see the Messiah. But he waited and he wasn't impatient, he was faithful. He believed what the Holy Spirit told him in such a way that when he was prompted to go to the temple, he went. He didn't know what was happening that day, but he knew that something was telling him to go.

And then there's Anna. So what do we know about Anna? We know that she was married a few years and that she was a widow for 84 years. Some people believe that she must have been close to 100 when this took place. And some people say perhaps she was only 84, but otherwise that's quite a long time that she spent doing what? Worshiping.

Now, I believe you guys love me a lot, but you guys wanna come and sit here and be with me day after day, morning and night. We can give it a try sometime, but wow.

Isn't that interesting that she was so devout and so faithful that she knew there was something to being in that temple for worship. The funny thing is is if you were a widow back in those days, it wasn't fun. Usually women in those times didn't work. Really the only jobs they could get were not necessarily ideal, but it's what they knew and it's what they were able to do. And so widows were usually poor. They didn't own any property unless they had family.

Sometimes it was challenging for them to have a place to live. They were usually exploited by the law and Anna should have, could have remarried. But back then it was more faithful and more devout to just remain a widow. That was the culture. If you were a pious woman, then you would not marry again. But you know, that was okay for her.

She wasn't worried about companionship or money or growing older alone because she was already faithful and devout to the one who held her heart and that was the Lord. And, if you look at verse 37, it says that after her husband left, she never left the temple. I just can't imagine that.

As I think about people who devote their lives to worship, worship is not just something we do on Sunday morning. It's supposed to be a way of life. But imagine that she actually was in a physical place designed for that day in and day out.

It's beautiful and at the same time, very mind boggling. They were faithful to God. They weren't just showing up to do a religious requirement. There are people who check religion and check church and check community service as just that, a checkbox. But these two were there because this was just the bottom of their faith. There was so much more to it, so much more built upon it.

And so I want to ask you, can you call yourselves devout? Yeah, we don't sit in here day and night, but are you devout? Do you think that the things that you do, you can consider to be a form of worship day and night? Do you feel like the actions and the words and the things that you choose to do, do you feel like they're honoring God? Do you feel like you could go and rub elbows with Anna and say, “Yeah, I know what you're feeling. I know what it's like to be that enthralled, that captivated, that devoted to following the Lord and to listening to the spirit.”

They were both waiting. They were both waiting as an outward expression of their devotion. And because of their devotion, they were able to see. No one in that space noticed who that baby was, like Simeon and Anna. And it's funny because it's not like when they saw the baby Jesus, they said, well, here's Jesus, look, it's the Messiah.

No, this was just another baby following customs as we read, checking the boxes of this is what we do. This is what our ancestors have done. This is the proper way that Israelites go through practices when we have children.

And the funny thing is when it came to Joseph and Mary, I mean, once they got over the scandal of Mary being pregnant and having this baby in a stable, they were just like everyone else. No one saw them as the mother and father of the savior of the world. But Simeon and Anna, they recognized Jesus right away. I don't think they get enough credit for that.

You know, Simeon, as I told you, he was led to the temple. He was told by God to go to the temple. And when he sees that baby, he just knows. He knows so much that he walks up to them and he wants to hold their baby. Can you imagine you're there going to have your baby go through the practice and some old man just comes up and is like, hey, can I hold your baby? I know who that is.

Creepy, you know. I'm not too sure about that one. But the thing is, he takes Jesus in his arms because he recognizes Jesus. And what does he do? He then begins to worship. It was a natural thing to do. He worshiped by singing a song.

S,o this is very important because this is the part of the Christmas story that really ties to the custom of that time. Whenever people felt joy, whenever people felt relief, whenever people had some catalytic moment happen in their life, they would sing.

You know, sometimes I threaten my children. I'm like, you guys, just one day, I wanna live my whole day like a musical. No matter where we are, I'm gonna stand up and sing as I talk to people. And then I usually try to practice and they don't like it. You know, but I mean, why not? Just live your whole day with that musical joy. 

But you know, that's the thing is it was a custom that when you wanted to worship, when something amazing was taking place, you would break out in song. And actually, if we remember from King David, when things weren't going so hot, you would break out in song too. And the thing about this song, it was the final song of the Christmas story and he sung it and everyone around him maybe didn't know what this was about and why this baby was so special, but everyone was called to attention and worship.

As Simeon recognized the baby Jesus, Anna recognized the baby Jesus in the same way. And we don't even know what she said. We don't have a record of that, but she simply thanked God.

So, there's my question for you: when you see God, do you recognize him? Do you even see God around you? You know, I've said this in church many a time. If all you look for is God, then all you will see is God. It's such a beautiful thing.

When you come into service or when you wake up in the morning and the sun is coming through your window, do you worship him? Do you recognize him?

When we see God in those moments, no, we don't need to drop on our knees and pray. We can just simply feel the joy of that rising in us and know that we are looking at the face of Jesus all around us. That's one of the greatest gifts of Christmas is remembering that God came in human form so he could remind us of who we are.

We would see him and follow him and learn our way back home. We would turn inward and remember what it's all about, and we would look around and see everyone and fall into that faithful, devoted worship the same way Simeon and Anna did when they saw God. But there's one more piece. They waited, they saw, they worshiped, and then they told the world.

That's so important. You know, in Simeon's song, you see that he recognized Jesus. He even said, this isn't just for the Israelites. And that's really challenging.

Now, listen to this. Can you imagine it was always taught that the Messiah was not for everyone, that the Messiah was for the Israelites. They were God's chosen people. They alone were in covenant. And yet Simeon knew that this was gonna flip the tables. This was gonna be something different.

Think about this, guys. We are all here because even though we may not think exactly alike, we are like-minded and we're following the same path. We are following Jesus.

We follow the Spirit. Now imagine if all of a sudden someone said, hey guys, there's a third chapter. There's still more that you don't know about and there's going to be even more to this Jesus character. Some of us would have a hard time with that. Some of us would be like, “No, no, we have it all. It's in this book called the Bible. And now we know everything and the resurrections happened and he's coming again and we're done.” Well, just imagine someone showing up and saying, there's more to the story.

That's exactly what Simeon encountered. As he held the baby Jesus and as he sung, he was told there is more to the story. It wasn't over yet.

And right now, as I stand here telling you, there is more to the story. There are so many people out there that have no idea who Jesus is, no idea what Jesus came to do. There are actually people that fill churches Sunday after Sunday and have no idea what they're even doing there besides it being something they've done for so long or something called them into it.

So, there's my question: what about you? What does your life tell people about Jesus? How can your actions, how can your words, how can just your spirit and the way you carry yourself tell people about Jesus?

The reaction that Simeon and Anna shared was the right one. They waited, they recognized, they worshiped and they told everyone. This is a beautiful time of year for us to slow down from the shopping and the wrapping and the cooking and the family and all the things. Let's not forget there’s property taxes and other stuff at the end of the year too. We wrap that in its own little box over here.

But this is the time where we put all of that away and we just simply recognize that we waited and we saw and now we're worshiping. So, let's go and tell the world, Jesus is born, Jesus is here and we can all have that connection. We can all follow our savior to the kingdom which is inside us all.

Please join me in prayer.

Our most gracious and loving God, we are so grateful for your word.

Your word that reminds us that Jesus and his love and his salvation was for everyone. Your word that reminds us that when we look to you, when we worship you, when we are devoted and faithful to you that you provide the way, that you continue to remind us so that we come to life in song of how beautiful the expression of God and love is. So God, as we are here in this time, we say thank you.

And we thank you for your spirit within us. We thank you for your son, Christ Jesus, who goes before us. And we thank you for this beautiful season of Christmas, the hope, the peace, the joy, and the love.

And it's in the great beautiful name of Jesus Christ, love that we pray, amen.