Saturday, December 30, 2017

Christmas 1 Nunc dimittis


Christmas 1 Dec. 31, 2017 Nunc dimittis

“Simeon took the baby Jesus in his arms and praised God, saying,”

In peace and joy I now depart as God is willing,
And faith fills all my mind and heart, calming, stilling,
God the Lord has promised me that death is but a slumber.

Christ Jesus makes the way for me, my gracious Savior,
With eyes of faith and trust I see God’s great favor.
When this life comes to an end my hope is God’s embracing.

The Lord is health and saving light for every nation,
Dispelling shadows of the night with salvation:
Israel’s praise and hope’s delight, my treasure, joy, and glory.

That’s hymn 440 in the red Evangelical Lutheran Worship hymnal. It is an English translation of Martin Luther’s German metrical version of the Simeon’s song of praise. Luther wrote both text and tune for the February 2, 1524 feast of the Purification. It was published in 1524 and included in a 1542 set of chants for funerals.

The traditional Prayer Book version has:  Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, To be a light to lighten the Gentiles,  and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

Psalm 119 verse 164 says, “Seven times a day do I praise you, because of your righteous judgments.” The early church continued and adapted the customs of Jewish daily prayer. As an Augustinian monk Luther learned the medieval pattern of corporate prayer 7 times a day. Simeon’s canticle was sung at the Compline service just before bed.

Many parish churches were served by monks In those churches the 4 major services were combined into two - morning and evening. The  Magnificat from Vespers and  Nunc dimittis from Compline are sung in Evening Prayer. The Nunc dimittis is also part of the extensive concluding prayers of the Eastern Orthodox liturgy. And when some Reformation northern German Lutherans began to chant the Nunc dimittis as a post-communion devotion it went viral.  The Nunc dimittis is a popular part of many Lutheran liturgies.  

We read that “Simeon was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.” As children of Adam and Eve, we are not by nature either righteous or devout. But God works in and through us to fit us for his love and service in this world and the world to come. Thanks be to God who imputes his righteousness to us and who draws by his love and beauty into devotion to his love and beauty. 

Simeon looked for the consolation of Israel. The consolation of Israel has come in the birth of Jesus Christ. The sin of the world has been defeated on the cross. Jesus’ resurrection offers new life to all who will believe.

What do we look for today?  What do we hope for today? Many of us spent some time this Christmas with family. We look and hope for the continued blessing of our family relationships, for their good health and ours, for reasonable prosperity for all. As a Christian I look and hope for continued growth in God’s love and service, and for opportunities to show God’s love in service. As a citizen I look for fuller expression of the declaration of the Pledge of Allegiance, “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

As we prepare for the new year, I invite you to consider, “What do I look for? What do I hope for?” Ask God to show you his particular will for your particular situation. And when God does show you what to look for and hope for, then ask for the truth and power of the Holy Spirit to do God’s will in your life and in our community.  

Simeon prayed, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.” We will all eventually depart this life. God grant we also may depart in peace, trusting in God’s word Jesus.

Simeon concluded, “for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel.” The God who made us loves us; he so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, that “whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Whosover – all people, rich and poor, English speakers and Spanish speakers, whosoever. May God give us grace and opportunity to share the good news of the gospel this day and this year.

This morning in Holy Communion we see the salvation secured to us in Jesus’ death and resurrection, as we obey his command to “do this in remembrance of me.”  

So with Simeon and Christians in every age since,

In peace and joy I now depart as God is willing,
And faith fills all my mind and heart, calming, stilling,
God the Lord has promised me that death is but a slumber.

 Christ Jesus makes the way for me, my gracious Savior,
With eyes of faith and trust I see God’s great favor.
When this life comes to an end my hope is God’s embracing.
 
The Lord is health and saving light for every nation,
Dispelling shadows of the night with salvation:
Israel’s praise and hope’s delight, my treasure, joy, and glory.

Friday, December 15, 2017

Know Jesus


Advent 3 B 17

John said, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me . . .”

On December 8, 1941 Japan invaded the Philippines. After the fall of Corregidor  May 2, 1942 they interned more than 3,000 civilians, Americans, British, and others in classroom buildings at the University of St. Thomas in Manilla. Interning foreign nationals is common in war time. Some Germans spent parts of 1917 and 1918 at Hot Springs, NC. From 1942-45 the United States interned more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry, even though 62% of them were American citizens. Canada interned about 21,000 people, 2/3 of whom had been born in Canada. We have a friend at Deerfield who was interned as a young child.

I tell you all this to introduce an internment Christmas story I once heard.  Over the bed an internee had hung a crucifix and on a table below had made a crèche with sticks and scraps of cloth. A Japanese guard pointed questioningly at the figure of the child in the manger and was told, “Jesus.” Then the guard pointed at the crucifix and was told, “Jesus.” He put his hands together, bowed, and said, “So sorry!”    

This same Jesus whose birth we remember at Christmas is our crucified and risen Lord, our crucified and risen Lord whom we love and serve. We love him, we serve him, but do we know him?  In St. John’s gospel we read how John the Baptist, as he was questioned by the Jewish authorities, spoke to the crowd, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me . . .”

Do we know Jesus?  Is it as true for us as it was for those who heard John the Baptist, that Jesus is “one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me . . .”   Bishop Tim Smith of the NC Synod wrote this year in an Advent meditation, “A simple philosophical exercise: “Who am I?” Immediately we must ask, in order to answer that, “Who tells me who I am?” The answer to that second question is everybody, from parents to teachers to pastors to politicians to advertisers and more.” 

We know a lot about Jesus, the babe in the manger, the crucified and risen Lord, the itinerant preacher whose teachings reveal God to us. Jesus wants us to know him. He stands at the doors of our life waiting for our invitation to come in. When we open the door of faith he does come in and makes himself known.  So in the quiet times I encourage you to get to know Jesus as Jesus makes himself known to you.

As you get to know him, be alert to Jesus as John spoke of him, “one among you whom you do not know.”  First semester in seminary we were assigned Albert Schweitzer’s Quest of the Historical Jesus. Schweitzer was born in 1875, a Lutheran pastor’s son from Alsace, a gifted organist interpreter and biographer of Johan Sebastian Bach. He was a theologian, ordained, and later served as a medical missionary in west Africa In 1952 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He died at his hospital in Gabon, west Africa, in 1965.

 The  Quest of the Historical Jesus examines all the 19th century biographies of Jesus and shows how much the Jesus they portray looks like the  biographer. Then Schweitzer wrote a biography that looks like Schweitzer. Every biography of Jesus since tells us much about the writer.

We want to believe in a Jesus who is like us. But Jesus calls us to be like him.

As you get to know Jesus in your prayers and meditations and Bible study be alert to the strangeness of Jesus, be alert to the ways he is different, be alert to the ways Jesus calls us out of spiritual comfort into new life.

John said, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me . . .”

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Hope and Isaiah


Advent 2B 2017 Newland

          We are called to be people of hope, people who trust in the love and mercy of God, in all our life, in this world and the world to come.

          The Book of the Prophet Isaiah has 66 chapters. The first 39 chapters tell of the last days of the southern kingdom of Judah. Then Jerusalem was captured, the Temple destroyed, and the leaders of the people taken into exile in Babylon 586 years before Christ. Two generations later Babylon fell to the Persians, who allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem. Gradually they did so and the last 27 chapters of Isaiah tell God’s word to the returning exiles.

          The Jews who returned had heard from their parents and grandparents of the land of milk and honey, the beauty of the Temple, the joy of living in Judah. Our children and grandchildren occasionally ask us about the past, and we all tend to describe the good parts. Going back to places where we lived as children is always a shock. The houses and the rooms are much smaller than we remember them. So we can imagine some of the returning exiles’ reactions, particularly from the reluctant spouses. “What have you gotten us into? This is not like grandmother described it. This “homecoming” idea is a big mistake. We’re being punished like our grandparents were. We should have stayed in Babylon.”  They forgot that their ancestors in the desert said the same things about Egypt.

          To this dispirited group, the word of the Lord comes by Isaiah, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins.”

          The penalty has been paid. By his death on the cross Jesus paid the penalty for the sins of the whole world, and for our sins, our individual sins and the sins that come because we live in a world filled with sin and evil and pain and injustice and hopelessness.  We can live in hope because on Easter Day Jesus rose from the dead. Because he lives, we live, and we live in hope. The Holy Spirit of God came at Pentecost to in-spirit us in God’s hope.

          The exiles had followed the route our father Abraham had taken. From southern Iraq they went up the river across Syria and then down the valleys past the Sea of Galilee and down the mountain road to Jerusalem. It took several months on a rough road. The returning exiles knew first-hand about the wilderness and the desert, the valleys and the mountains, the uneven ground and the rough places.  They understood the call of the Lord, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” The exiles understood the call to hope.

          We all know about physical, emotional, and spiritual valleys and mountains, uneven ground and rough places. And we know how the Lord has brought us through them into the place where we are now. For some of us it was easier than for others, but we’re in this together, to help each other, to hope together.

          Deciding to leave the familiar in Babylon to return to Judea was not easy. Families were divided. Some left; others stayed. During the 500 years of Europe’s Dark Ages Babylon was the center of Jewish learning, and Jews were only forced out after the founding of Israel in 1948. The returning exiles knew from experience about the pain of broken personal relationships.

          We know about pain and loss and the loneliness that invites us to lose hope. We know how “people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades . . . surely the people are grass.”

To the exiles, and to us, Isaiah comes with a word of hope, the word of the Lord. “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.” Our hope is in God’s promise. We are called to take the long view, the view from the mountain top, to trust in the love and power of God who “comes with might,” feeds “his flock like a shepherd,” who gathers us his precious lambs in his arms, and carries us next to his heart, and gently leads.

          St. Peter reminds us that we live in God’s time, and encourages us to patience. “With the  Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”

          John the Baptist called the people of Jesus time to repentance, and John continues to call us to repentance. We are exiles in a sin-filled world who are on the road – the sometimes rough road – to God’s kingdom. We are sinners saved by God’s grace in Jesus. And while we are on the road we are called to hope, to hope for our final redemption, to look in hope for God at work in the world and in us.

          December can be a dark month, a time of despair and loss and pain and hopelessness.  But Advent is a time of hope, hope in Jesus’ final triumph, hope in our redemption, hope both in the last day and hope every day. In the busy days let us hope for the guiding of God’s Holy Spirit. In the sad moments let us look in hope for God’s love and power. In the happy times let us hope for the fullness of God’s love and joy in our lives, in the lives of those we love and those we have trouble loving, and in those whom we do not know with whom we share life in the world redeemed by Jesus death and resurrection. Amen.