February 2, 2020 Luke
LUKE 2:22-40
Happy Groundhog Day 2020! Yep! Today is the day that people take the prophetic actions of a groundhog, who is really a large rodent, as the weather forecast for our spring weather. Whether the groundhog sees his shadow or not, however, really means little as the groundhog has a very poor track record as far as predicting spring goes. One thing for sure, the groundhog is not a prophet of God, but a superstition brought to this country by the Pennsylvania Dutch settlers.
In today’s Gospel lesson, however, we meet two of God’s prophets, Simeon and Anna, but before we talk more about them, let’s take a look at prophesy itself. Today, most of us ignore prophesy that come to our attention, such as the date of the second coming of Jesus. Afterall, prophets are only as good as their accuracy, and most of them today are batting zero. A look at the Old and New Testaments, however, reveals many, many places in the Bible that refer to the prophets of that time. God often spoke through the prophets. For example, Matthew 1:22 tells us, “Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophets, and Zachariah 7:7 says, “Are not these the words which the Lord proclaimed by the former prophets.” I also want to point out that there were both men and women who were prophets and prophesized what God spoke to them.
Perhaps the most important prophesy of old was that of the birth of a messiah. A few weeks ago, we talked about the “wise men” who knew of these prophesies and immediately believed the angels and followed the star to Bethlehem. Here are a few of the prophesies they were probably familiar with.
- Isaiah 7:14—Isaiah prophesies that a pure young woman will give birth to God’s son.
- Matthew 1:18–23—Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled.
- Isaiah 9:6—Isaiah prophesies that Jesus Christ will come as a baby; Jesus is described by several names.
- Micah 5:2—Micah prophesies that Jesus will be born in Bethlehem.
- Matthew 2:4–6—The scribes knew that Bethlehem was the prophesied birthplace of the Messiah.
- 1 Nephi 11:18–21—Nephi prophesies that the Son of God will be born to a virgin.
- Luke 1:26–31—A virgin named Mary will be the mother of Jesus Christ.
3 Nephi 1:4–21—On the night of Jesus’ birth, there was no darkness in America and a new star rose.
- Matthew 2:2—A new star appeared in Israel.
Unlike the famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, we can see that the Prophets that God spoke through had a very good track record. This is one of the things about God’s word that amazes me, the wonderful way that God’s word over time, is consistent and true.
This brings us to today’s prophets and what we can learn from them. They are only mentioned in this one section of scripture. Yet, we can gather much about their character from these few words.
Have you ever heard of the old saying, “Good things come to those who wait”? As a child, this was a saying that I heard often from my mother. We expect children to have issues waiting, after all their concept of time is different. In today’s society of instant gratification, however, adults also have issues when they have to wait for anything. They want everything now! I can’t imagine anyone today having the patience that Simeon and Anna had. The coming of the Christ Child was a long-awaited event. For Simeon and Anna, we are talking many, many years of waiting. Yet, their faith never wavered and their believe that the Messiah would eventually be born remained steadfast.
Here are two people that are important symbolic representations of many of us, for they were people who loved and worshipped God, people that had hope burning in their hearts, and who God would keep His promises. And God did keep His promise. The spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would see the Messiah before he died, and here he is in the temple with the Christ Child arrives. We can be sure that his presence at the temple that day was no accident. We are told that the widow Anna was very devout and lived night and day at the temple. We can also be sure that God had a hand in placing her there so that she, too, could see that the promised Messiah had been born.
We are told that Anna was 84. As a widow we know that she had experienced sorrow in her life. Yet, we see that she had not grown bitter from her experiences, but instead had grown closer to God. However, her other choice would have been to rebelle against God and blame God for her loss, and in the end becoming bitter and resentful. Our lesson from Anna is that it all depends on how we think of God. We can think of God as always with us and close to us, or we can think of God as being distant and far from us. This begs the question of how each of us thinks about God. As Lutherans we profess that we believe that God is a living God and always with us. Yet, the question to ponder is whether we only give this concept lip service, or do we really experience a minute to minute, day to day, relationship with God? Do we walk on the path of faith with Him?
As we leave here this morning, we need to ask ourselves whether the spirit is at work in our lives. Do we listen for the spirit’s voice, and follow where Christ is leading us? Are we living our lives with hope and the expectation that God can and does keep His promises? Through what our Lord Jesus Christ did for each one of us on the cross, we have been promised eternal life if we believe. Ultimately when God makes big promises, he is going to be able to keep those promises, and He wants us to be confident that He can and will! Are you?
Amen