"The Spirit Moves: in Individuals"

January 28, 2018

Luke 2:22-32

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Sermon 

So...

Every once in a while things in life go awry, off the rails, and life gets difficult!

Everything we do only seems to results in only more challenges. We try to shovel the snow and we hurt our back. We go to wash the car and don’t notice the window is open. We take down a bit of loose wallpaper only to notice the paint behind it isn’t the same faded color as the rest of the room!

And it can be much worse. A few years ago a friend started a new job as a teacher where you have the option of getting your year’s salary paid  to you every two weeks over the course of a year (with more in each check) or every two weeks over the course of 10 months (with less in each check but none in the summer).

She opted (she thought) for it to paid out over a year, only to discover, much to her consternation and distress, that she had marked the form wrong and had been getting paid more each month and would get nothing in July and August!

It’s easy and quite understandable in those circumstances to get a little stressed out, maybe even a little depressed! You might lose some hope and even stall out. It happens to the best of us, in our work lives, in our family life; it even happens sometimes in our spiritual life.

We want to pray. We don’t! We know we should give. We miss a Sunday or two, and then instead of the $20 bucks we normally put in the offering baskets, we should put $60, but can’t.

We want to study the bible, help our neighbors, go to Texas, sing in the choir. Get our kids to Empower Kids or Empower Teens. But we fall short.

Even with the best of intentions, we fall short and miss the mark. It happens! A lot!

As one who is committed to trying to get healthy, I decided to exercise using an app on my iphone. The idea is to over a 12 week period; end up doing 100 pushups, 100 sit ups and 100 squats.

Three days a week you are supposed to do three or four sets of like 3-4 reps of each and the app then challenges you the next time to do one more rep in each of the sets every time you come back.

I started two weeks ago, Monday. I am planning on doing the second day sometime this week.

Failure is an option, it seems.

So what do we do? We could consider of the famous words of Sue Farley to poor Sue Maney Eggleton on the Appalachian Trail hike of 2015, “Suck it up buttercup”. Or we can take heart in the good news given to Simeon!

Even when it seems darkest, God is in the process of sending a natal star. Doing as God always does, a new thing! We just need to remember: the Spirit continues to move! – even in individuals!

There was nothing special about Simeon. Yet Simeon is one of the great biblical characters. Not because he was famous or powerful or even very significant. He was not. But what he was it turns out, was one of us.

He was simply a person of faith in touch circumstances wait for God to do his thing! To do what God always does, what he has promised! And then Simeon did what each of us is invited to do; to rejoice when we sees God act work with our own eyes.

Think about the context in which Simeon lived.  Even though he stood just outside the Great Temple in Jerusalem the symbol of the power and authority of God, his life, his city and his country were under Roman rule and authority.

In a few weeks we will celebrate Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on a donkey to the cheering crowds; but we must not forget that at the same time the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate would also be riding in another of Jerusalem’s gates astride a glorious Roman war horse with all the pageantry and power of Rome!

To Simeon it must have seemed hopeless. The values that every faithful Jew held most precious were being challenged and stripped away. God had made great promises to come and save his people and to send a Messiah, but that hope was fading, seemed distant, and most unlikely.

Yet Simeon like most of God’s common people, becomes the symbol, the reminder that God can come in many ways to us! The Spirit can come as great power in a time of need! But the Spirit can also come as a quiet comfort, an assurance, a still small voice that calms our nerves and gives us hope to see beyond hope the glimmer of God at work.

Even when life is precarious and we feel frail, God is there, aware of our need, and ready to act.

And sometimes the help God sends comes in most unlikely ways, in the most unlikely packages; even in the presence of a tiny little baby boy with his mother: he getting circumcised, she making offerings for being of all things, unclean!

To Simeon was given the gift of a child, who was not yet King, but still a token of God’s peace and grace to come, and Simeon rejoiced!

The Spirit continues to move – in individuals like you! So take, note, be of good hope, and rejoice, for the spirit is here!

Amen.