If you're a college student home today, then you can probably sympathize with one dimension of Jesus' early ministry. Early on, he comes home to his hometown of Nazareth, but he's exhibiting all of this new authority in teaching and in wisdom. And the reports of his miraculous work are beginning to filter back to the townspeople and they're a little bit incredulous. Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son? How can somebody that came from such inauspicious background rise to such commanding levels of influence? It just can't be. To their incredulity, Jesus offers a little bit of proverbial wisdom in Mark 6 when he says, a prophet is not without honor except in his own hometown and among his relatives and in his own household. The prophet might speak for God, but for some reason those who know him best or who think they know him best are the least likely to respect him. We all know the adage about familiarity breeding contempt, but Jesus is speaking of a familiarity that shapes low expectations, in fact that stifles faith because he could do no good work there among those who knew him best, so the text says. This morning, as you heard Ripray, begins the season of Advent. We're going to turn our attention to two truths that our hearts and minds can scarcely get around. One, that God became flesh and dwelt among us, in Jesus, and two, that this same Jesus is coming back, that he's not just an idea or a philosophy or a moral code, he is a person, and he will return, and we can scarcely fathom that. For each of the next four weeks, we're going to look at a person who was close to the coming of Jesus, who was present to his arrival, and we're going to do so in part because of what Jesus warns his hometown of. You see, we're like Nazareth. In one sense, we can be so familiar with what Jesus has said and what he has done that we think we know him all, and we know him well, and our eyes and minds sort of glaze over, and we stop being attentive to what he might want to show us, or do with us or in us. In effect, then our honor of him is degraded, just like it was of those in Nazareth. In another sense, though, we're so intoxicated by the trappings of Christmas, that we can really have our view of Jesus eclipsed. We might not openly question his authority or even deride him, but both are assumed familiarity with him, and our attention to so many other things, instead of him, leaves us essentially unmoved by him. In brothers and sisters, the people that are unmoved by him, they will ask nothing of him, they will expect nothing from him, and they will do nothing for him, for their honor of him is muted at best. This morning, we're going to look through the eyes of one who rejoiced in him. We're going to get his perspective here, his story, and see how his perspective might shape three very crucial things in us. Love, courage, and the sense of our own death. So would you stand for reading from God's Word, chapter 2 of Luke's Gospel, starting in verse 22. And when the time came for their purification, according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, as it is written in the Law of the Lord, every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord, and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves, or two young pigeons. Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him, and it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, Lord, now you are letting your servant to part in peace according to your Word. For my eyes have seen your salvation, but you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel, and his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. And Simeon blessed them and said to marry his mother, behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed, and the sword will pierce through your own soul also, so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God, you may be seated. He is a man we know almost nothing about. We don't know where he came from, we don't know what he did for a living, we don't know of any title that he might have held or who his family was, we don't know if he was a man of modest or great means. He leaves the narrative as quickly as he enters. His is the briefest of testimonies and yet perhaps the most poignant. From his few words, we infer that he is aged. There's been a lot of water under the bridge for as long as he's been alive. He's seen two Roman emperors come and go. He's seen vile puppet leaders installed to rule over Judea and Jerusalem. He might have even seen brazen and pious men seek to restore the glory of Israel, and then seen them put down as quickly as they rose. This is a man in winter. Weird by his years perhaps, but not decrepit. Not too exhausted or affirmed to get up each morning and to go to the temple to pray. We know this man's name, it's Simeon, and that he knew the scriptures. It was likely his daily office to meditate upon what his forebears had preserved for the glory of God and for the good of his people. He likely would have known the Psalms intimately, found his delight in them, and assuaged his pain by them. We know he knew the prophets, both their lamentful agonized laments and their effusive hopeful expectation of Israel's restoration. He knew the words of Isaiah in particular. For the text says he was waiting for the consolation of Israel, which is what Isaiah spoke in chapter 40. When he anticipated the day when God would end all of Israel's warfare, when God would pardon their iniquity, and when God would gather them again like a shepherd, dealing gently with them in his arms. Simeon would have been so familiar with these words and promises that they would not only inform his mind, they would forge his hope and shape his character. We don't know much about Simeon, but we know at least from this text that he was a righteous and devout man, and he was righteous because he staked his faith in the promise of God, that God would fulfill his promise even if the fulfillment would come long after Simeon had moved off the stage. Which is what makes this moment in his life so intriguing. At a time when nothing special is really happening in Israel or in Jerusalem, when God had seemed had gone silent for a few hundred years with his people, when Israel was as much under the thumb of a pagan nation as it was when she was an exile in Babylon, amidst Israel's languor, Simeon receives a bit of insight, and from no less than the Holy Spirit himself. You and I may erroneously assume that prior to Pentecost, that the Holy Spirit is sort of sitting on the bench waiting for the bullpen to call, biting his time, doing nothing. The Holy Spirit is very present in this moment and very present to Simeon, informing him of the greatness that was about to come his way and promising him that he would not die until some of his faith had become sight. Because he's going to witness to the earliest manifestation of Israel's consolation. How the Spirit communicates with him, we don't know, the text doesn't say. It just says that the Spirit was much upon him. But just as mysterious as how the Spirit led him to the temple on a particular day to encounter a young couple with a newborn who were weary. They had already been through a lot. The mother had been told by an angel that she would give birth to a son who would be called the son of God. When the husband finds out she's pregnant, he is incredulous as you might expect it first, and he offers to quietly and discreetly dismiss her from their betrothal until he is convinced of its reality by an angelic presence like the one who first informed Mary. When that child is born, this couple, unassuming as they were, are thronged by a bunch of shepherds, telling them that they've heard from angels that the Savior has been born in the city of David. They've been through a lot. They've traveled a lot. And it just so happens that they're in Jerusalem on that day in order to fulfill the righteous requirements of the law of Moses. Mary has finished her 40 days of post-partum seclusion. She's ready to offer a sacrifice that will restore her to ceremonial cleanliness. The law called for the sacrifice of a lamb, but they offered the more inexpensive two pigeons and a turtle dove. It's all they could afford, and the law made provision for those with lesser means. There's one other reason though that they're in the temple that day. The Passover is on their mind as they look at this child. You see, God had said in His law that all the first born males of the families of Israel belonged to Him in a special way. In our day, we don't make much distinction about siblings or birth orders or whose first born and whether they're male or not. We just have children. But in the ancient near east, the first born son was almost everything to a family. Upon Him, the hope of a family survival rested since it would be through His name and work that they would retain their holdings and their land. So when the Lord strikes down the first born of Egypt for Pharaoh's refusal to release the Hebrew captives, the Lord is striking at what was most highly esteemed. But you remember Israel's part of that story too. She too had her first born males threatened. She had to make sacrifice to protect the lives of the first born males. Why? Because of Israel's own sin. For her sin, a ransom would have to be paid for the first born males, a ransom paid in blood. And unless they spread the blood of an unblemished lamb atop their doorposts, their first born males would suffer the same fate as that of Egypt's. Just as sacrifice therefore had to be made for the lives of the first born males at the Passover. So every family henceforth in homage to the Passover would have to make an offering for their first born male. That's why Mary and Joseph were there to offer a monetary ransom to so to speak by their child back in remembrance of how God spared the children at the Passover. For those two reasons, this young couple finds themselves in the courts of the temple. But before they can fulfill what's required of them, they are intercepted by a wise and old man named Simeon. The text does not record any words of introduction between them, only that he takes the child into his arms and blesses God in thanksgiving. It must have been a powerful moment for the couple and him. Because I think he would agree that hope fulfilled is his powerful a sight as it is a feeling. Maybe you've seen the little video montages going through the internet this week of soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan that are arriving home much earlier than expected. And they're showing up at school rooms and in front doors and at workplaces and they're showing up before faces of wives and children and husbands and those to whom they come crater. They weep with joy because the dream that their family would come home was finally fulfilled. They weep because they know in that moment that they lived not only with hope but with fear of its disappointment. And so when that hope is fulfilled, it's like winning two battles, one over fear and two over the weight of having to wait for so long for it to come true. That's the closest thing I can think of to what Simeon must have felt as he held this child in his hands because his weight had been so long. And the promise as an idea was probably so sweet to him but the lack of evidence that it was even imminent must some days have made him think that this promise was just an idle tale. That's why he could only celebrate at the sight of this child. He so moved that all he can do is sing just like Mary and Zachariah and the angels had before Simeon breaks into something like a hymn. To give praise to what God was doing in his midst. And he echoes what Mary his mother had already heard twice before that the salvation of Israel would come through this child. But then he annunciates something to Joseph and Mary that makes the marvel as if they hadn't been through enough to make the marvel. He says, my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for the glory to your people Israel. This Jesus who would be called a son of God who will sit on the throne of David who will bring consolation to the people of Israel. This same Jesus will bring that very same consolation not only to Jews but to Gentiles also. Now to us, that might sound nice sort of inclusive like we moderns like to hear. How sweet. But not very significant. To Joseph and Mary however, they marveled at the sound of that promise because Simeon is saying that the mercy and kindness of God are about to be extended to people and nations that had once hissed at Israel. That had spat upon them, that had harassed them, oppressed them and enslaved them. Jesus had come for the likes of them too. He had come to bring blessing to peoples who had been at bottom enemies of God's people. So is that sort of a new wrinkle with God's plan now that Jesus is here? Is this plan B, a kinder gentler administration where a thousand points of light will be scattered throughout the world? Is that it? Is it new? It's not new. It's as old as humanity. The universal offer of divine blessing is as old as the garden because you know in the garden there's no ethnicity, there's no color, there's no race, there's no class, there's no rank, there's no status, there's just humanity. When God makes a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12, it's with the understanding that the blessings that will come through Abraham and his seed will be for the purpose of being extended to the nussing of all nations. If you read carefully in Law of Moses, you will find abundant verbiage that speaks of how sojourners, immigrants, those not native born to Israel should be afforded the same privileges, the same respect as if they were native born. Even during Israel's exile, she is called to seek the welfare of the nation to which she has been relocated. For in doing so, Jeremiah says Israel will find her own welfare. So kindness to all nations is not new. This plan was not hatched in a corner. It's been part of the plan from the beginning. What you do about Jesus is that he is the culmination and the acceleration of that original plan. Jesus will mean glory for Israel. Simeon says that. Why? Because we know what Jesus says in John chapter 4, salvation is from the Jews. Israel will be honored as the privileged people from whom the Savior comes, but light will come upon both Jews and Gentiles. And both see the majesty of God as he upholds his holiness and his mercy in Christ. They will both have access to the same forgiveness and the same spirit. They will both become, as Paul puts it, one new man, a unified body of believers who are at once at odds with one another. Israel's warfare ends. Mary and Joseph marvel. Their child will mean the full inclusion of Gentiles and the purposes and blessing of God. That's astonishing to them. But then the tone shifts. Simeon's tone shifts. He said what's marvelous. And now he's going to utter what sobering. And he says it directly to Mary. Maybe because he knew that Joseph wasn't going to live to see these realities. He says to her what would sober her. Namely, the Jesus will mean the rise and fall of many in Israel. Some who have high standing who appear to be in God's favor will actually be brought low and humbled for their arrogance. While others who are usually not given a second thought who are marginalized because of their station, they will end up being highly esteemed by God. They will be blessed despite what everyone else thinks they deserve. Jesus is going to challenge entrenched categories of what constitutes righteousness before God. And because of that, Simeon says Jesus will be opposed. Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens had another one of those debates last week about whether religion was good for the world, whether Christianity was good for the world. The new atheists, as they call themselves or as they've been called, think that not only is Christianity wrong, it's wrong for the world and should be eradicated. I think of what Simeon says. Apparently the idea of having the warrant to oppose Christ is not so new. Jesus will provoke opposition and that opposition will believe that it's in everyone's best interests to have him and it eliminated. It's become a moral imperative. Jesus is going to expose men's hearts their true condition. He will cast a searing light upon false piety on naked self interest in the guise of religion. He will call out the twisting of the word and condemn those who use it to control and all that will get him killed. But the unkindest cut of all is that Mary, his mother will be witness to it all. The sword will pierce through your own soul also, he says to her. The pain will be light at first. When he's 12, they'll lose him outside Jerusalem and rush back and find him they're sitting humbly yet authoritatively with the scribes in the temple. But he is not theirs and that he is bound for both glory and agony will emerge slowly. But like a tumor, the pain of seeing him dismissed and mocked and ridiculed and eventually executed will eventually metastasize through her whole soul. She will not go unscathed in the wake of his work. And so in all, the sobering part of Simeon's message to Mary is that the salvation that Jesus brings will be full of disruption. Disruption of the profoundest sort and no one will be untouched by it. Everyone will be challenged. All pretenses will be exposed, all ages is tested. And then what happens to Simeon? He vanishes from the narrative, never to be heard from again. All we know is that he went to his death in peace because he'd seen the salvation of Israel in this child. So there's more here in a few verses than perhaps you expected. A little more color and significance than the brevity and cultural distance might have suggested, but so what? What's here for us? What do we do with what we've heard from him? How will what he said about Jesus helped to restore Jesus' honor in our hearts so that we don't walk through another advent season marginalizing the one for whom we sing and make Mary and give gifts? Three things, I think. One, that Jew and Gentile are brought together to form one new community of belief in Christ Jesus may only seem mildly interesting to you, like a little bit of theological minutia that people write down in large heavy books that no one ever reads. But when you look at the history of the church and now it's struggled to get its mind around this idea that God had come for the Gentiles also, that love was to be shown not only to those who were unlike them, but also to those who once hated them, then you might begin to see that though we might not marvel like Mary and Joseph, but the thought of it, it does touch us at a critical point of weakness in us. Our first instinct you see and you know is not to love those who are unlike us, much less those who hate us. Our first instinct is to avoid those who make us uncomfortable, who are so different from us, and to retaliate against those who hold us in contempt. Brothers and sisters, the Lord doesn't care, I think, if you marvel over the fact that Jews and Gentiles are now in a common humanity in Christ, but he does care if you're loving only those who love you and caring only for those who are like you. Jesus says as much when he grows up on the sermon on the Mount. And so you and I have to beware of this ingrained tendency to narrow the circle of our concern and our love to only those who respect us and reflect us. Because that tendency defies the example of Christ and may in fact betray an insidious self-interest in our so-called love. Now am I overstating the case? Are you saying Patrick that if I love those who love me that that's not true love? I'm not saying that, but if we're refusing, if we're withholding love from those who don't love us, then we're making love contingent upon another's love and brothers and sisters that ain't love. If we're refusing to love those who aren't like us, then we've made either a conscious or an unconscious determination that they are beneath us. And that is a partiality that God finds abominable because it flies in the face of his steadfast love for you, love that condescended to you and to me because God is not like me. And he loved me when I was his enemy. Of course we love those who might love us, but we have to beware of limiting our concern to those constituencies. Why? How else will this world see that God's love is different from other versions unless we defy the instinct to love only those who love us who who like us or who are like us? In what better arena of life will you be forced to trust in the love of God for you than when you're compelled to love one who neither respects you nor reflects you? We ask the question, how shall our honor of Christ be restored? We have our honor of Christ restored to us when we recognize that our mandate is to love those who are unlike us and who don't like us, who even despise us. So who are you angry at today? Who's angry at you? Who are you afraid of? Who are you different from or awkward around? What does this text say? You love them. It won't be easy, but it'll be holy. And when you love them, our prophet Jesus has his honor among his kindred again. That's the first thing Simeon Four has for us. Here's the second. And it's bound up with the fact that disruption accompanied Jesus' salvation. The Jesus upsets the apple cart wherever he goes, almost goes without saying. He toppled the assumption that if you know a lot about God that you necessarily know God well, he challenged that. He also challenged the characterization that if you were privileged economically or politically or vocationally, that that necessarily meant that you were favored by God. He says, no, it's not the case, not necessarily. He also pushed back against the idea that if you were a woman or a child, if you were poor, sick or crippled, that you were of no consequence to God, on the contrary. But most importantly, he overturned the idea that if you were a wicked sinner, that you were beyond the love of God. If you've come into this room this morning wondering if you could ever be forgiven for your sin, let Simeon remind you, let Jesus' life and death remind you that until you recognize that you're a wicked sinner, you are beyond the favor and forgiveness of God. If Jesus disrupts conventional wisdom like he does, then you have to expect him to disrupt the peace wherever his salvation goes. What do I mean by that? We can't be surprised when the gospel provokes opposition. His salvation does offend, not because it offensive in itself, but because it offends the modern sensibility that anyone would actually be in need of salvation at all. And if we can't be surprised by his opposition, neither can we run from it. There are discerning ways as to the time and the manner in which to explain the salvation that Jesus brings, but there's no way to keep it from disrupting someone's assumptions about what is true and good and beautiful about themselves or this world. It will humble someone before it encourages them. It has to. That's the nature of the message. So Jesus will provoke opposition from without, but here this two brothers and sisters, he'll provoke opposition from within within your own soul. He will disrupt you in order to bring you the consolation he means for you. He will challenge and disrupt how you see things, what you love and how you cope. If it took his death to reconcile you to God and form you into the image of his son, then that has to mean that there's something deeply rooted inside of us that has to be rooted out from us. This Jesus seeks to do, but he's only going to do it through disruption. Some people are hysterical in this country about the TSA and their screening and their patdowns and all that. Some of you in this room may have gone through that and I can still see the blushes on your face. People are up in arms because of this intimate look into what is personal in them. They bristle at the ostensible intrusiveness, but let's be honest. It is not for no good reason that somebody's put this protocol in place. You might disagree or question the means or the efficacy of the effort, but you can't argue with the intentions or the goal in the same way. The salvation that Jesus brings disrupts in how it demands a kind of investigation into what is deep and personal in us. You might think it's intrusive to be held to account in your finances, in your marriage, in how you use your time, in what you watch and what your priorities are. But it's that sort of examination into your soul's priorities that strengthens and secures your soul against the sin that so easily entangles. Jesus has to disrupt in order to redeem and there's pain in the disruption because it destabilizes, it disorients the way you do things. How do we honor our prophet? We honor the prophet, Jesus, when we recognize the disruption that's necessary to our redemption, which leaves us one last thing that I'll close with. It's from someone himself and his own story, not just what he said, but who he is. You can't miss the fact that all of us talk about salvation was in the context of a sort of joyous relief. Now, sovereign Lord, he says, I may depart in peace. He may go to his death having seen the salvation of the Lord. But Simeon was righteous and devout and that he went to his death in peace, I think suggests at least this truth, that a good life and a good death are tied to faith in the promises of a good God, that a good life and a good death are tied to faith in the promises of a good God. Simeon had so familiarized himself with the promises of God that he made his choices on the basis of them. When hopes rose and fell, he kept his eyes on the promises of God. When friends came and went, he kept his eyes on the promises of God. When age began, when feeble his body, when plans changed, he kept his eyes on the promises of God. What were the promises? You've already heard them hinted out in the text. God has promised to ransom us. In Jesus, he pays himself for the debt of sin that you owe yourself. All your sins are covered and forgiven in Jesus. That's his promise. But he also promises to purify you, to cleanse what defiles you and lead you to his wholeness, to his jalom, and God promises to shepherd you. By his spirit, he will lead, guide, encourage, chase, and discipline all of that in love. It's trust in those promises of God that led Simeon to be righteous and devout. Can you see how trust in those promises might free you to love those who hate you or who aren't like you? If those are his promises and they are true, then there's no reason to fear or to think love in those ways is futile. Can you see how trust in those promises helps you face the disruptively redemptive work that he does around you and within you? If you know he means to make you more like him, then you don't have to fear the painful moments that he leads you through. Most importantly, can you also see how trust in those promises might help you face the idea of your death and the experience of its nearness with a kind of peace? All death is a sorrow, but death with his promises is a sorrow with hope, buoyed by his spirit, its advent. Though we don't see Christ, we give thanks for him, and we wait for him, and as we wait for him with this love and this courage and this peace, we honor him. Amen.