Showing Up: The Holy Act of Presentation. February 2, 2020 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Luke 2:22-40

Did you know today is a feast day? And, no, I’m not talking about the mass quantities of food that will be consumed during the Super Bowl this evening. What I am talking about is that today, February 2nd, is a feast day in the Church known as the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple. It’s a celebration of one of the major events in Jesus’ life which makes it a principal feast in the Church.

Jewish law prescribed that forty days after the birth of a first-born son the child be consecrated as “holy to the Lord.” And so Mary and Joseph, being faithful Jewish parents, make the trek from their home to Jerusalem so that Jesus can be presented in the temple. By all accounts this  was going business as usual until, that is, a man named Simeon swooped in and scooped up the child Jesus into his arms. 

Simeon, Luke tells us, was a “righteous and devout” man to whom the Holy Spirit had revealed that he would see the Messiah, the Christ, the one whose name means salvation, before his death. Which meant that every day for weeks, months, years, probably even decades, Simeon waited and wondered. “Will this be the day? The day that I will see God’s promise of salvation?” Surely during those years of expectation there had been some hopeful prospects - prophets, teachers, healers, and the like. Simeon had seen them all come...and go. Yet he hung in there. Simeon kept on showing up day after day, year after year, with openness, expectancy, hopefulness that God was at work even if he couldn’t see it.

We know what that’s like, don’t we? Who among us has not lived for a time in that place of anticipation - waiting for life to change, for grief to subside, for a prayer to be answered? Hoping for joy to return, for direction to come, for healing to happen? In fact, I bet even today each one of us has shown up here holding in our hearts some sort of hope, some kind of need, some degree of expectation just like Simeon who on that one fine day, after all those years, was led by God’s Spirit to the temple.

How wonderful it must have been to hold the long-awaited Messiah in his arms, to see God’s salvation with his very own eyes, and then to be set free to go in peace. Although it must of felt to Simeon that he had been the one waiting lo those many years for the Messiah to finally show up what if it was really Jesus who had been waiting for Simeon all along? No doubt that Simeon thought it was he who was presenting the child Jesus to God that day. But I wonder if perhaps it really was Jesus who was actually the one doing presenting of the man Simeon to his Father in heaven? And not just on the one day in the temple, but maybe Jesus was presenting him on all the days of his life. All those days that Simeon showed up with hope, with need, with expectation and went to bed night after night continuing to trust God.

That is hard work and faithful worship. Hanging in there even when nothing seems to change. Keeping the faith when there’s more questions than answers. Staying in relationship when nothing is clear. That is showing up. The showing up that Simeon did. The showing up that we are all called to do. For when we show up we are engaged in the holy act of presentation.

At our 8:00 service in the Rock Chapel we use the Rite I liturgy for Holy Eucharist. Now as you may know, all Rite I services use traditional language like thee and thou along with wording that reflects the religious sensibilities of the 16th century Anglican Church. And there is a part of the Rite I that resonates deeply inside of me. It happens when the celebratant is praying over the bread and the wine. The amazing mercies of God have just been recounted. And then come the words, And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee. Just as a side note, much of what we pray in our prayer book comes directly from the Bible and this is no exception. This part comes from a verse in the book of Romans (12:1) where Paul writes, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

Showing up to God with hope, trust, and faith along with all of our needs, doubts, and failures is spiritual worship. It is the act of presenting our selves, our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice to God. A God who never rejects such an offering, would never say something like, “Yuck! Don’t give me that. Clean yourself up first!” Rather we present real and true selves to a God who is love, who is mercy, who is safe. A God who wants all of who we are to show up in the temple of our lives and be presented. For that is the means through which God fulfills his promise of salvation to Simeon, and to us.

We may think that we are the ones who are doing all the hard work of showing up and then waiting for God. But the truth is actually the opposite. God is the one who is always present, always with us, always showing up and waiting for us - waiting expectantly, hopefully, with anticipation that today will be the day that we are able to see more fully God’s promise of salvation. Salvation that is being fulfilled right before our very eyes. So that upon seeing it our lives are transformed, healed and made whole, and we are set free to go in peace to share the salvation of God with the world.