How do you celebrate New Years? What New Years Traditions do you celebrate today or last night? I went to the Ball Drop in Harmony. It has the advantage of being 12 hours ahead of time so little grand nieces and nephews can celebrate early and get to bed before they are grumpy. I have a pork and sauerkraut in the Crockpot. I have a list of New Year’s resolutions. I’m wearing red underwear. These are my traditions. What are yours? Why do we do these things? We do traditions because they are fun. But more importantly, we do traditions and rituals to mark time as important. We use rituals and traditions to find meaning in life. We do traditions to remind us of who we are and where we come from. We do rituals because they ground us. They make us pause and think. We do rituals to tie the old with the new. We do traditions to celebrate the continuity of life and also the new pages and chapters of our life. As Christians we should be using traditions and ritual in a powerful way to bring the Holy into our lives.
Our bible passage today is all about the new and the old. This story is about Simeon and Anna blessed with many, many years and a brand new baby Jesus. This story is about old, old traditions of the Jewish faith and a brand new thing that God is doing right now. This story points out how the Holy comes into ordinary traditions. Here in Luke we have our only accounts of some details in Jesus' early life. Although Luke is one of the most gifted storytellers of all time, he does not reveal these glimpses into Jesus' infancy just to give the Christian community fodder for fireside remembrances of Jesus' life. The event of Jesus' presentation at the temple and the prophesies of Simeon and Anna are told to show that the Holy is at work. The point here is not fireside tales, but faith's firepower. Luke uses this story to weave the birth narrative of Jesus with the story of the great prophet Samuel's own birth and the story of God’s deliverance of the slaves in Egypt. Luke takes two separate rituals here, merging them together. The first ritual was "purification” of Mary and the second ritual was “dedication” of Jesus. The first ritual was Mary's ritual purification after the birth of a child.
As detailed in Leviticus 12:1-8, a woman was considered unclean for 40 days after the baby's birth, and thus, unable to enter the temple. Actually, I like to think that in childbirth a woman encounters the Holy and needs some time off from all other duties. So this period allows for some mommy time. But at the end of 40 days the mother was to bring a lamb, or two pigeons or two turtledoves to the temple as a sacrifice and a sign that she was once again ritually clean. Luke's details make it clear that Mary and Joseph are, at least at this point in their lives, quite poor -- for instead of a lamb, Mary brings instead two doves.
But while the baby Jesus did not have to be present for this ceremony, he did need to be brought to the temple for another reason. Symbolic of the living link binding Jews to their great history of exodus from Egypt, all first- born male infants were automatically considered dedicated to the Lord's service. This tradition recalled the miraculous night in which all the first- born sons of Egypt were destroyed by Yahweh's hand, but the Hebrew children were "passed over," and saved by the Lord. After acknowledging Jesus' first-born status and dedicating him to the Lord, Joseph and Mary were required to offer five shekels in order to "buy" him back from temple service. But Luke doesn’t mention any five shekels. Jesus is dedicated to the Lord’s service in the same way that the little boy Samuel was dedicated.
We sophisticates of the twenty first century don’t hear this story with the same years as a Jew in the time of Luke would have heard. In the first century the audience would have heard the echos of the great exodus from Egypt and the Passover story of God’s salvation. In the first century the listener would have heard the echos of the story of little Samuel being called by God in the temple. Hannah was barren and longed for and prayed for a child. When God answered her prayer with the gift of baby boy Hannah brought the baby Samuel to the temple and dedicated him to God’s service. And there in the temple with Jesus was another Hannah. The prophetess Anna is a Greek form of the name Hannah. So read carefully. Jesus is dedicated to the Lord just as Samuel was. This story shows who Jesus was, what God has done in the past and what God will do in the future. This is the best sort of tradition. It brings together old and new, the past and the future. It reminds us of the Holy thing God is doing now.
So how as Christians do we make rituals significant? Let’s figure this out because without God at the center of our rituals they become dead dogma and rote obligations. There is a story about a woman who always cut the end off the roast for Christmas. She did this because her mom did this, and her grandmother did it. But one Christmas she asked her grandmother why they always cut that end off the roast. And the grandmother answered that she only had a roaster that was only so long and she cut the end off to fit in that old roaster. So all these years, they had been doing a silly thing that no longer had any real meaning. How do we use traditions that don’t uselessly cut the end off the roast? We want something better. We need a tradition that is alive with meaning. How do we use tradition to put us in a place where we acknowledge God, give thanks to God and draw all of our life into a celebration of God with us, Immanuel? You see that is what was happening to the holy family, the rituals that brought them to the temple put them in exactly the right place to hear the amazing prophesies about Jesus. That is what good traditions do, they put us in the right place to encounter God.
One way to use traditions to open us up to God is to follow Jesus advice, become like little children. Be thrilled with both the new and the old. Christmas is a marvelous example of how to do this. Kids love surprises, the new. But kids love ritual and tradition too. On Christmas day did any of you sleep in until noon? No the shining surprise of what might be under the tree got everyone out of bed. Yet in the midst of the new surprise there was the comfort and warmth of the same Christmas brunch or the present that you get every year, like the Christmas jammies, or the familiar ornaments that all have a story. A child’s eye view on life always asks the question, “why.” So ask the questions that get to why you do the celebrations you do. When you are eating pork and sauerkraut you remember that this is because you are thankful for the plenty that pork represents and the fertility and new things that cabbage represents. If you ask the question why and you don’t get a good answer, you need to change your tradition. You need to re-tradition.
One of the best things about children is acceptance that a kid is a kid. You accept that you are a child, a child of God. Jesus came as the literal child of God so that we could all become children of God. So as a child you have to have a little humility and you have to trust your parent. Jesus said you must become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Philip Schroder paraphrased that this way, “Verily, Verily I say unto you, there will be no grown ups in heaven.” The good news is that it doesn’t matter how old you are you can always be the child of God. You can be part of the old, old story of God’s love and healing and part of the New Year that God is preparing for you. Simeon and Anna were chronologically gifted, really ancient for their day. But God opened their eyes to what God was doing right there before them in a new baby boy and what God would do in the future.
It is never too late to re-tradition a good tradition. Simeon’s words of praise to God is a prayer the church has used for two thousand years. Yet this cry from the heart can be new to us. Simeon’s prayer is called the Nunc Dimittis which is Latin for permission to depart. This is the prayer.
Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word;
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
Which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
A light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.
This old, old, traditional prayer can become a new prayer when we use tradition well. When we use it to say yes, we are servants of God, When we pray from the heart that we are free to go in peace. We are free to lay down at night in peace, to get up in peace, to go about the work of our day in peace. Let’s use this prayer to help us remember when our eyes have seen the salvation. We review our day or our life and say yes that is when I saw God’s salvation. Let’s use this prayer to know that God’s light is for all peoples. Simeon’s prayer new when he said them but now 2000 years old can be new again if we pray them with God’s spirit.
G. K. Chesterton said, “The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul” So what traditions or rituals or daily habits will you use to remind yourself that you have a new soul? Will you give thanks in your coming and going from your house? Will you ask that you honor God in all you do at your work or school? Will you look for the thrill of what gift God has set before you?
Amen.
