We’re halfway through winter, literally and figuratively, and there’s light to be shined, work to be done, with the grace and help of the One we follow, tested as we are so Christ can help us in our testing.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Presentation of Our Lord
   Texts: Luke 2:22-40; Hebrews 2:14-18

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

We’re halfway through winter. That’s important to remember.

Yes, this is the Feast of the Presentation, forty days after Christmas. Jewish mothers underwent purification rites forty days after giving birth; first born sons were presented in the Temple then, too.

But in Ireland and Britain February 2 held further significance as a cross-quarter day. Christmas Day, the Annunciation (March 25), St. John the Baptist/Midsummer Day (June 24), and St. Michael’s Day (September 29), marked the quarters of the year, falling very close to the solar turning points, the solstices and equinoxes. But Gaelic culture also marked the half-way points between these quarters. Presentation is the cross-quarter day between Christmas and Annunciation, and is about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

Today our forebears started to ask how long winter would be. They had celebrated the coming of light at Christmas, but the sun still rose late and set early, and it was still cold. How long before spring? they’d ask.

The movement of the earth around the sun gives holy reminders of our life in God’s care, reminders our ancestors lived and breathed deeply. We’ve reduced today to a silly ritual with a groundhog, a joke. But there’s nothing funny about the question of how long winter will last. For those wise ones, it wasn’t just a question of weather. The yearly journey through dark and cold taught them about the same journey our lives are making.

Winter is more than weather for us, too. And in a world where cold and fear are growing, what might it mean that tonight we note that we’re only halfway through?

As we hear of Simeon and Anna, it means we’re not in their enviable position.

These ancient saints diligently served and waited, worshipped and prayed, and at the ends of their lives were blessed to witness the coming of God-with-us, Christ in the flesh. Simeon’s beautiful song anticipates departure and rest, because God’s light has come.

But we’re not at the end. We’re still in the middle of winter. The coming of God’s light in Christ isn’t the signal for us to lay down and rest; the task is still before us.

We celebrate the coming of God’s light but we see how dark it still is.

We rejoice in the warmth of God’s love we know in Christ Jesus but we feel how cold the world still is.

We delight in Christ’s resurrection and the promise of eternal life, but we’re painfully aware of the pervasiveness of death.

In every way that matters, we’re in the middle of winter and are longing for God’s spring.

But that’s why we’re here. 

Not to answer, “How long?” Simply because it was a sunny day today doesn’t mean we have any idea when spring will return. Likewise, no answer awaits us as to when God’s full healing and restoring of creation will come to pass.

But our ancestors knew that, even if they engaged in weather prediction on this day. The festival of Presentation was tied to symbols of light, to the blessing of candles, as ours were tonight. Because Simeon sang of God’s light revealed. But also that they might remind each other of the signs of the light they had, the candles who bring light and warmth to the dark and cold.

And in the very long winter this world now faces, we gather tonight to remember the light we celebrated forty days ago on the darkest of nights. We gather to see fire and eat bread and smell beeswax and taste wine and sing songs and hear God’s words that sustain us in the winter, until the spring comes.

And now the Hebrews reading makes sense to this day.

On first glance, it seems unrelated to the Presentation. But if we’re in the middle of winter, and there is work for us yet in the world’s cold and fear, it is exceedingly good news to know we leave here not just with memory of tonight’s light and warmth.

We leave here with the grace and presence of Christ who has already lived through winter, who is the embodiment of God’s spring. Christ can help us as we are tested by the cold and fear, because Christ was also so tested. We go out into the middle of winter with Christ our Lord who knows how to hold hope and light in the deepest cold and ice and hatred and fear. Who is our strength, our courage, our encouragement. Who is always with us, no matter how long winter lasts.

So we sing with Simeon but with different meaning.

We sing, not at the end, but in the middle of things. When we sing, “now let your servant depart in peace,” it is our invitation to Christ to go with us as we depart into the wintry world that desperately needs God’s light and warmth.

When we sing, “a light to reveal you to the nations,” we ask for Christ’s light and fuel to keep that light burning in our hearts. Not just so others may see. But also that we don’t despair at the depth of the winter.

We sing, “your Word has been fulfilled,” not as the end of all things, but as confident hope that in us God’s Word is living into the world bringing light and healing.

We’re still in the middle of this thing. But as we join Simeon and Anna in song, we know that we’re not in the middle alone. We go with Christ: our Light, our Spring, our Warmth. And nothing can stop this grace from reaching this world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Found by God in Christ and loved, our joy is to find others and share this with them, bring them to Jesus so they, too, might know this love and grace.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Second Sunday after Epiphany, year A
   Texts: John 1:29-42; Isaiah 49:1-7

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

What would it take for you to share your faith with someone else?

What might convince you to take that risk?

Andrew and John, disciples of John the Baptist, start to follow Jesus in the Gospel today. But almost immediately Andrew finds his big brother Simon, and eagerly tells him, “We have found the Messiah!” Simon Peter doesn’t become Simon Peter without being brought to Jesus by his brother.

Mary and I were blessed to be at dinner with friends last week who shared about their faith practices, which were different from ours, and the joy and life they bring them. It was a blessing and a privilege. But what might Andrew the fisherman think about our culture where more often than not we’re reluctant to open up about what we believe, about what gives us life and joy?

Andrew’s joy in finding God’s anointed one couldn’t be kept inside; he had to share it. What would be like for us to have such uncontainable joy?

In Isaiah, God dreams that God’s light and healing would reach the end of the earth.

In a beautiful turn, God says, “It is too light a thing” for the Messiah just to restore Israel. All nations need God’s light. We see this in Christ, who came for the whole world, not just his people.

But these words are also given us in our anointing. Made God’s Christ in baptism, we are sent with the same mission Christ began. And if God has anything to say to us it might be, “It’s too light a thing that you might know my healing salvation just for yourselves, or for your congregation. I give you as a light to the nations.”

There is a joyful sharing of faith in this place. We live our hope together here. We meet the Triune God in Word and Sacrament, in song and prayer. We serve Christ together in this place, in our neighborhood, and in each other’s name wherever we live and move and work. This is a grace for us, and in this community the Spirit gives us life.

Andrew and John must have loved being together in Jesus’ presence, listening to him, talking to him. They’d followed the Baptizer hoping for God’s coming, and now in Jesus they knew that coming. But Andrew, at some point early on, left Jesus’ presence for a bit to find his brother. The author of First John says that his joy can only be complete when he shares the Good News.

What if our joy will not be complete if we keep what we know and find in this place to ourselves? If we never reach out to someone we know and say, “We have found God’s hope and life”?

This is the pattern we see in John’s Gospel repeatedly.

Jesus finds people, who go out and bring friends or relatives or neighbors to Jesus. John the Baptist points out the Lamb of God to his own disciples, who follow Jesus. Andrew brings Simon Peter. After this story, Jesus finds Philip, who finds his friend Nathanael. The Samaritan woman at the well meets Jesus and then gets her neighbors and brings them to see. Andrew and Philip bring Greek seekers to meet Christ for themselves.

This is how God’s light gets to the ends of the earth. When those who rejoice in the light, who are blessed to see by it, who find hope in the darkness and fear of this world in God’s love, say to another, “I’ve found something. Come with me and see.”

In John’s Gospel those who bring others don’t try to convince them of anything. They simply tell what they’ve found, and say, “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

How different that feels from what passes for evangelism in the churches today.

We’re in a time of deep confusion about evangelism across the Church.

The focus of so many articles and books and workshops is either fear or marketing. Mainline churches are frightened about their numbers dropping. There’s a pretty constant stream of gloom and doom writing about how the church isn’t going to survive.

The answer from many is marketing. Sell your congregation, your programs, your facilities. Make a splash in a busy world where people’s attention is divided and glossy, professional entertainment is the norm. Are you doing the right things in worship? Are you finding ways to attract the kinds of people you need?

Isn’t it striking how different that is from Andrew? He found the joy and hope of God’s coming, and needed to share that personally with his brother. The Samaritan woman met the Messiah and couldn’t wait to tell her neighbors.

Evangelism is never about building churches, or adding members. It’s never about worrying about survival, as if that’s Christ’s goal for us. Jesus never said that the ELCA needed to grow, or that Mount Olive should have a certain number of people. He simply came as the love of God in the flesh, invited people to follow, and those people started inviting other people to come and see Jesus themselves. And God’s light spread around the world.

It’s telling that John uses the word “found” a lot.

Andrew and John find Jesus. Andrew finds Simon. Jesus finds Philip. Philip finds Nathanael. Telling the Good News about what God is doing begins with first finding that Good News for oneself. Once we’ve found it, we find others we know and love and share it with them.

It’s how it often happens here. People tell others they know and love what they’ve found, about meeting God here, about the life and worship and service we do together, and invite them to come with them and see. Not to build up our numbers. But because the joy of being filled with God’s grace and knowing a community of faith in which you’ve met the Spirit of God is too explosive to keep inside.

None of us need to care about how many people belong to any denominations or any congregations. That’s never the point. Up or down, it’s not ours to worry about. The only question before us is, have we found God’s love and light for the world? If so, what will it take for us to tell someone who doesn’t know it what we’ve found?

It’s too light a thing, it’s too small, God says, to keep the joy of God’s love for the world for ourselves.

And if our forebears in faith have anything to say, it’s that our joy is incomplete if it’s kept to ourselves. It’s completed when it’s shared. When we set aside our fears, our reluctance, and share what we have found in Christ with someone else. Then we start finding real joy.

When we break our cultural rules that say keep faith private, and instead gently, lovingly, open up to another about what we’ve found in God. Then we start finding real joy.

This isn’t about being intrusive, or knocking on doors, or pushing our beliefs on others. It’s not about convincing others, or being right. It’s about being ready to share with those we likely already know and love what we have found in God, what brings life and joy to us and to the world.

So that God’s light of healing might reach the ends of the earth. And our joy might be complete.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen