Going through temptation, learning the hard task of repentance (turning toward God), this is how we come to find the Good News of God Jesus found.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday in Lent, year B
Text: Mark 1:9-15

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

It’s a rough entry into ministry for Jesus.

Wet from the water of baptism, the heady words from the Creator, whom Jesus calls Father, still warming his heart, “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased”, now Jesus is pushed out by the third Person of the Trinity. “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness,” Mark says.

No gathering disciples, not yet. No preaching to the crowds, not yet. No signs and wonders, not yet. The Spirit says to the Son, “Get out there, into the bleak Judean desert.” Forty days without food. Temptation by the Great Accuser. Wild beasts all around.

But Jesus comes out of it, goes up to Galilee and it begins. He preaches: “The time is fulfilled, the reign of God has come near; repent, and believe in the Good News.”

Whatever happened in the temptation, the hunger and heat in the wilderness, Jesus comes out of it saying, “I’ve got good news for you to believe.”

Except there’s a little word that comes before believing: Repent.

That’s Jesus’ signature line, what the Gospels say he began with, and said throughout Galilee. It’s what drew followers to him, including the twelve. Repent, and believe in the Good News.

Turn your mind around. Turn your heart around. Turn your life around. That’s what he means. You can’t keep walking on the path you’re walking if you want to find the good news, Jesus says. Finding good news, believing good news, starts with repentance.

We don’t talk much about repentance with each other. Maybe it sounds too negative. Maybe it’s church-talk that we don’t really know what it means for our life anymore. But it was a cornerstone for Jesus’ preaching, the beginning to everything. Jesus comes and says “you’re going the wrong way! Turn around! Then you can believe in good news.”

There’s tremendous good news from God that Jesus brings. But Jesus had to go through the temptation in the wilderness to find it.

Temptation’s another word we’ve put aside. We usually draw it out only for our obsession and shaming around food. When did you last think of temptation in any context other than eating another doughnut or cupcake? When did you last have a serious discussion with someone about your struggles with real temptation?

Temptation of the order Jesus faced is real for us, and is tied to repentance. Temptation is the pull we have to take a path other than the path of Christ in our journey of faith. When Jesus calls us to turn our minds, hearts, and lives around, he’s revealing the temptation we face to keep our minds, hearts, and lives going the way we like.

We’ll only find God’s Good News if we go into the wilderness ourselves, like Jesus, and face our temptation.

Temptation as Jesus faced, as we face, is the challenge between what is easy and what is hard, between what is truth and what is lie.

Mark doesn’t include Jesus’ specific temptations. But let’s consider as an example the first one in Matthew and Luke. Jesus is fasting, really hungry, and is tempted to turn stones into bread. But he says no. You don’t live by bread alone.

Think about that. A famished Jesus says there are worse things than being hungry. For him, it’s using his power, his privilege, to benefit himself. So when he’s arrested and facing the cross, he has already learned here there are also worse things than dying. He sets aside his power.

So many things tempt us toward the lie, toward the easy. All the problems that plague our society – racism, poverty, oppression, systemic violence, climate change, and on and on – all these things can be changed by people taking difficult paths turned toward God’s way. The temptation is always to take the path that’s easy, the path that takes away our pain, the path that everyone else says is logical. To avoid changes in our way of life, to believe the lie that we’re not really able to make a difference. And the good news can’t be found.

We face these challenges every day. How often do we take the path of repentance, the turning toward God?

In the wake of the Florida school shooting, everyone is saying the same things they always do. We’re shocked, saddened, angry. We rage about impotent leaders who do nothing. People post on social media, shout with their friends. Of course, the leaders are also saying and doing nothing different. But that’s not who Jesus is interested in. He wonders about us.

Because ranting and being saddened and talking to our friends is little different from politicians offering “thoughts and prayers.” All of our anger has done nothing. Something like 80% of Americans want significant gun control. How don’t we have it?

Well, are we doing anything other than ranting? Are we pressuring our elected officials? Organizing with others for effective campaigns? Joining existing ones and putting our money, our letters, our votes where our mouth is?

This is the way temptation works: we’re always offered the easy way out. Turn these stones into bread. Rant about the idiots in Washington. But Jesus’ real path was setting power aside and letting us kill him. Our real path is getting off our high horses and actually working to make something change. If 80% of Americans finally rose up and said, “No more,” no gun lobby, no paid-off politicians could stand in the face of that. And the good news could be found.

This is our Lenten learning as we see Jesus come out of the wilderness with good news.

We learn that repentance, turning to God, is facing all the temptation we have to stay the same, to take the easy way, to live as we’ve always lived. We could think of hundreds more examples than just this one.

But we also learn from Jesus that through the trials and testing of temptation we find God’s good news. God’s time is fulfilled, Jesus says. God has come to rule and reign in our hearts and in the world. When we struggle with our temptations, and resist with God’s help, God’s love breaks out in our lives and heals the world. Change happens, hope happens, grace happens. Jesus dies, but rises from the dead and destroys death forever. We lose, we sacrifice, but life and hope come out on the other side.

Jesus’ resistance in the desert only looks easy because we read about it after the fact. In reality, it was 40 days of suffering and pain and challenge that he needed to learn the truth. We shouldn’t expect an easier path ourselves.

We can learn this Lent to embrace being in the wilderness, struggling to be faithful, dealing with temptation. It’s only through these challenges that we’ll find the good news. Only through learning what it is to lose ourselves for the sake of others will we find the joy of loving, true connection with others. Only through learning the pain of sacrificial love will we find the heartwarming truth of real, vulnerable, gracious love with others.

“Repent, and believe the Good News.”

That’s our path: to struggle through whatever is before us in order to turn our minds, our hearts, our lives toward God’s path of life and love and hope.

But Christ put us on this path together. Let’s risk telling each other of our temptations and challenges and fears. There’s so much more wisdom among us than any one of us can have alone, so let’s share it with each other. There’s so much more encouragement among us than any one of us can have alone, so let’s lift each other up.

And because God’s Spirit is in each of us, we are the angels Mark says ministered to Jesus during his trials. We are the love of God for each other as we learn what it is to turn around. We are the blessing of God for each other as we each face our particular temptations and struggles. God lives in and through us, so none of us are ever alone.

The time is fulfilled, Jesus says. God’s reign is now. Let’s walk this desert together, and find the good news that God will bring.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

We are mortal, our life is limited. But our life is bound up in God’s love and life, so we are free to boldly seek to become Christ, shaped to look like the one who loves the whole world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Ash Wednesday
Texts: Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

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

You’re going to die. You know that, right? So am I.

Once a year, on this day, we remind ourselves of our mortality, we face this truth: none of us is living through this.

You’d think we’d know by now, given how much death we see. But as this past weekend once again reminded us, we’re still shocked and surprised when someone we love dies. We don’t seem to learn. What we know in our heads doesn’t convince our hearts and our hopes.

So today we tell the truth: you’re going to die. I’m going to die. We can’t change that. I’ve had the juxtaposition of putting ashes on a 95 year old head, reminding that sister that she will die, and moving to the two month old in his mother’s arms next to her, and telling him for the first time, ashes on that brand-new face with no cares or wrinkles, that he, too, will die. That’s the truth.

This day is about honesty: honesty about our sinfulness. Honesty about our mortality. As we begin our Lenten journey, we begin with the truth. And that’s because, as Jesus said, the truth will free us. Free us to live a life worth living in the time we have left.

People who know they are about to die often find freedom to live.

With nothing to lose, with only the months or days the doctor has given, people let go of lots of baggage they’ve carried most of their lives. Grudges long held. Anxiety over the future. Frustration with failed attempts to improve. All can be dropped. When you know you’re in the final stretch, that truth frees.

So, if we know we’re going to die, what do we have to lose? How do we want to live? By clinging to possessions, to habits, to sinful ways of being that hurt us and others? By lugging around fears and worries? Today’s honesty is a gift: now we know we’re on a countdown, we can focus.

This is a brilliant way to start our Lenten journey. Not to be reminded of our mortality as a scare tactic. To be reminded of our mortality as a life tactic: how do you want to live the remainder of your days? That’s what our Lenten discipline helps us learn.

The discipline of Lent is the discipline of a freed life. We’re shaped into something new and different.

Consider a flowering vine you’d like to cover an arbor in your garden. When you plant it, you gently tie the stems to the structure. As it grows, you keep connecting it to the pattern. One day you’ve got a green, flowering, beautiful gate into your backyard. In one of our houses Mary trained a rose bush over an archway; it was amazing when it finally got there.

Christ is our pattern, the frame, the trellis. Our Lenten discipline is the discipline of life shaping us to that pattern. Disciples are those trained into a new shape for a new purpose. Through this discipline, our wayward vines and stray flowers, our feelers and outgrowths, are nurtured and connected to Christ our frame, and eventually we become a beautiful thing. We look like Christ.

Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount provide the Church with the shape of Lenten discipline: sacrificial giving and works of love, prayer, fasting. And repentance, the turning around of our hearts and lives into God’s way. These are the tools that will shape us into beautiful growths of God in the world.

And that’s the point of our discipline. Not so others will notice or appreciate it.

Isaiah’s people have a huge complaint: God doesn’t appreciate all the fasting and liturgy they’re doing.

What’s the point, God, if you’re not giving us any credit? they say. We’re fasting, and you don’t see. We’re acting humble and praying, and you don’t notice.

This isn’t a wise approach. Because God says through Isaiah: “Let me talk to you about fasting. The fasting I want is freeing the oppressed, sharing your bread with the hungry. How about doing that? The worship I want is bringing the homeless into your house, and giving clothes to the naked. But you serve your own interests when you worship, you leave prayer and get into fights, your lives oppress other people.”

God’s righteous outburst reveals why we do what we do, and joins Jesus’ words today. We don’t do liturgy to draw attention to ourselves. We don’t practice Christian discipline to get credit from God or from others. If our ritual and liturgy and worship and prayer don’t train us into Christ, shape our lives into people who bear God’s love in the world, there is no point to them.

So what if our Christian discipline is unnoticed, unpraised, unappreciated? That’s not the point.

We’re all going to die. That’s the point. And Christ is what we want to look like in the time we have left.

We don’t give sacrificially, give alms as Jesus says, to get God’s notice or impress people. That attention is worthless. We give of our selves, our lives, our wealth, for the sake of others. So those who are hungry are filled, those who lack shelter are brought in from the cold. But also so we are shaped into Christ, whose love for the least and lost and forgotten is eternal. That’s the reward: looking and loving more and more like Christ.

We don’t pray so others can praise our words and our piety. There’s no value in that. We pray so that we might be connected to the Giver of Life, the Spirit who moves in us and shapes us into Christ. We pray that we might have eyes and hearts opened to the needs of those whom God loves and cares for. That’s the reward: living intimately with the Triune God.

We don’t fast, or put on ashes, so others can think we’re great Christians. There’s no reward in that. We fast, remember our mortality, turn our lives back toward God, to learn the discipline of letting go and losing for the sake of others. We let go of things for certain times to learn what it is to let go of things for our whole lives, baggage that drags us down and keeps us from being Christ. That’s the reward: living a life free of the brambles and weeds that would choke out our hope and our love.

Look, we’re all going to die. We might as well face that truth.

But we literally have nothing to lose because our lives and our deaths are bound up in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus. When we all die, we will be brought into life we only glimpse in pieces in this life.

So: we’ve only got so much time here. We know what awaits us when our time here ends. So let’s make the most of what we have, risk a little, that we might look on our outside, in our lives and words and actions, what God already sees on our inside: beloved children of God, embodied witnesses of God’s eternal love. That’s a life worthy of the time we have left.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

We all have experiences when God’s presence with us is especially clear. The world briefly shines with heavenly light – but then the moment passes, and we need to make sense of what we have witnessed, and what it has to do with our daily lives.

Vicar Jessica Christy
Transfiguration of Our Lord
Text: Mark 9:2-9

You have to be ready for the week after church camp. That’s what the older kids warned my youth group as we were preparing to go to summer camp for the first time. They promised that it was the kind of experience that was going to change our lives – and that we wouldn’t want to leave when it was over. They were absolutely right. For that week in the Wisconsin woods, I felt closer to God than I ever had in my life. We spent our days reading scripture, discussing our faith, and playing amidst the beauty of nature. And at night, we’d gather around the campfire to sing quiet songs and bare our souls to one another beneath the endless, starry sky. For seven days, it was like we were living on holy ground, where faith and friendship were all that mattered.

And then, it was over. We went home and returned to our regular rhythms and responsibilities. The older kids’ warnings were right: the transition wasn’t easy. After that week of intense, faithful joy, the rest of the world seemed lifeless and unhallowed. I spent the next months longing to return to that sacred place where Christ was so clearly and unapologetically the center of my life. Camp had been so special, and everything else was so ordinary, that it was hard to see what the one had to do to the other. In confirmation, we would reminisce about our summer and ask each other: why couldn’t all of life be like church camp? Why couldn’t we stay in that sacred space?

And so I feel for Peter, James, and John as they’re walking back down that mountain. I can’t imagine how strange it must have been for them to witness the miracle of the Transfiguration, and then return to their work as though nothing happened. On top of the mountain, they see Jesus filled with the light of creation as he is named God’s son. They see the old heroes of their faith walking the Earth. They hear the very voice of God. When Peter sees Christ shining in the presence of Moses and Elijah, he understandably thinks that this is it – the Day of the Lord has finally come. Here and now, all of God’s promises are at last being fulfilled. He wants to crystallize this moment, to build dwelling places for the ancient prophets so they can stay and usher in God’s reign on Earth. He thinks that this is what the coming of God’s kingdom looks like, shining high above the mess of everyday life.

But Jesus has already told him that’s not quite right. In Mark’s Gospel, the Transfiguration is immediately preceded by Jesus’ first prediction of his own death. Jesus proclaims that he will experience suffering, rejection, and death, and then rise again on the third day. Peter is appalled. He pulls Jesus aside and tries to silence him, but Jesus doubles down on his claim and calls on the crowds to follow his difficult way. There will be no path to glory that does not pass through the Cross. So of course the disciples can’t stay on the mountain with Jesus and the prophets. They can’t just escape to enlightenment and leave the rest of the world behind. They might wish it were that easy, but that’s not how God works. The mountaintop isn’t where Christ lives.

So back down the mountain they go. Back to the hard days on the road. Back to the press of the crowds. Back to a teacher who has stopped glowing and gone back to saying that he’s about to die. They have to return to lives in which everything about their world has changed – and yet everything seems the same. They’re not even allowed to tell people what they’ve seen. Maybe they couldn’t put it into words if they tried. It must have been lonely. It must have been hard.

The three disciples had a special revelation, and that means they had a special challenge as they came down that mountain. But their experience wasn’t all that unique. Human beings are so marvelously receptive to beauty and wonder that we all have shimmering moments when God’s presence in our lives is made especially clear. All of us are given glimpses of the Transfiguration. Sometimes it happens in the midst of worship – during a beloved hymn, or at the baptism of a child. For some people, it comes in prayerful meditation. Sometimes it is revealed in an experience of nature, the overwhelming beauty of a sunset or the stars or the sea. Or it is found in art, or a relationship, or something else altogether. Even if we haven’t seen Christ shining on the mountaintop, God invites each of us, in our own ways, to stand on holy ground and witness a flash of God’s glory. That is a marvelous gift, and as Peter says, it is good. But then comes the hard part, when the curtain falls back into place and the heavenly light fades. The moment passes. The world returns to normal, and we have to figure out what to do with what we’ve seen and felt. We might struggle to articulate what happened to us. We might wonder if it was even real. We might long to return to that place where God shone so bright and clear, and wonder why God so often remains hidden from our sight.

But friends, the good news is that the Transfiguration is all around us. It may not be obvious at every moment of our lives, but it is always here. Christ came back down the mountain, back down to us, and the whole world shines with his image. The Transfiguration is not some perfect vision up in the sky. It is not something we have to wait for or search for on some distant summit. It is here and now, illuminating everything. In Christ, all ground is hallowed ground. Jesus taught the disciples to return to the crowds, because the crowds are where he’s really found. We are called seek out and serve the light of Christ in one another.

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton was standing on a busy street corner when he had the most famous mystical vision of modern times. All of a sudden, he saw the people around him “shining like the sun.” He wrote that it was as if he were seeing the crowds around him through God’s eyes, and everyone’s innermost beauty was for an instant laid bare. He realized that the glory of God is in everybody, “like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven…and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.” At this vision of light, Merton was overwhelmed with love for these strangers, and only wished he could show them how brightly they shone.

If we follow where Jesus leads, then the path back down the mountain brings us to one another. We witness to the Transfiguration in each other, and when we do so, we are ourselves transfigured. We carry God’s light into the world for each other to see.

Christ is shining all around us. Christ is shining in us. Trust that, and seek it, and you will see that it is true. You will see Christ – everywhere.

The only way people know of God’s love for the weak and faint and weary and lost and oppressed is through us: when we embody God’s love in the world. That’s the whole point of it all.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, year B
Texts: Isaiah 40:21-31; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39

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

“Have you not known? Have you not heard?”

How should we hear Isaiah’s tone? Frustrated? (How do you not know this already?) Or excited, breathless? (Have you heard? Do you know?)

Isaiah asks if we’ve heard and known two huge, seemingly opposing, things about God. First, God is the unequalled creator of all, sitting above the heavens, to whom the stars are like a fabric God can spread wherever needed.

Following that, the second “have you not known?” is hard to grasp. Have you not heard, Isaiah says, that God cares for the most vulnerable? God gives power to the faint, strength to the powerless. Those who wait for God will lose their weariness, will run, be lifted up like eagles.

God is so great we’re tiny grasshoppers, Isaiah says. Yet God notices when we stumble, when we’re so exhausted we can’t move. This is the consistent witness of the Hebrew Scriptures: however great and mighty God is, God sees all pain and suffering and struggle of God’s people, and comes in love, giving life and hope and healing.

But what tone of voice should we use to hear Isaiah? Surprise, that people still don’t know this truth about God? Or maybe sadness: “Haven’t you heard? Don’t you know?”

Because, given how God’s people, people bearing Christ’s name, act in the world today, it’s fair to wonder how anyone would know Isaiah’s astonishing good news about God.

We despair almost daily at the witness we hear from Christians today.

People bearing Christ’s name vote enthusiastically for child molesters and defend sexual predators, claiming they and the people they vote for are godly people. People bearing Christ’s name work overtime to create laws that crush the poor, laws that destroy families in the name of safe borders, laws that benefit wealthy white men while depriving the neediest of essentials for living. We make the sign of the cross on ourselves, it hangs prominently in our worship, yet people still use this sign of God’s undying love as a sign of hatred and terror, still burn it on neighbors’ lawns, use it to frighten those of different faiths.

If you’re looking for Christians to help, this is a country where you’d better not be weak, or weary, or faint, or exhausted; it’s not a country where you’d want to be a stranger, or to be different from others.

How could anyone know? How could anyone hear? That’s the more sensible question. As people of faith, who bear Christ’s name, it’s deeply painful to see the kind of God that our fellow Christians controlling our current political climate trumpet across our country. If people who knew nothing about God listened only to the loudest Christians in our country, they’d run in the opposite direction.

But listen, my sisters and brothers: there is still great hope.

See our Gospel today: the Incarnate Son of God acts just as Isaiah says to expect. If Isaiah’s God came and took human flesh, it would look just like Jesus. Healing a mother-in-law of fever. Standing in the midst of a huge crowd after sundown, healing all who come.

In Jesus, God’s Christ, we see the truth about God’s love for the weak and weary and broken of this world.

And notice something else: Jesus doesn’t work alone.

Remember a couple weeks ago, a little earlier in chapter 1 of Mark, we heard Jesus promise to teach his followers to fish for people? Look what they’re doing. They’ve got it down.

The disciples know Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is suffering, so they tell God-with-us, who heals her. That’s not all. Sometimes crowds find Jesus, just show up where he is. Not here, not in Capernaum that day. Andrew and John, Simon and James, whoever else is following, they bring people to Jesus.

As soon as Sabbath was over, “they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons,” Mark says. It’s these followers who witness to the healing love of God in the world, who bring those who suffer to the God who cares, the God who heals.

This is the way God will bring healing, and the only way people can know, through us.

It’s the way of Christ, from the beginning. Paul today talks about how he puts himself in the shoes of whomever he’s reaching, whether they’re Jews or Greeks, strong in faith or weak, to better reach them. He might be a little over-confident that he can be all things to all people, but he’s doing the job we’re all called to be and do: bring people to God’s love and healing.

And these folks don’t just hand them off to Jesus. These first followers became God’s embodied love themselves as they traveled the land after Pentecost. They didn’t proclaim God’s good news in Christ to gain members of churches. They proclaimed God’s love because they wanted everyone to know, everyone to hear. They wanted everyone to be able to answer Isaiah’s questions with yes.

God lifts up with wings like eagles through our love and care. God strengthens the powerless through our vulnerable giving and loving. God raises up the exhausted, feeds the hungry, heals the sick, breaks the systems that oppress, through us. That’s how people hear and know.

This is why we are anointed as Christs ourselves. It’s the whole point.

What we despair seeing done in the name of Christ today has been done by Christians for a long time.

But there have also always, always, been Christs in the world living the love of Christ at the same time, through whom people heard and knew of God’s love. Christians invented the Holocaust and executed it, but there were also Christs throughout Europe embodying the sacrificial love of God who stood against such hate. We might not be at that level yet in our country, but we all still have this calling, this gift: you are Christ. We are Christ. We can make a difference.

And we already have. People have heard and known God’s truth already, through us. Through many others around the world. Through you others have learned God’s compassion, have experienced God’s healing, have found welcome, and rest, and nourishment, and hope.

So we’re not starting today. We’ve been at this awhile.

But today, like every time we worship, we are re-centered in Christ’s love, we’re lifted up and our weariness is taken away. We leave here refreshed and ready for another week of being the embodied love of God in our broken world.

There are always going to be plenty of people who take their own hate and fear and prejudice and try to bless it with the name of God.

Thanks be to God, there are also lots of us, here and across this world, who try to do the opposite. Who have learned the joy of self-giving love, of vulnerability, of sharing. Who have been so shaped by God’s forgiveness and grace that it flows out of our words and actions. We fail sometimes. We might not be as loud. We don’t make the headlines (but God never meant for that, anyway).

We just go out with the heart and eyes and hands and love of God, and start spreading the news in our bodies, voices, and lives that the God of all time and space actually cares about the least, the weak, the weary. And when we show up, as Christ, that’s when people will know. That’s how they’ll hear.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

In Luke’s Gospel, the Holy Spirit starts her work through a few chosen people. It’s easy to envy these people their clarity – of course Simeon could be faithful when the Spirit was directing him! – but that same Spirit is filling and guiding us now.

Vicar Jessica Christy
Presentation of Our Lord
Text: Luke 2:22-40

I wonder if Simeon woke up that morning knowing that the day had finally come. When the Holy Spirit tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Now, today is the day,” what was that like? Was it a voice? A vision? A sensation in his bones? What does it feel like to be grabbed by the Spirit?

Because Luke tells us that the Spirit had a special role in Simeon’s life. Not just that, he says it three times in a row: the Spirit rests on Simeon, she reveals to him that he will see the messiah in his lifetime, and when the time comes, she guides his steps to the temple. Simeon has been eagerly waiting for the Christ, but he has been living with the Holy Spirit for a long time. Because of the Spirit, he can live in the marvelous hope that he will witness God’s salvation. Through the Spirit’s eyes, he can see that a poor young couple is God’s chosen family, and that their ordinary baby will deliver his people. And it could only be the movement of the Spirit that builds such instant trust between Mary and Simeon, that she places her newborn into the arms of a stranger. The Spirit transforms his life, his sight, his relationships. Because the Spirit is upon him, Simeon can see God’s reality shining through the surface of the world around him, and that changes everything.

But what the Spirit reveals to Simeon isn’t entirely joy and light. He sees that the arc of this baby’s life isn’t going to be an easy one. He blesses the little family, and then he confirms what Mary already knows: her child is going to bring turmoil into this world. Mighty people are going to be brought low, and lowly people are going to be lifted up. Jesus is going to reveal things that the world would rather keep hidden, and so people are going to resist him, resent him. None of this is news, but then Simeon goes farther. He tells Mary that this turmoil is going to touch her. A sword is going to pierce her soul. This precious, promised baby is going to bring her unimaginable pain. Simeon has seen God’s salvation, and yet he knows that the world isn’t quite saved. Not yet.

This could be reason for mourning or fear, and yet Simeon rejoices, because by the Spirit, he sees through the pain to what lies beyond. There’s going to be hurt and confusion, but out of those wounds will come God’s salvation. He isn’t going to see God’s plan fulfilled, but he’s seen its beginning, and he knows how it will end: with the glory of Israel, the illumination of the whole world, and the healing of the nations. Whatever conflict is coming, the Spirit has shown him that conflict will not have the last word, and so he can depart in peace.

I envy Simeon’s clarity. He’s righteous, and patient, and so full of hope. God has given him this amazing gift of experiencing life under the Spirit’s guidance. Not only does he get to see Christ, but he knows that he’s seeing Christ, and he knows exactly what Christ represents. He’s given such perfect insight into God’s plan, and he fulfills his role so faithfully. And it’s a beautiful story, but it’s a hard one to live up to. Simeon feels like one of those untouchable saints. Yes, of course he knows what to do – the Holy Spirit is giving him personal instructions. Where does that leave the rest of us who are waiting and hoping to see Christ? Because in this fallen world, God’s will for us isn’t always so obvious. We don’t always recognize Christ’s presence, or respond when the Spirit is pushing us to get up and go. When we see all the disorder and ill-will around us, we might falter in our hope that we will ever witness God’s salvation. Not all of us will be able to face death with such certainty or such joy. So what does Simeon’s clear vision have to do with all of us who still see God through a mirror, dimly?

But the good news is that Simeon’s gift isn’t anything special. He might look exceptional, but that’s not the story that Luke tells. Throughout Luke’s Gospel, the Holy Spirit is hard at work transforming the world – and she does start with certain chosen individuals. She fills Mary and John the Baptist. She leads Simeon to the temple. She greets Jesus at his baptism, guides him through the wilderness, and enlivens his teaching. But then, at Pentecost, everything changes. The promise that God made to the prophet Joel is fulfilled: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” Tongues of fire appear over the apostles, and through them, the Spirit fills the assembled crowd. And from there, she spreads like wildfire. When Peter is speaking to a group of Gentiles in Caesarea, she falls on everyone who hears the word. The circumcised believers are astounded by this, but Peter asks them, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” The Holy Spirit is setting the whole world ablaze, and nothing is going to stand in her way.

That same Spirit is in us now. We might not experience that in the same way as Simeon, but our gift is no less than his gift, and we are just as empowered to see this world through Spirit-filled eyes. Like Simeon, we can see through this world’s appearances to recognize God within. Where the world shows us despair, the Spirit shows us hope. Where the world shows us strangers, the Spirit shows us beloved siblings. Where the world shows us the least of these, the Spirit shows us Christ. And where the world shows us death, the Spirit shows us abundant new life. We’re still waiting for God’s plan to be fulfilled, but like Simeon, we know how this story ends. We know that peace and life and love win. That’s not what our senses tell us. That’s not what politics or science or even common sense say, but it’s what our faith tells us, and by the Spirit, we can believe that it’s really true. And that means that we get to carry that truth, that reality into the world.

Like the candles that we carried in tonight, we all bear the Spirit’s flame.  Even if we doubt, or falter, or fail to recognize God’s call, the Spirit has been given to each of us, and she will never leave us behind. Even now, she is filling us with the light of Christ for all the world to see. So with Simeon, we can proclaim: look, Christ is here. God is now healing the world. Come and see for yourself. Come and find God’s light. Come and find God’s peace.