Sermon - Presentation of Our Lord

Luke 2:22-40                                                                        

                                Doing What the Law Requires

            When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee.  I will have to tell you that I cringed just a little bit when I read those words.  My experience has not been very good with things that are required.  We required our kids to eat their vegetables or they couldn't have desert or a bed-time snack.  The ensuing battle is not a pretty picture.  Members of the LCMM Student Council were required to attend Council meetings.  Even when I provide free food - they still don't come.  My experience with things that are required has not been very good. 

            I mean it also for myself.  Like most folks, I have a couple of those wire boxes on my desk.  The difference is that most folks give titles to their boxes like "In," "Out," "Urgent," etc.  I have psycho­logical­ly labeled mine "stuff I want to do," and "stuff that is required."  When the time comes for me to finally deal with the overflowing required box, I haul the big trash can down from the kitchen.  It works wonders.

            Things required are not met with the greatest of enthusiasm.  We had just as soon avoid them.  But sometimes avoiding them carries a tremendous cost.  My sister-in-law was a dental hygienist.  She understood this thing about requirements.  She got around it by saying to her pa­tients, "You are not required to floss all your teeth.  You are only required to floss the ones you want to keep."

            When the time came for their purification (as required by) the law of Moses, Mary and Joseph brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.

            I do wonder if this introduction is intended to suggest that Mary and Joseph are doing what is required, even though they are none too excited about it.  You could read this verse as a statement of their unwavering faithfulness - that they were faithful followers of the law and so they were going to do exactly as the law instructed.  Or you could catch a subtle suggestion that while they were not so excited about yet another trip into Jerusalem they would do this thing that was required of them.  You could read the verse either way.

            Luke's rendition of what is required actually represents a combination of two differing passages of scripture.  In Leviticus 12, we are told:  If a woman conceives and bears a male child, she shall be ceremonially unclean seven days...On the eighth day (the male child) shall be circumcised.  This ceremony is to include the offering of a lamb in its first year.  But, if she cannot afford a sheep, she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons.

            Exodus 13:2, 12 is where we read of the requirements associated with the firstborn male.  There the Lord (says) to Moses;  Consecrate to me all the firstborn;  whatever is the first to open the womb among the Israelites, of human beings and animals, is mine.

            The law required that Mary and Joseph take the eight-day old Jesus to the temple.  There they were required to make an offering of turtledoves and pigeons.  They go to the temple to do what was re­quired.  Did they do so willingly or with a sense of begrudge?  We can't say.  But we know that they went.  They go and they do what the Law of Moses expects of them.

            But what happens to them while they are there is not expected.  They are there doing their little ceremony and WHAM!  This old guy, righteous and devout, comes up to them and starts saying all kinds of strange things about what will happen in this child's life.  Some loony old lady walks in and speaks about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.  Those two little turtledoves and pigeons get lost in the shuffle.  The requirement of Moses' law is nothing compared to what these two prophets, Simeon and Anna, are saying about the infant.

            Mary and Joseph go to the temple to do what the Law requires.  Once there they experience an epiphany far beyond their imagination.  In the midst of doing what was expected of them, they experienced the miracle of God's presence.

            Maybe you can begin to see where this is leading.  Maybe you've begun to remember the way in which epiphany moments have come into your own life.  Isn't it true that God comes into our lives in ways and at times we could have never unpre­dicted?  We are doing one thing and WHAM!  God hits us from the blind-side.  I have never been able to control when such moments would come, and I have never met anyone else who could. 

            But I do find that such moments are more likely to come if we are doing the things that are associated with God's people;  if we are doing the things that as obedient children we were required to do.

            I was in a conversation with a Clemson graduate who had been involved in the campus ministry group there.  He told me that he hadn't been active in church prior to coming to LCM.  His parents had insist­ed he go through the church's confirmation process, but there they didn’t attend worship the previous years nor did they offer to help him get there in the years after those catechetical classes.  This surprised me, because I considered this student to be one of the inner circle of active students.  I asked how, with that history, had he had come to be such an integral part of this ministry.  His answer was simple; “Free food."  A friend told him he could get a meal on Wednesday nights.  All he had to do was sit through a little bit of church stuff.

            He started out, doing what was required.  Once there, he experi­enced an epiphany of a community which drew him in and encouraged him to faith­fulness.

            The Church sometimes requires a lot of us.  There are things which we are expected to do.  But these things will not ensure a relation­ship with God. What they will do is put us in a position where we are likely to experience God's presence.

            This congregation is not one of those which requires its members to be at worship every week.  And I know that the ratio between really meaningful Sunday experiences and really boring ones is likely to be way too low.  But you'll miss those good ones, those epiphany opportunities, unless you do happen to be present when they occur. 

            We don't require participation in Christian education classes. But unless you stick with it, your life experiences will soon outstrip your biblical and theological knowledge.  We got into a deep conversation this past Wednesday at Bible Study.  “I hadn’t heard that,” was an honest admission by one of the participants.  No shame there – but what a travesty if she had lived the next 60 years of her life without hearing baptism as an invitation to celebrate the gifts of God bestowed on the one who is baptized.

            The season of Lent is just around the corner.  You will again hear talk Lenten disciplines and sacrifices.  Such outward signs of piety are not required, but maybe they ought to be.  Those embark upon a Lenten discipline are rarely disappointed.  The discipline becomes a conduit through which they experience the passion, death and resur­rection of our Lord.  It is not the discipline which brings salvation, but it positions us so as to be surprised by God's pres­ence.

            Mary and Joseph went to the temple to do what the law required.  As they were going through the motions, something totally unexpected happened to them.  An epiphany occurred in which God entered their lives and spoke to them of what God would do.  The original require­ment contained no anticipation for that outcome.  However, fulfilling the requirement put them in the place where this visit from God was possible.  Requirements are not very popular with any of us.  But maybe owning up to a few more of them could make our lives fuller.

Amen.