For
My Eyes Have Seen Your Salvation
Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3, Luke 2:22-40
12/30/18
Simeon was a normal person who, after
a long life, was able to see salvation, salvation given, as we are told in Luke,
to ALL people. And that salvation,
holding that baby in his arms, finding the peace of knowing that salvation has
come to the world and for the world, he now feels he has finished his tasks
here on earth, completed what he came to do, and he asks God to then let him
go, “you may now dismiss your servant in peace.”
As we approach New Year’s eve, I
often think about what tasks we have yet to do, what we have yet to see, to
learn, or to accomplish here in this life time that will then allow us to go,
when it is our time, in peace, work completed, job done, accomplished, finished,
a whole life, bookended with a call and a response, created in love and allowed
to move forward in peace. New Years is
often a time of reflection. We reflect
on our past year, but we can also use it as a time to reflect on the whole of
our lives. What have been your life
lessons? What has been your life
calling? I think these are often
different: some things we are called to accomplish, some things we are called
to learn. It usually is not just one thing, but I think God does call each of us
to certain tasks in our lives. I also
think there are specific tasks for each life - they are not always the same for
every person. They are not always
obvious, not always clear, but each of us has a call, sometimes multiple calls,
throughout our lives, reasons to be here. I think we have things we are
supposed to learn and things we are supposed to do. Sometimes those reasons are
things that carry us through a long life, sometimes it is something that we
have to learn over and over again. And
sometimes we may learn and do things early on.
Do you know what you are being
called to do and called to learn in your life?
To help you think through this, let me give you some examples. I think I’ve had several life lessons, or
things that I have found myself called to do and learn. One of my life lessons, or something that I
feel I’ve been called throughout my life to learn has been what I would
describe as the call to be an adult. While
others appear called to learn to surrender to God, to let go of their egos and
allow God to be the driver, I find that every time I pray for God to tell me
what to do, every time I ask God to make the decisions, I hear God calling me
in turn in multiple ways and through many different forms, to take some risks
and chances and make my own decisions, some of which will be good and others
which won’t, which I will just have to learn from. I hear God telling me to trust that God will
be with me in those choices, but that God will not make them for me.
I’ve had other life lessons as well. Such as facing my judgments. Every time I have judged someone, it comes
back at me, and I find I have to deal with that, face that, in my own
life.
What are your life lessons? They usually are not things that come easily,
but they are deep calls to us to be the best and most whole we can be, for God,
for others and for ourselves.
As people reach the end of their
lives, I am often asked the question, “Why am I still here? Why haven’t I been able to die? Has God forgotten me? I feel done here, so
why hasn’t God taken me?” My answer is always the same. “Perhaps there is something still left here
for you to do. Our job then is, with
your time left, to figure out what that is.”
Often a person is not able to completely name what that is, what is left
undone, what needs still to be done. But
I have walked now with many people at the end of their lives and I find it is very
often an amazing time of coming to terms with their lives, of reconciling
relationships, of making peace with what has been and with what is.
As I reflected on this, I thought of
Thornton Wilder’s book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2014. New York: Harper Perennial). The book begins with these words, “On Friday
noon, July the 20th, 1714 the finest bridge in all Peru broke and
precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.” This collapse began an intense search into the
“why” of that strange tragedy. In
particular, a monk was convinced that if we were to look at the five lives of
those who died, we would see that each life was at a place where something had
been concluded, that each life was “done” in some profound way, that God’s hand
was in the bigger picture of the collapse because their callings, their
purposes, their “jobs” here on earth were concluded and so it was simply time
for God to call them home. It is a
question that many ponder. Does
everything happen for a reason? Or at
least, do we die at an appointed time? Is
there a bigger pattern and bigger picture that determines the very hour and
even minute at which we will die? Or
does God call us home when our jobs here are done? When we have finished our “tests” or our tasks
and done what we are called to do, learned what we have been asked to learn? In many ways, the story doesn’t actually
answer the question about providence, destiny and fate. In describing these lives and where they were
at their final moment of death, the story causes the readers to explore more
fully their own beliefs. But it does so
while leaving more questions than answers.
Towards the beginning of the book, Wilder says this about whether or not
their fates, their lives and their deaths are determined, “Some say that we
shall never know and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill
on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not
lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.”
But more to the point of this sermon, the
book ends with these words, “But soon we shall die and all memory of those five
will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and
forgotten. But the love will have been
enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of
the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”
Under
all of our calls, under all of our life lessons, there is a bigger call, a
deeper call. It is to listen and follow
God. It is to follow Love, since that is
what God is. It is to bridge and
reconcile and heal all of life with that Love. It is to learn to embody and be
and act and live that love out. Thomas Merton put it this way, “My Lord God, I
have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know
for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I
think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope
I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the
right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you
always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not
fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils
alone."
Sometimes
the distinction between loving God for our own happiness and loving God for God
is a subtle difference. “God, help me to find what will make my life whole,” is
really a question about me. It is a
question that invokes God, but it still is about me. “God, how can I serve you? Where would it be most helpful to you for me
to be and what would serve you and your people and your world the most for me
to do in that place?” is slightly, but profoundly different. That difference, between turning to God to
make our lives whole, and turning to God so that we might serve God and help
God make the world whole, that is the difference between asking God to be with
us, following us in our journeys, and following God.
Simeon had seen love incarnate. He had seen it, recognized it, allowed it
into his heart. He followed God in his call. He had been given a task, and that task was
seeing, recognizing and proclaiming who Jesus was. Anna, too, had that task. Their proclamations were about love, were
about Jesus. And having finished their
work, they were ready to depart. They came
for the one thing that would make each whole and they did it. And as Simeon declared, he was then made
ready to cross that bridge of love and to be dismissed in peace.
How are you called to follow the way of
Love? How are you called to serve God
with eyes of love rather than fear? As
we enter the New Year, my hope for us all would be to move more fully into a
commitment to loving God and serving God with our whole beings. It is the call, the meaning, the resolution
that matters most. Amen.
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