Presenting Samuel, Jesus, and Ourselves

She shares the gift, yes she even shares her first-born son, the child of her old age, so that others in the community might benefit from this gift to her from God.

The Bible is remarkably unemotional at this point.

We can imagine a great mix of feelings as Hannah brings the young Samuel to share him with Eli the aged priest.

He was to live henceforth at the Temple, and not home with Hannah and Elkannah.

And yet she knows that God will continue to give her enough in the days ahead, and so we hear her joy,

the joy she has in spite of the sorrow she must have also felt at leaving Samuel with Eli.

The cost of this gift? Life.

Her lifetime of waiting, watching, praising God, and prayer;

and also the life of Samuel who is not her possession but her trust as well as her joy.

She has waited, she has been given the reason for joy,

and that joy changes and shapes the rest of her life.

All this takes place when Samuel was presented in the sanctuary at Shiloh.

There are the two stories: one 2,000 years old, and the other more than 3,000 years old.

What do they have to do with us?

Is that canticle, the song of Simeon in the Temple, our song as well?

In an important way, the two stories are models for the living of our lives.

We, too, have been living in a troubled world, in situations far from perfect.

We have a whole litany of problems:

For some, it is a serious illness or impending surgery.

For some it is job problems and stress-related tensions.

For some, it is family crises, communication problems, promiscuity, adultery, truancy....etc.

For some it is the working out of civil justice.

For some it is loneliness, grief, or the fear of death.

If your category hasn't already been mentioned, please add it to this list.....

We all sense the incompleteness and the problems of things the way they are.

We pray: “Put things right, O Lord!”

And the waiting seems endless.

Here is the Good News: it has begun to happen.

The great gift of the presence of Christ has been given to all who call on the name of the Lord..

A gift! A gift of God!

And joy like that of Hannah, Simeon, and Anna arises in us,

and it changes and shapes the rest of our lives, just as it did to those of long ago.

What will you and I do in thanksgiving because God made a promise to us when we were presented at the font of Holy Baptism?

What will you and I do in thanksgiving because God refreshes us in that promise in scripture and sermon and as we gather at his Holy Table?

Our lives are different.

The old despair shall not overwhelm us.

There will be gifts enough for us, and enough also to share.

There are gifts enough and more than enough to take up our proper work:

and it begins with praise.

Hannah, Simeon, and Anna all had as their first reaction praise to God.

When we discover that God has not forgotten us despite our problems and our sin, our first impulse should be to join in song right here.

And then to keep right on with praise after the first flush of enthusiasm has passed.

Hannah and Anna had long years of waiting and watching;

long years in which they kept coming to the temple anyway, even when it seemed like God was silent for them.

They held on and trusted that at the right time God would make good on his promises.

And so can we.

Even on a day when we don't feel like worship because of pain, sorrow, emptiness, or whatever, come anyway and let the prayers and praise of the rest of those present carry us along with them.

Our lives can be changed, even when we are not expecting it anymore.

The first impulse is praise;

the second impulse is to tell someone else about it.

Anna spoke to all who were looking for the redemption of Israel, Luke says, those who knew the emptiness of life as one long day after another.

She told them that something had fundamentally changed.

It was good news not just for her but also for anyone who will listen.

How was it that the story moved from a handful of frightened disciples to us?

One told another, and another...until it reached across time and space to us.

And now the responsibility is ours.

Tell someone about what happens here!

May the Spirit stir up in us the courage to speak and the right things to say and do, so that others might be presented in the temple of the Lord.

Several weeks ago someone said to me that they were tired of hearing the pastor remind them that we need to be engaged in Bible study.

I'm not apologizing for that; it is the foundational action for our life as Christians.

It is where we are encouraged by the example of others who heard the story first.

It is where we see the pattern of praise and thanksgiving that is followed by action.

It is where darkness is banished and the light of Christ shines brightly.

If it were doing its full job in us, we would be inviting friends and neighbors to see Jesus here, as we heard Andrew do in last week's Gospel.

So the problem is not that I've talked about it too much, but that not enough are following through.

May the Spirit stir things up in us all!

The candle is the right symbol for today.

One little candle can make a big difference in a dark room.

One candle loses nothing when it lights another candle.

When we leave the nave today, each household will receive a candle,

a sign of the gift of God that is ours,

a reminder of the reason for joy in spite of sadness,

a light in which to begin our works of thanksgiving.

Use it well;

and if you want to offer a candle to someone else, simply ask and it will be provided to you for that purpose.

So, the words with which we end the service will indeed become the right words:

Go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.