Preached to the Congregational Church in Exeter, U. C. C., on the first Sunday after Christmas, December 29, 2002, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.

Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:21-40

You shall be called by a new name.

                      –Isaiah 62:2

     The Exeter River and the Squamscott River are the same river. The name changes at the bottom of the falls by the String Bridge. Nobody tells you this. You have to figure it out for yourself. This is how the locals keep the tourists in their place.

     There's a good reason for the change, of course. It's not just to confuse newcomers. Below the falls it's a salt-water tidal inlet, navigable all the way from the ocean. Above the falls you have an inland fresh-water stream. Two different worlds. I note, however, that this logic was not considered relevant in the naming of the Hudson, the Connecticut, the Mississippi or the St. Lawrence. On the other hand, if you ask me the Pemigewasset is the same river as the Merrimack. So maybe what we have here is just another case of New Hampshire crankiness.

     But I still think that even in New Hampshire, whenever there's a new name, there's some real new thing underlying it. Some new identity. (The only exception I might allow would be for corporations and corporate products, where new names are given precisely to create the illusion of something new.)

     Abram became Abraham and Sarai became Sarah when God covenanted to make them the parents of many nations. Jacob became Israel when he was designated to become the ancestor of one special people. A change of name is a change of identity.

     We give our children names by way of telling them who they are, and oftentimes in the process of growing up they take for themselves perverse variations of the names we gave them, by way of telling us we aren't in charge of who they are. In the end, of course, neither parents nor children are ultimately in charge of the identity of a person and the meaning of his or her life. Like everything else, that's a gift of God.

     And that's why Mary and Joseph take their baby boy to Jerusalem, to the Temple that King Herod built: They do it to present him to God, as the Law of God requires, because he is from God and belongs to God. This has nothing to do with his unique identity as Son of God and Messiah. It's equally true of every Jewish child and, by extension, of every child on earth, including you and me and our children.

     Now, we don't consider it necessary to haul our kids to some Temple in Jerusalem. We are not observant Jews in the time of the Roman Empire. We bring our kids here and baptize them and give them a name. We have our own ways, every culture has its own ways, of presenting its children to God.

     For a Jewish boy in the days of the Romans, you had to do two things. First, when he was eight days old, you had to circumcise him, and it was traditional to name him at the same time. Second, if he was a first-born, you had to sacrifice him. Yes, sacrifice. It says in the Torah, in Exodus:

You shall set apart and consecrate to the Lord every first-born, both human and animal. If in the future your child asks you why you do this, you shall answer, "When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt. Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord every male that first opens the womb. It serves as a sign and a reminder that the Lord brought us out of Egypt."

     But of course God didn't really require child sacrifice, in fact God would not allow it. So there had to be a way of giving their boys to God without harming them or losing them. And this is how they did it: They would bring the boy to the Temple and present him to the Lord, and then they would offer a substitute sacrifice of a sheep or a couple of pigeons or some money. What they were doing was, they were buying the kid back from God, or paying God a ransom for him. Redeeming him as you would redeem your heirloom jewelry from a pawnshop. Perhaps even renting him or borrowing him!

     This has interesting implications for parents of sweet little boys and girls who turn into teenagers. The point is that our children don't really belong to us. They are entrusted to us, through no virtue of our own.

     The odd thing is that the baby Jesus, when he grew up, became very critical of what went on at this same Temple in Jerusalem where his parents presented him to God and redeemed him. He criticized it because it was corrupt and unfaithful, which unfortunately can happen to any religious institution then or now. I'm sure you can think of examples. But they took him there anyway. They did what they were supposed to do, even if the place they were doing it wasn't the way it was supposed to be. You and I have done that sort of thing too, haven't we? It's a fact of life.

     And when the parents bring him in, up come these two characters, Simeon and Anna. The old goat and the old bat. I tell you, for some reason I find myself in greater sympathy with those two with every passing year. Now lots of oldsters make fusses over babies, but this goes way beyond that. This is prophecy, which means seeing things that other people can't see or don't want to, and telling the truth about them.

     Preaching about Simeon and Anna, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism and the man who gave enthusiasm a good name, said, "Let the example of these aged saints animate those, whose hoary heads, like theirs, are a crown of glory, being found in the way of righteousness." And as I look out over all the hoary crowns in these pews, or as I look in the mirror or across the breakfast table, I think: Yes. Right. As our heads go gray or white or bald or synthetic, we need someone to show us the right way to go about being old, and that's why God gave us Simeon and Anna.

     For instance, why did the two of them happen to be in the Temple on the day that this particular baby was brought in and presented to God? The story says Simeon went because the Holy Spirit inspired him to go there that day and see the Messiah. Well, God only knows what inspirations you or I may have received from the Holy Spirit that we just ignored. Inspirations don't cut much ice unless you‘re in the daily habit of expecting God to be doing something. Simeon was in that habit. Continually alert to the possibility that God would change the way the world was. So don't let's allow our old age to take that away from us. Let's hope rather that it grows in us as we age.

     Anna, the story says, was there that day because she was continually in the Temple. But as I said, the Temple was a den of thieves. So she hung around for what it was meant to be and once had been, not for what it had actually become. By doing that she kept the Temple and the worship of God alive as the Temple's own priests and functionaries were failing to do. This is the upside of the old person's famous stubbornness about clinging to a vision of the way things are even if they aren't anymore. You're actually prepared to encounter sacred things, looking to encounter them, in profane places. And of course, what you see depends heavily on what you're looking for. Believing is seeing.

     It's not newsworthy that there were a couple of old folks who were standing around in the Temple when the Christ child was presented to God. The remarkable thing is that they recognized him and knew what he was up to and came right out and said so. This is the kind of old people we need more of.

     They also recognized the nature of the opposition. "This child is destined for the falling and rising of many," said Simeon; "this child will be opposed; he will reveal the inner thoughts of many, and a sword will pierce his mother's soul." No rose-colored glasses there. No underestimating of the powers and principalities that dominate and corrupt the world, and a healthy respect for the price to be paid for resisting them. Respect, but not fear.

     These two show me that an old age can be a good age, and I pray it will be so for all of us. But you can bet they weren't born to reach a good age. That's something that comes through change after change after change, internal as well as circumstantial. In that sense we're all adoptees many times over, as God gives us or lends us or entrusts us to this or that circle or community or family, and our identity shifts accordingly. Our identities evolve even within the keeping of a covenant like the ones between spouses or between brothers or sisters or between parent and child.

     We're all adopted, but that's not second best, that's a good thing. It means that who we are and to whom we belong aren't just random, meaningless accidents. It's not chance that has thrown us together and required us to pay attention to each other — it's God. And maybe that will animate our hoary heads.

     Amen