Luke 2:22-40
January 1, 2006
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
When our kids were young, they just couldn’t wait for Christmas morning to come. Before they knew how to tell time, we would say, “You have to wait until it was light outside.” Then after they knew how to tell time, we had to say, “Not until it is 7:30!” When I visited our granddaughter, Evi last week, her mother would say, there needs to be a 3 in the middle of the clock to come down for presents. We know it must have been maddening for them to wait when Christmas presents are under the tree!
With December 25th falling on a Sunday last week, many of us needed to adjust our traditional Christmas morning traditions. Instead of waiting until Christmas Day, we opened our gifts on Saturday, the day before Christmas. I guess as adults, we can give ourselves permission to open gifts when we want.
Simeon and Anna
In our Scripture for today, we meet Simeon and Anna. This is a crucial story in Jesus’ life, but is often forgotten. After all, Christmas is over. We celebrated Christ’s birth with our candlelight service; we’ve opened our presents and entertained family and friends; and we are ready to move on. Next week, our gospel lesson is about Jesus’ baptism, when he was about thirty years old. The story about Simeon and Anna links his birth and his adult baptism.
Simeon and Anna are two of the most faithful servants in the New Testament. They waited at the temple day after day. They had been promised a sighting of the Messiah before they die. Simeon was righteous and devout who came to the temple to dedicate the baby Jesus and bless him and his parents. He told Mary that Jesus is destined to be a light to the Gentiles and the glory to the people of Israel.
Anna was eighty-four. She chose to be in the place of worship while she waited; worshipping, praying, and fasting for the long-awaited Messiah. When she saw Simeon dedicating baby Jesus, Anna praised God and told others about the redemption of Jerusalem. Both Simeon and Anna waited for that moment to see the Messiah as they were promised by God.
The waiting that Simeon and Anna endured was unlike waiting for Christmas morning, a date on the calendar to happen. We call that chronos time. We get the word, “chronology” which means telling time on our watches or on the wall calendar. The kind of timing that Simeon and Anna were waiting for is kairos time. Kairos is waiting for the right moment in time. It’s usually what we call, “God’s time.”
Both Simeon and Anna experienced chronos time when the Holy Spirit revealed to Simeon that he would not see his death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. And for Anna, she was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four, never left the temple until at that moment she saw baby Jesus. Like all of us, they experienced the ticking of the clocks and the page-turning of calendars.
Both Simeon and Anna experienced kairos time too. At that right moment, Simeon knew it when he said, “my eyes have seen your salvation.” At that moment, Anna began to “praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”
Jesus’ Time
The central meaning of Christmas is that God came into the world as a child in time. Jesus was born in a particular location named, Bethlehem at a certain time when Augustus was emperor and Quirinius was governor of Syria. At his birth, shepherds who were tending their sheep at night came to visit when they were told of this good news of great joy by the angels. So after eight days had passed, the baby was circumcised and he was given the name, Jesus.
Jesus didn’t live in some abstract time but in real time, chronos time just like us. It was time for baby Jesus to be dedicated on the eighth day at the place of worship to show that he was not Mary and Joseph’s alone but that he must be given back to God in service of him. This is the reason why we dedicate babies at our church as well. This is a reminder that our children are not ours alone. They must be given back to God, so we can understand who they are. It was Jesus’ time for this to happen.
Afterwards, Mary and Joseph took Jesus home to Nazareth. Mary had hidden in her heart all the things the angels had told her about Jesus, but she knew it was not yet time for his revealing. At the wedding at Cana, Mary prompted Jesus to do something about the wine running out, but he responded, “my time has not yet come.” Then, he quietly turned the water into wine. Although it was about time to save the wedding party, Jesus was still waiting for that right kairos moment to reveal to the world who he is—the Messiah.
Wasting Time
Today is New Year’s Day 2006 and we wonder about where time has gone. The fact is that we allow a great deal of time to slip through our fingers every day. The average U.S. worker waste more than 2 hours a day at the workplace surfing the internet, socializing with co-workers, conducting personal business, spacing out, running errands, making personal phone calls, applying for other jobs, planning personal events, and arriving late or leaving early. The wasted hours amount to a cost for U.S. companies somewhere in the neighborhood of $759 billion a year.
We all have the same 24 hours each day. But how do we spend that time? On an average, the typical American sleeps 8.6 hours each day. A third of our time we spend at work. Half of our leisure time, which is 11% of our lives, we spend in front of the television. We also spend an average of 24 minutes per day shopping.
We all live in chronos time. But the question for us is how we are using our time to know God. For most of us, we hate to wait for anything. We live in a world where things happen as quickly as we click a button. We are willing to pay a little extra postage to ship a package overnight. We get frustrated when there are more than two cars ahead of us at the drive-thru. How willing are we to wait as Simeon and Anna did, day after day, patiently waiting for Jesus to be revealed to them as the long-awaited Messiah?
The good news of great joy is that Jesus Christ is come! While we don’t need to wait in chronos time as Simeon and Anna did, we have often chosen to not wait for God in our fast-paced and busy lives. The waiting time is over.
Kairos Time
Anna and Simeon clearly were looking beyond hours, days, weeks and perhaps years. They recognized the eternal sense of what they were doing. They dedicated their lives to waiting, to fasting, to praying for that right moment in God’s time. Is there anything in our lives that’s worth waiting for? Do we wait for Jesus? Do we want more than the cute little baby that comes on Christmas Eve?
There’s a story of an English pastor who came to South Carolina in the early 1900s to preach and to go quail hunting. Mr. Smith had a plantation and hosted this pastor. There was a hunting accident and the English pastor was shot and died. Mr. Smith contacted the man’s family, compensated the man’s family as much as he could, and tried to get over this tragic event.
He never spoke of it in his home. Children were born into Mr. Smith’s family and one day one of his son’s came home from college for Christmas break. He told his father, “Dad, I know you want me to carry on the farm. But I have to tell you that I have given my heart to the Lord and feel compelled to enter seminary.”
Mr. Smith broke down. He told his son where he got his name, John Owen Smith. The pastor who died was named, “John Owen.” The father said, “Ever since you were born, I have been praying that somehow you might be called to take the place of that good man.”
We all live in chronos time as God has created us to live—even Jesus lived in our time. But we are also invited to wait for God’s time, kairos to happen in our lives too. Mr. Smith waited for a long time in grief over what happened and in God’s time, God chose to bless him with a son who faithfully served God when it was God’s time to do so.
Simeon recognized Jesus as the “light to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” He knew Jesus because he was waiting for him, he was attentive to him, because he was looking for him.
New Year’s Day
If we are going to make it in this world, we need to learn how to tell time. A child learns that it is 8:00 o’clock twice a day. One must learn about a.m. and p.m. Then they must learn about set times: time to get up, time to eat, time to go to school, time to go to church, etc. After the child masters keeping up with time like all of us here that he or she can read and anticipate time. Teaching with a clock is rote memorization. This is chronos time.
But teaching about the times of one’s life is wisdom passed from one generation to another generation. This becomes kairos time—God’s time when we trust our lives on him and wait to know God’s presence and plan for our lives.
On this first day of the New Year, are you looking for Jesus? Do you recognize him? Are we attentive enough that we would know Christ’s presence in our lives? Today is a good time to know Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Perhaps it is time for God’s kairos—the right moment in time to bless you from this day on and forevermore.
Let us pray.
Gracious God, you broke into our time in the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem when Augustus was emperor and Quirinius was governor of Syria. Jesus lived among us and fulfilled your plan for the world on the cross for our sake. We pray on this New Year’s Day that we are open and ready to know your will for our lives. May we become a faithful partner in your time of peace, justice and righteousness for all people. Amen.