Lord, now let your servant go in peace;

   your word has been fulfilled:

my own eyes have seen the salvation

   which you have prepared

in the presence of all people,

   a light for revelation to the gentiles 

and the glory of your people Israel.

Ordinarily, on a day like today, I would tell you a little story about that. Maybe something that happened at Beverly Hills, or Beaver, or Blue Jay. But I can’t do that this morning. It just wouldn’t fit. Wouldn’t say what needs to be said. So let me tell you about something that happened somewhere else. A little closer to home. In a little place called South Charleston… To some people who looked awfully familiar – though I won’t name any names.

It was four years ago — four years and one week or so — on a Sunday evening, as I recall, just two days before Christmas. Some of your fellow parishioners – maybe a dozen or so – gathered downstairs in the fellowship hall to do what good Christian people have done for centuries just before Christmas… To crawl into a crowded van, drive around in the dark, and then stand outside somebody’s house in the freezing cold and hurl Christmas carols at them with their voices. Caroling, they call it. Which according to Webster’s dictionary means – and I’m not making this up — “to praise in or as if in song.” Sounds like Mr. Webster knew a little something about Christmas caroling, doesn’t it?

But that’s what we did. We went Christmas caroling. And it was the perfect night for it, too. The moon was full and bright and the stars were shining. The air was crisp and cold — a lot colder than I thought it would be, I’m sorry to say. And everyone had “donned their gay apparel” — Santa Claus hats and gloves and mittens and things that light up with flashing lights.

It’s a wonderful thing to stand on someone’s front lawn and sing about Christmas and the birth of our Lord. And what’s even more wonderful than singing, I think, is seeing the smiles and the glow and the sparkle in the eyes of the people you sing to – those who hear the glad tidings of great joy in these wonderful carols they’ve heard from the time they were children. And with the starlight, and the moon nearly full, and not a cloud in the sky, it was easy to see the look in their eyes and the joy on their faces. It is a wonderful thing – full of joy and love and Christmas.

Everything was lovely that evening – like a Norman Rockwell painting, except for the horse and sleigh gliding over the snow. It was great.

Mike would park the church van. We’d gather on the sidewalk or in someone’s front yard. Claire would go to the door and knock, or ring the bell. And we would watch and wait for someone to appear. And Gena would lead us in singing the carols, the great songs of Christmas.

Claire ran up to the door of one house when everyone was in place. She knocked at the door, but nobody answered. She knocked again, a little louder this time. And we waited and watched. But no one came. So she knocked again. And the door opened. Not the door she had knocked on, mind you, but the neighbor’s door. And a man appeared who had donned his gay apparel, but had cast it off, I think. He didn’t just come to the door, he came all the way out. Stood in the driveway wearing less than most of us would on a hot summer’s day.  He was sporting a small pair of trousers – I believe they’re called boxers. And the rest of him was clad in pretty much the same thing he was wearing the day he was born, which went right along with one of the carols we sang – the one, you know, that says “word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.”

The amazing thing to me was this man was not cold! I think maybe for the same reason the wind shield washer in your car still works when it’s only twenty-two degrees outside. He was not cold… or very modest, at all, from what I could tell. He was just standing there out-of-doors in late December with the moon and the stars brightly shining. And there were a dozen or so people right in front of him, almost. So he struck up a conversation.

“You folks Christmas caroling?”

“Yes.”

“That’s nice. Is my boy over there?”

“Nope. He’s not with us.”

“I thought it was my boy. I’ve been watching for him. He’s supposed to be coming in tonight.”

“That’s nice.”

“And you say my boy’s not over there?”

“No sir. Haven’t seen him.”

I don’t know where the man’s son was. Maybe he was coming home from school for the holidays. Or maybe he’d just run out for some pizza, or some sodas, or some clothes for his father. But, his father was waiting and watching.

We weren’t that far away from Good Shepherd, you know, down on fifth avenue. [The funeral home in our town.] And I was thinking, why don’t we just go on down there. Because I’m ready to go now, Lord. Just take me now… because I’ve seen it all, Lord. There’s nothing more left to see.

It’s what Simeon said at the temple that day in the second chapter of Luke. “Lord, I’m ready. I can go now, Lord. I’ve seen all there is to see.” Well, maybe that isn’t exactly what he said, but it’s awfully close. For what he said was,

• Lord, now let your servant go in peace;
•    your word has been fulfilled:
• my own eyes have seen the salvation
•    which you have prepared
• in the presence of all people,
•    a light for revelation to the nations
• and the glory of your people Israel.

He was like some of the people we sang to that night. He’d been watching and waiting. Keeping an eye out for someone who would someday walk through the door and take his place where he belonged. The truth is he was waiting for a son. But not just any son, mind you. Not even his own. No, Simeon was waiting and watching for God’s Son. The Messiah. The Anointed One. The Christ.  Every day, says  Luke, he was there in the temple watching and waiting for him to walk through the gates, take his rightful place, and deliver his people from sin and death.

But it wasn’t just Simeon. There was a woman there, too. A prophet, she was. An eighty-four year-old prophet of God who came to live there in the Temple. Her name was Anna — it means “favor” or “grace.” And she graced the temple night and day, says Luke. She never left it, never went home, but she was there day and night, fasting and praying and listening for God – for that still, small voice of God that speaks to the heart.

Simeon and Anna, both of them old and wise. Both watching and waiting. Luke says it was the Spirit who brought them there. The same Holy Spirit that came to Mary, the mother of Jesus, led them to the temple (just as the star would lead the wise men to find him in a little town called Bethlehem). The Spirit spoke to Simeon’s heart in wordless whispers with the assurance that he would see the Christ, the Messiah of God. So there he was in the temple waiting and watching for the Son of God…

But lots of people came to the temple. Every day somebody new would walk through those doors. Travelers would come to worship and pray and make their offering to God. The priests would come, and the teachers of the law. And every day families would come – parents with young children. Newborn babies to be blessed and marked as God’s own. They’d come from all over. From every corner of every town and every village in the land. And every day Anna and Simeon were watching and waiting.

One day, says Luke, a young woman came with her husband from the old city of David, a backwater village called Bethlehem, “the House of Bread.” And in their arms was a child – a little boy. Like so many others, they brought him to the temple to be set apart as holy, because that was the way of God’s people then. Every firstborn male was to be set apart. Made holy. It was like being baptized in a way, for the child was given a name and claimed by God to be one of his own.

So the young mother and her husband brought the little boy into the temple. And just as they were about to do what they had come there to do, Simeon took the child in his arms. And he lifted him up and thanked God with all his heart. And he said, “Now, Lord… Now you can let me go. For I’ve seen all I ever wanted to see.”

• Lord, now let your servant go in peace;
•    your word has been fulfilled:
• my own eyes have seen the salvation
•    which you have prepared
• in the presence of all people.

You know them, this couple. Mary and Joseph of Nazareth, and the infant Jesus… A carpenter and a teenage mother with her wee little baby.  Ordinary people from an ordinary little village. Simeon saw people like that every day at the temple. These folk weren’t dressed in fine linen and silk, or adorned with diamonds and rubies, or silver and gold. They were just plain, common, everyday people. Working class folk. A carpenter, mind you, and a young homemaker with a baby who had for his cradle a manger. A feed box. With hay for his bedding… You can’t get any more ordinary than that.

And yet, Simeon saw him and he knew. “There he is. This is the one. This is the one we’ve been waiting for. This child is the Light of the World, the One who will save God’s people from sin and death, and bring Light and Life to all of God’s children.” And right then and there he lifted up his voice and sang praise to God. “I’ve seen it, Lord. I’ve seen your salvation.”

Joseph and Mary were amazed, says Luke. How did he know? What did he see? “This child will do great and wonderful things for the people of God,” said Simeon. But how did he know that? What made the difference for him? And while they were still wondering how Simeon knew this, the prophet Anna came. And she praised God, too, for this wonderful gift. And then she turned to all who were longing for God’s glory and grace, to all who yearned for God’s presence and peace, and she told them about the baby — this little child named Jesus.

So you see, Anna and Simeon were waiting for this. They’d been keeping an eye out for the One who would come. But not just the physical eye. They had been watching with other eyes. Deeper eyes. The eyes of the heart and the eyes of the Spirit. The kind of eyes that are opened through prayer and worship, through hearing the scriptures. Eyes that are opened wider and wider as we learn to love and serve and care for other people.

Oh, but that kind of vision doesn’t come overnight. It takes time. A lifetime, I think, John Wesley would say. Maybe that’s why an old man and an eighty-four year old prophet were the first to see him,  I mean really see him that day in the temple. Because they had devoted themselves to a lifetime of prayer. A lifetime of seeing other people as they really are, and not just as the world teaches us to see them.

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy!

So keep your eyes open. Not just these [physical] eyes, mind you. But the deeper eyes, the hidden eyes — the eyes of the heart. The eyes that are opened through love and prayer, through giving and serving. Because a wonderful thing happens when we do. We begin to see more and more clearly that Jesus is here. Right here, I mean…. He comes to us through the young families all around us struggling to make a way in this world. He comes through the children. And he comes through older people around us — our own Annas and Simeons. He even comes in the least likely places through the least likely people we can imagine. But the good news is Jesus is here — the One who brings light and life to God’s people on earth is here. And our eyes can see him, too.

Do you remember Mister Rogers, from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood? Mister Rogers’ name was Fred. He was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church. And he was a friend to everyone who knew him, especially all the children who grew up watching him on TV.

Some years ago, Mister Rogers made a trip to California. And while he was there, he decided to visit a fan – a boy with cerebral palsy. At first, the boy was really nervous. Just to think that Mister Rogers had come him was just overwhelming. And it made the boy so nervous that he got mad at himself. He started hating himself and even hitting himself. And he was so upset and so agitated, his mother had to take him into another room so he could calm down.

Mister Rogers waited patiently. And when the boy finally returned, Mister Rogers said, “I‘d like to ask you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?” And on his computer, the boy answered, “Yes.”

Mister Rogers said, “I would like to ask you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?”

The boy was stunned. No one had ever asked him to do that before. No one had ever asked him for anything like that. He had always been the one people prayed for. He had always been the subject of prayer. Ah, but now he was being asked to pray for someone else… for Mister Rogers, himself! And even though he didn’t know at first if he could do it, he said he would. He’d try his best.

And he did. He did. From that day on the boy kept Mister Rogers in his prayers. And he never talked about hating himself and hurting himself, he never talked about wanting to die after that. Because he figured Mister Rogers was really close to God. And if Mister Rogers liked him, well… that must mean that God liked him, too.

Someone asked Fred Rogers how he knew what to say to make the boy feel better. And do you know what he said? He said, “Make him feel better? – Oh, heavens no!” he said. “You’ve got it all wrong. I didn’t ask him for his prayers for his sake; I asked him for mine. I asked him to pray for me because I just knew that anyone who has gone through all he’s gone through must be very close to God. I asked him because Jesus loves him. And Jesus is with him.”

It’s what happens when we watch and wait in prayer and worship. It’s what happens to us when we open our hearts and hands to love and serve the people around us. We begin to see with deeper eyes, the eyes of the heart and the eyes of the Spirit. And like Mister Rogers and Simeon and Anna the prophet our eyes are opened to see Jesus in others.

So keep an eye out. Look for him in the world around you. Because something wonderful happens when we do. We begin to see more and more that Jesus is here. And he is. Jesus is here. Jesus is here…

• Lord, now let your servant go in peace;
•    your word has been fulfilled:
• my own eyes have seen the salvation
•    which you have prepared
• in the presence of all people,
•    a light for revelation to the gentiles 
• and the glory of your people Israel.

This is the word which is given for you. Amen.