Sunday Video Message – “Falling and Rising”

Sunday ~ December 27, 2020 

Rise of Worship ~ Monthly Meeting for Business

December 27, 2020

Order of Worship

Announcements 

Music?

Children’s moment? 

Prayer Concerns

Pastoral Prayer 

Message: “Falling and Rising” 

Scripture:  Luke 2:22-39 

Open Worship

Benediction 

Announcements 

Good morning, and welcome!  We at University Friends are glad to have you worship with us this morning. 

• Thank you for technical support by Michael Barrett and Joe Dawley, music coordination by Dawn Blue.   
• We are live streaming on Facebook and the church website (wichitaquakers.org).  
  • Please feel free to share our worship with your Facebook friends by posting a link.   
  • Please also feel free to comment on the Facebook page with prayer concerns or announcements.

Today 

• We have our Monthly Meeting for business at the rise of worship via Zoom. 

This week

• Scheduled prayer times at noon on Monday and at 8:30 Thursday morning, via Zoom 
• The church office will be closed on Friday, New Years Day.  

Music?

Children’s moment? 

Prayer Concerns

• Don Mallonee had a balloon procedure on Tuesday and a CT scan Wednesday.  He is now scheduled for a full valve replacement on Tuesday, December 29.   

• Erin DeGroot has asked for prayers for her grandmother, Bonnie Jarvis, who has recently been diagnosed with leukemia. 

• Our church during this time of transition — May we find clarity and energy for the tasks at hand and the decisions we will need to make as we find our way forward.   May we find ways to use our assets wisely and well.  May we discover ways we are to be a beacon of love in our world. May we be looking for the doors you are opening, and may we have the courage to walk through them.  May we see what you are doing in our world and join you in it.   

Pastoral Prayer 

God of all ages, we open our hearts and minds to you.  

Don Mallonee

Erin’s grandmother

This week we say goodbye to 2020. 

• We recognize the many losses of the past year.  
• We are grateful that you have been with us through good times and bad.   

As we look toward a new year, we have hope.   We hope that our world will turn the corner with this pandemic.   

As a church, we recognize that this is likely to be a momentous year.   

• We need to make a decision about our building and our relationship with Friends University. 
• We have a retreat coming up in early February as we seek clarity in answer to the questions of who we are, about our neighbors, and about your call on us.  
• Soon after that, we are likely to begin a search for a new settled pastor.

We are grateful for your faithfulness.

Message: “Falling and Rising” 

Scripture:  Luke 2:22-39

This morning’s scripture, from the Gospel of Luke, is about the presentation of Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem when he was a baby.  It includes one of my favorite stories in the Bible.  

Here’s how it begins, in The Message, Luke 2:22-24: 

Then when the days stipulated by Moses for purification were complete, they took him up to Jerusalem to offer him to God as commanded in God’s Law: “Every male who opens the womb shall be a holy offering to God,” and also to sacrifice the “pair of doves or two young pigeons” prescribed in God’s Law.

After the Christmas shepherds had gone back to their sheep, Mary and Joseph got down to the business of raising a good Jewish boy.  Luke 2:21 says that when the baby was eight days old, they had him circumcised and gave him the name Jesus.  

Then, we get to “the days stipulated by Moses for purification.”  What’s up with that?  A couple of things. 

We find the first reference to the tradition in Exodus 13.  It’s among what some call commemorative rituals, traditional acts of worship that serve to remind people of their religious heritage.   

Taking the baby Jesus to the temple was related to one of the commemorative rituals presented in Exodus, in chapter 13, verses 2, 12, and 15:

God spoke to Moses, saying, “Consecrate every firstborn to me— the first one to come from the womb among the Israelites, whether person or animal, is mine.”  (v. 1-2)

 “When God brings you into the land of the Canaanites, … and turns it over to you, you are to set aside the first birth out of every womb to God. (v. 12)

“Redeem every firstborn child among your sons. When the time comes and your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you tell him, ‘God brought us out of Egypt, out of a house of slavery, with a powerful hand. When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, God killed every firstborn in Egypt, the firstborn of both humans and animals. That’s why I make a sacrifice for every first male birth from the womb to God and redeem every firstborn son.’ The observance functions like a sign …: God brought us out of Egypt with a powerful hand.” (v. 13-16)

I don’t want to skip lightly over one aspect of this account: “When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, God killed every firstborn in Egypt, the firstborn of both humans and animals.”  It says right there that God killed every firstborn in Egypt.  What do we do with that?   

One discussion I read suggested that all Egyptians were complicit in the enslavement of the Hebrews, so they deserved to lose every firstborn (https://renovationchurch.org/messages/thefirstbornprinciple), but I find it hard to swallow the idea that every family actually deserved to lose their firstborn child.   

I find this perspective, from My Jewish Learning, more satisfying:  

… we … as readers must confront and challenge troubling aspects of our sacred narratives. The persistent hardening of Pharaoh’s heart results in the Israelites’ night of redemption, but we must never forget that this same night was one of horror for the Egyptians. We must continue to ask the questions that preserve our awareness of the Other’s story. … Year after year, as we recall at our seder table the wonders God performed for us, we must remember the price the Other paid for our liberation. (https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/does-one-crime-justify-another/). 

That’s the Exodus background to our passage in Luke 2.  Jesus was Mary’s firstborn – he opened her womb, so to speak – and he was to be redeemed.    

Another aspect of the background to this passage in Luke 2 has to do with purification.  

According to the teachings in Leviticus, childbirth, with its blood and mess, makes a woman ceremonially unclean.  While she is unclean in this way, Leviticus 12 says, “she shall not touch any holy thing, or come into the sanctuary” (v. 4, NRSV).  If she has a son, she shall be unclean for 33 days.  If she has a daughter, she shall be unclean for 66 days (v.4, 5) (Nobody said the Bible doesn’t have gender issues from time to time.)

Here’s how the purification ritual works, according to Leviticus 12:6-8, from The Message: 

^6-7 “When the days for her purification for either a boy or a girl are complete, she will bring a yearling lamb for a Whole-Burnt-Offering and a pigeon or dove for an Absolution-Offering to the priest at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. He will offer it to God and make atonement for her. She is then clean from her flow of blood. …

⁸ “If she can’t afford a lamb, she can bring two doves or two pigeons, one for the Whole-Burnt-Offering and one for the Absolution-Offering. The priest will make atonement for her and she will be clean.”

Because Luke suggests that Mary and Joseph brought two birds, we could understand that they couldn’t afford a lamb.   In any case, the two new parents brought the baby and the two birds to the temple.   

Luke continues, beginning with verse 25, in The Message:

^25-32 In Jerusalem at the time, there was a man, Simeon by name, a good man, a man who lived in the prayerful expectancy of help for Israel. And the Holy Spirit was on him. The Holy Spirit had shown him that he would see the Messiah of God before he died. Led by the Spirit, he entered the Temple. As the parents of the child Jesus brought him in to carry out the rituals of the Law, Simeon took him into his arms and blessed God:

God, you can now release your servant;
    release me in peace as you promised.
With my own eyes I’ve seen your salvation;
    it’s now out in the open for everyone to see:
A God-revealing light to the non-Jewish nations,
    and of glory for your people Israel.

^33-35 Jesus’ father and mother were speechless with surprise at these words. Simeon went on to bless them, and said to Mary his mother,

This child marks both the failure and
    the recovery of many in Israel,
A figure misunderstood and contradicted—
    the pain of a sword-thrust through you—
But the rejection will force honesty,
    as God reveals who they really are.

^36-38 Anna the prophetess was also there, a daughter of Phanuel from the tribe of Asher. She was by now a very old woman. She had been married seven years and a widow for eighty-four. She never left the Temple area, worshiping night and day with her fastings and prayers. At the very time Simeon was praying, she showed up, broke into an anthem of praise to God, and talked about the child to all who were waiting expectantly for the freeing of Jerusalem.

³⁹ When they finished everything required by God in the Law, they returned to Galilee and their own town, Nazareth.

Here, in the Jerusalem temple, were two people, Anna and Simeon, who were paying attention to what God was doing in their world.  They were paying attention and ready to join what God was doing.  

Anna, a widow over a hundred years old, had an active and vital spiritual life, and she got it.   

And Simeon, a good man, listened to God’s leadings and so was there at the right time and the right place to see God’s Light. 

May we all be so attentive to God that we see what God is doing and be ready to join in.    

As I read this passage this year, I noticed especially Simeon’s message in verses 34 & 35.  

In the New Revised Standard Version, it reads, 

“This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed ³⁵ so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”   

“This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel….”  

I hear echoes of Mary’s prayer in Luke 1:

… [God] has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
⁵² [God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
    and lifted up the lowly;
⁵³ [God] has filled the hungry with good things,
    and sent the rich away empty.

The proud and the powerful and the rich would experience Jesus’s message as scattering, a bringing down, and being sent away.  Falling.   

The humble and the lowly and the hungry would experience Jesus’s message as bringing together, being lifted up, and filled with good things.  Rising. 

Anna and Simeon had open hearts and were ready to see the new emerging, ready to embrace it.   Not everyone who was part of the Jewish community was as ready as they.  

Even among the followers of Jesus, some people seemed to want to join what God was doing in their world.  They were ready to follow Jesus, but they wanted to follow Jesus while keeping their religious traditions the way they’d always done them.    

We read about that struggle in Acts 15.   

• Some believers said that followers of Jesus have to keep the law of Moses (Acts 15:5).  After all, Jesus was Jewish. 
• Some believers observed that God was already at work in the lives of people who weren’t keeping the law of Moses (Acts 15:7-11, 12). It’s about grace, not about the old traditions, they argued (Acts 15:11). 
• In the end, they came to agreement to keep some of the Jewish law but to let most of it go (Acts 15:28-29, NRSV). 

I wonder how many of those believers went home with tears in their eyes, understanding that something new was emerging while also grieving for a way of life that had fed them and sustained them and that they were letting go. 

Change involves both falling and rising, letting go of the old and embracing the new.  That was true for those who saw God breaking into human history with the birth of Jesus.   It’s also true for us.

As this church moves forward, some of you may want to welcome a new pastor while keeping everything else the way it was before.    

Now is the time to ask some important questions.  

What was not so good about the way things were before?  How might you want to develop new ways of being together and being in Wichita that are better?   

What was good about the way things were before?  What of those good things may still have to be set aside to make way for the future? 

I cannot answer those questions for you.  I can say with some certainty that you will have to set aside some of the way things used to be.  Some of those ways, you may set aside gladly as you see the new things that God is doing in and among you.  

Some of those things are going to be more difficult to let go.  You will likely have to set aside some good things, things that have fed you and sustained you. 

May your hearts and minds and souls be open to the new thing God is doing among you. 

Open Worship

Let us join together in a time of open worship, communion after the manner of Friends. 

Benediction 

May you, may we be ready to embrace the work of Christmas: “To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among others, To make music in the heart.” (Howard Thurman)