Sermon 29th December 2013

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh-Cunnell preaches.  The reading is from Luke 2 verses 28-35

Ask what people got for Christmas

ask Simon if he got anything unexpected

SHOW JESSE BAG

This was a present for Christmas I gave my daughter Jesse

The design on it is an adinkra one from Ghana

A bit like Chinese characters it spells the words Gye Nyame, you may have heard me mention this phrase before.

Jesse and I have just been to Ghana to see my dad and everywhere you go you will this design Gye Nyame on the side of mini buses, on Christmas cards, on clothes

 on wrapping paper even on jewelery like my ring

The words Gye Nyame mean

except for God fear nothing

Not just fear as in be afraid of

But fear as in pay attention to or follow

So Except for God pay attention to or follow nothing else.

just follow God and Don’t be afraid of the world, -

Except God Fear Nothing

Gye Nyame!

We’ll come back to this but now…

A manager of an electronics shop, ordered a part, number 669, from the factory. When it arrived, he noticed they'd sent him part 699 instead. he fired off an angry letter and sent the part back. A few days later, he got the replacement. It was the same part,

along with a note containing these four words:

TURN THE BOX OVER.

Sometimes life happen to us in unexpected ways

What if we pulled this cracker and it was empty…shall we see..??

Will someone come and pull this cracker with me

What do we expect inside??

Hat toy joke…

Read joke

Times change and so do our expectations

Simeon followed God

He lived you could say a Gye Nyame life ..

He was a devout man who always obeyed Jewish Law and Through all the ups and downs of his life until now he was a very old man he expected and trusted God to keep his promise to the Jews that the Messiah would come –

The Messiah, a saviour to free the Jews of Israel, God’s chosen People. from the conquering Roman armies and bring back the Kingdom of Israel.

With the birth of Jesus, as he holds that little baby in his arms, Simeon knows that God's promise has been kept and The Messiah, the one sent to save the Jews has come

But also this Messiah has come to save the whole world,

And knowing this Simeon says he can die happy.

Times changed for Simeon

He was no longer waiting

The wait was over and so he could be at peace.

How many of us can say we are at peace in our lives?

In telling us of Simeon, in letting us hear his words, the writer of Luke's gospel is reassuring us,

Don't worry Christ has arrived in the world and the world will never be the same again

All our expectations can change now the Messiah is here

Death is no longer the ultimate end for us

The power of love, of healing, of forgiveness, of saving from misery has arrived to bless us and walk with us at all times

On Friday the 21^st of December my dear cousin Jojo was diagnosed with stage 4 oesophogeal cancer

On Monday morning his daughter rang & left me a message  that her daddy was very ill and she was flying home to Trinidad the next morning.

By the time I returned her call 2 hours later last Monday  my cousin had died - he was 58

In September 2012 my brothers son Noah became a father himself at 19 

His son Xion is now nearly one and a half and I am a great aunt

Life continually takes us by surprise

WE didn’t expect that my cousin would be so dreadfully ill and die within 4 days of diagnosis

We didn’t think that my nephew would barely be a man before he became a father

Change comes in our lives in many unexpected ways

Often life can feel like it’s happening to us overturning all our expectations

Sometimes life grabs us and shakes us

Births and deaths

moving homes and schools and jobs

Illness

Marriage

Friendships

All sorts of changes happen to us throughout our lives and these can affect us deeply

Sometimes change fills us with great excitement

Sometimes with terrible anxiety

Sometimes change brings great happiness

Sometimes unbearable grief

And when life does shake us where can we turn and hold on tight?

To our most unexpected Messiah Jesus

In Simeon’s day many Jewish believers expected that when the  Messiah returned, he would be mighty and strong and ready for revenge

He would throw out the Roman Military Occupiers and the Jewish people would be able to live freely with dignity and honour, God’s chosen people in God’s chosen land

Their expecations were not of the Messiah returning as a vulnerable baby in a poor family

growing up in the rural nowheresville of Nazareth, where they all spoke like country bumpkins

This Messiah did not kill his enemies  - he told us to love them

This Messiah did not come only to save the Jews,

he healed the daughter of a Roman soldier – the enemy

he healed a woman from Samaria – a non Jewish foreigner

he told us to love our neighbours as ourselves,

even when our neighbours are our enemies.

This Messiah did not come to convince powerful Jewish religious leaders to like him.

 He argued with them about the way they lived

He challenged the way they used their power to feed their ambition and not to help their people.

Jesus spent His time with the poor , the sick  , the unloved, people with no worldly power at all.

An Unexpected Messiah

In the Temple when the baby is just 8 days old Simeon says to Jesus’ mother

“This child is chosen by God for the destruction and the salvation of many in Israel. He will be a sign from God which many people will speak against 35 and so reveal their secret thoughts. And sorrow, like a sharp sword, will break your own heart.”

What a thing to hear?!

Your child will bring destruction

Your child will be spoken against

Your heart will be broken

When a baby is born we expect to hear lovely things said about it

But Simeon said unexpected things to Mary because Jesus was an unexpected Messiah

Jesus was a sign from God of a sort of power that no one expected of the Messiah.

The power to speak the truth to powerful people when they behaved wrongly

The power to love and forgive people who wished to hurt him

The power and confidence to surround himself with people who had nothing to offer him in worldly terms except the honesty of who they are

All the things that Simeon said to Mary that sounded terrible, were true and yet from them came the message of love, healing, forgiveness and hope that Jesus has brought us

This is the message of Christmas

This is what we remember and celebrate

In the middle of a dark winter we light candles and have lights on our Christmas trees and around our homes to remember the light to ‘reveal God’s will’ – as Simeon calls Jesus

the peace that came to Simeon can come to us, that Jesus, the unexpected Messiah stands unshakeably next to us whatever life throws at us.

He has changed our expectations, because

we know his powerful love is in our lives,

we have his example to live by, bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth

and we have eternal life in heaven to look forward to.

The way the world works for us has changed forever –

It is still full of change and unexpected events but one thing we can rely on and be sure of is Jesus

Luke writes in this Gospel about asphaeia the Biblical Greek word meaning truth.

We get the English word asphalt from the word asphaeia

Asphalt the concrete of roads and pavements

The FIRM surface we walk on

The FiRM surface we rely upon to support and hold us up as we travel along life's path.

The truth or Asphaeia of Jesus Christ the Messiah's birth is that God in the form of baby Jesus

brings a saving healing loving power to surround us with as we travel through all the changes and changing expectations life sends our way.

Jesus is the truth, the Asphaeia,

The FiRM surface we rely upon

With this knowledge through all the ways life shakes us, we too can share in the peace of Simeon

The peace that comes from a promise kept

We are never alone, in Christ we have the hope of eternal life in heaven

and a loving healing saving Messiah on earth

Asphaeia Asphalt the truth of Jesus concrete & firm beneath our feet

My prayer for us all this morning as we worship together for the last time in 2013 and face the unexpected of the year ahead is that we draw on the peace of knowing Christ

The Unshakeableness of a life following his firm path

A Gye Nyame life

Like Simeon we have the promise of the Christmas baby, our unexpected Messiah, Jesus, to hold us up every step of the way in 2014 and beyond, in our sorrows and in our joys

For we are loved eternally

Amen