From Ritual to Revelation

Sunday, February 2, 2025 – Malachi 3:1-4, Psalm 84, Hebrews 2:14-18, Luke 2:22-40

Last week I asked us to think about a question: How do we need God to show up for us and for the people we love and care about? I asked you to think about your children, your grandchildren, your neighbors, and the broader Bradenton community.

You graciously shared what was on your hearts. And I found that incredibly powerful and moving.

Today, I’ll offer a second question for us to consider: How does God actually show up in our experience?

In one sense, there are many answers to that question. We might say that God shows up for us in church. And for those of us who were raised here, that is still very true. And yet, for so many people in our culture that is not true, that has not been their experience.

For many people, church is a place of condemnation or abuse. Or a place of undeniable hypocrisy. When people out there see the church (of any denomination) defend and protect sexual predators of children, they find it hard to listen to anything else it has to say.

For many people, God shows up for them in the natural world. I think we can all say we have felt that sense of transcendence – of being lifted out from our mundane lives into something greater and grander. I know that when I sit near the Gulf of Mexico, or near a rushing river in the mountains, or in a quiet grove of trees, I am in the presence of the sacred.

And yet, for centuries, the Church has denied God’s presence in the world, telling us that the material world is profane. Or worse, that it is evil. But again, if people beyond our walls have experienced God in the natural world, and we tell them otherwise, they will dismiss everything else we have to say.

Because experience will trump beliefs and theory every time.

And yet.

And yet, it is also true that the holy Presence we call God, can and does show up for us through the people and practices of the Church if we can open our minds and hearts. When we place ourselves in the spaces and under the conditions where we can hear God speak or where others who are activated by the Spirit can reveal God for us, we may suddenly see God’s presence where it was invisible to us before.

The people in our gospel did exactly that.

They placed themselves in the spaces and under the conditions where they could witness God’s presence.

Joseph and Mary traveled to Jerusalem to fulfill a religious requirement. Their tradition required them to come to the Temple to present their firstborn male child to God and make a sacrifice. But before entering the Temple, Joseph and Mary had to participate in religious practices of purification. We may remember the large jars from the wedding at Cana that held water for that very purpose.

As Joy Moore writes at the website Working Preacher, “Just as [Mary and Joseph] traveled to their family’s community to fulfill the requirements of being counted in the census for the government, they traveled to their faith community to fulfill the requirements of presenting a newborn before God.” Joseph and Mary were actively devout.

They trusted that there was a Presence to whom they could give their lives.

Because of that trust, and because of their being raised in a religious tradition, they came to the Temple devoted to observing the rituals of purification before they could present their firstborn male son to God.

Not only did Mary and Joseph actively engage their tradition in their own lives, they shared that tradition with their child. In bringing him as an infant, they taught Jesus from birth to observe the law, to participate in the rituals and practices that help us to experience God. They practiced devotion from an assumption of belonging to this larger community of the covenant.

They knew that one day in God’s courts were better than a thousand elsewhere.

And because of their belonging within a faith community and their own personal devotion, they felt comfortable in the House of God. In other words, they engaged actively in their faith and trusted the practices of their tradition that had been tested through time.

Simeon and Anna also trusted in their tradition, and we see how because of that trust, they became sacred vessels to reveal God’s presence to others. We’re told that Simeon came to the Temple because he was “guided by the Spirit” and “the Spirit rested on him.” Anna, too, placed herself in the space where she knew God might reveal Godself and became a prophet.

In fact, we might compare Anna’s life of faith to those who live within a monastic community, like monks and nuns. She completely devoted herself to the life of faith, to prayer and fasting, and so her life was centered on the Temple.

Simeon didn’t spend every day at the Temple, but he went there that day. He had been given a promise maybe years before to see God’s revelation on earth. We read that,

when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what was customary under the law, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
29 Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word,
30 for my eyes have seen your salvation,
31 which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 a light for revelation to the gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”
33 And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him.

We see in this reading the devotion and revelation of both men and women. In Mary and Joseph, Simeon and Anna, we see devotion, dedication, and revelation.

Today, we honor that approach to faith. And I’d like us to think about how we might better understand the people in our community who cannot and will not approach the church in that way. How might we come to know where they experience the Sacred today so that we might honor that experience of faith as well?