Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Luke 2:22-40

Since Easter Day, the friends of Jesus have been gathering to celebrate that the tomb is empty and Christ is risen. Today, we learn if he saw his shadow or not.

While talking, take two lanterns and have them passed through the sanctuary with instructions to hold long enough to know that you’ve held it. The last person to receive the lantern should bring it back up front. The lantern will be passed through the congregation as long as it takes to finish.

I know. I know. It’s an old, bad joke, but I love that the joke makes a connection between Easter and Phil the groundhog. Groundhog day adds another layer to this occasion.  The day is exactly exactly between winter and spring, a day when ancient folks had great anxiety that “this” year it seems like it could go either way, back into darkness or onward into light. Hedgehogs and badgers were supposed to have wisdom. In Pennsylvania, it became a groundhog. Ancient Celtic peoples also wanted to call on Brigit, goddess of fire, hearth, and ewes that bear milk for the lambs to come. People lit fires on hillsides, in their hearth, and every candle that could be lit. Imbolc was considered the first day of spring if the light kept coming. When the church arrived on the shores of Celtic lands, Brigit became Saint Brigit of Kildare, and the church offered its blessing for the light and all its candles: A Mass just for blessing candles. When the parties got a bit too wild, a few folks with power far to the East in Rome, decided to place The Presentation of Christ on this date to make it a more “respectable” festival, a light to the Gentiles and the glory of God’s people, Israel,” one more story of the baby Jesus, a fitting end to the Christmas cycle after forty days.

I love finding this brilliant thread that winds its way back in human history, our ancestors, whether earth-based or Catholic or no religion at all, have bequeathed to us stories, rituals, practices, festivals, even rodents with names, that hold our fear in tension with hope. We still wonder if this is the year that things go backward. With all our scientific knowledge, there’s a part of us that is still afraid of our shadow, and we know that the future is wide open, which really could go either way. Is this the year that it all turns to dust?

Who has the candle? Raise it up. We need to see where it is.

We need to see where it is. It’s really why we’re here. Even setting aside what’s happening in the country, a lot of us have a feeling that so much could go the other way. Last week, Pr. Jodi had those who are afraid raise their hands. So many did, but what I realized in retrospect, there was an amazing and mysterious number of you who didn’t! You weren’t afraid, at least not last week.

That’s a gospel miracle. There is always a Presence to behold, the echo of, “He is not here. He has gone ahead of you,” which I always take to mean, “Jesus is out there.” Everything, indeed, has already gone the other way, from death into life. I love that the very name of the church, “Gloria Dei,” the glory of God, with a mission to burn with a love that is stronger than fear, a dedication to creation and welcome instead of destruction and rejection, a place of healing, joyful celebration and beauty, a community that embodies the paschal fire that always trumps a dumpster fire. The glory of God is in this place.

Who has the lantern? There it is.

It will always be true that there are those among us who are holding the lamp. Those who pray when most can’t. Those who have faith they will see the day when all is made right. Those who show up just in case today is the day that it will all be fulfilled. And some who show up for everything just because you never know when someone is going to show up and need a blessing. Best to be there for it. They are the keepers of the fire.

There will be those who pass on the flame without even knowing it. Who has the lantern? You’re it right now. Bet you didn’t expect to be in the sermon.

So many of you wrote this week to say how recording “Beautiful Savior” for our Tanzanian partners connected to that that deep place of tears and awe. Some knew the words by heart. Some had never heard it before. Some loved it. Some cringed because of how it was used in their past. Some hoped for the St. Olaf choir ending; some were afraid it would. Most of you had no idea that was a thing. Some didn’t feel it at all but tried the harmony because others seemed to be moved by it. I think we’ve made way too much of feeling it. Sometimes you just do it, and the power of it doesn’t appear until years later, or even at all.

We don’t know if Simeon and Anna were feeling it. We don’t know if Mary and Joseph went to the temple because they thought they had to or because they wanted to. We don’t know if Simeon expected to be nudged toward a baby when he started watching for the One. I suspect not. It’s sweet to hold a baby, but its vulnerability and the way it will need so many others is hardly a sure sign that fear will be conquered, and Israel will be consoled. Was he shocked when “the revelation to the Gentiles” came to his spirit as a lyric in the song he’d been working on all these years? That wouldn’t feel right to a lot of Jesus’ own disciples for quite some time. There are still some who think God couldn’t possibly save everyone. Simeon did know enough to know that any chosen one, fire-bearer, change-agent, holy one has trouble and usually doesn’t die a peaceful death. The powers that use fear to keep everyone on edge and eager to give away their agency have always been strong enough to silence the different ones.

Anna must have been one of those folks who just doesn’t want to miss anything. She never left, likely praying with one eye open so that she could see who was coming and going. Her devotion probably seemed quaint to the more fiery ones who need to feel big with their prophetic rants. I thought of Marilyn Dayton, who was almost 84 just like Anna, who appeared at every baptism to have her picture taken with the baby, whether she knew the family or not. And then she followed that child as if it were her own family. “Give me your school picture,” she said year after year. She was a keeper of the fire, and she trusted love and goodness more than most of us.

Who has the light? By the time we’re done alll of you will have held fire.

Maybe you didn’t think you were faithful enough. Maybe doubt is your protection, and you were polite when the fire got handed to you. Maybe you knew today that you would be a keeper, and you held that fire, absorbing its grace. Maybe something mysterious nudged you to come this morning or join the livestream. You knew in your gut that the Spirit was on the move, and you wanted to hold it. Maybe you baked for the coffee party, or fixed the wick in the paschal candle, or prepared a Sunday school lesson. Maybe you came because your parents said you had to. Maybe you came because you want to look like you are a faithful member of the church. Maybe today you have both light and lightness that you want to give away.

No matter what, you have now become part of this great story of love, begun when God said, “Let there be light,” then passed from generation to generation. Your presence is somehow, someway the same as the presence of Christ, a sign of life that does have more power than those who use fear. What the powerful don’t know is that long after they are gone, we won’t open big books and tell stories about them. We’ll open books to tell stories about Mary and Joseph, Shepherds, Simeon and Anna, Marilyn and Lois, Jessica and Johnny, Teresa and Alan, Sue and Janet, Leif and Steven, Leatrice and Augustus, Liz and Bill.

One the count of three, all of you say your names. One. Two. Three.

This is an unending genealogy of fire. You carry light.