Seeking and Waiting

Read Matthew 2:1-12 and Luke 2:-21-38 to start.

Who here enjoys waiting? What’s that? No one is immediately putting their hand up? That’s hardly surprising. It’s not a question like “Who wants ice cream?” or “Anyone mind if we finish early today?” We are not keen for waiting, it’s not something that we particularly want to experience, or that we would commonly seek out.

Now, on the other hand, we often very much enjoy what comes on the other side of the waiting. If you’re in line at an amusement park, when it comes to your turn for the rollercoaster or the waterslide, then that’s great, that’s something that is enjoyed by one and all, or at least by all who enjoy waterslides and rollercoasters. I remember as a child waiting for summer vacation or Christmas break, or even long weekends. Frankly, as an adult I find myself waiting for those things as well.

On a smaller level, there are mundane, daily waits for the toaster, the microwave, the traffic lights, the weather report on the radio, what have you. Perhaps you are sitting in your seat waiting for this sermon to get interesting, or for me to finish so you can have your lunch. Or maybe so you can work on your Christmas shopping. After all, right now, we are all waiting for Christmas, and whether you are all done, mostly prepared, or if you are in full panic mode, you are looking forward to the arrival of that day.

Maybe you aren’t looking forward to Christmas in particular, sometimes we wait for things that we don’t especially want. No one enjoys waiting at Access PEI to get their renewal on their driver’s licence, or waiting for an appointment, and don’t even get me started on the indeterminate nightmare of waiting at the ER. Is it going to be two hours? Seven hours? Nobody knows.

We don’t enjoy waiting, but we find ourselves waiting a lot more than we would prefer. We like things to be instant, immediate, without delay, and society caters to that. Otherwise we would not have the multitude of fast food restaurants with drive through windows that exist today, and maybe not so much here in Montague, but in many larger centers you can get all manner of food delivered to your door while you might have to wait, you can do so in the comfort of your own home. You can watch your choice of thousand of on-demand TV shows while you wait.

We have done our best to make waiting comfortable so that enduring it is more palatable. There are comfortable waiting rooms at medical offices of all types, there’s a mechanic where I used to go and a few years ago they put in a big new waiting room with soft chairs and a big TV and a coffee maker, even the little garage I go to now has a TV and decent seating in their waiting area. After all, if you have the choice between waiting in comfort or waiting uncomfortably, which would you choose? For that matter, if we can pretend that we aren’t really waiting, then it’s not nearly so difficult.

Now, some waiting is pointless and completely unnecessary, like appointments that are intentionally booked for times that are unrealistic, or the need to arrive at the airport a full two hours before flight or three hours before an international flight. For that matter, if you have a reservation for the ferry at Wood Islands, they would like you to arrive 40 minutes before departure. I have to bite my tongue to avoid ranting about Northumberland Ferries at the moment, but I will just say that there have been times I’ve arrived closer to four minutes before departure, although that was cutting it too close, would not recommend.

As a society, we have done so much to minimize the obligation to be patient that we have largely forgotten how to wait. And that is a problem, because some waiting is unavoidable. Some waiting is necessary, and should be experienced. Some waiting is important.

Farmers plant their crops and then wait many weeks until harvest. Lobster fishermen set their traps, and then return a day or two later to see if they have caught any crustaceans. Bakers prepare their dough and wait for it to rise, then wait again for it to bake. We need to be able to wait, because much of life does involve waiting. We might want things to be instantaneous, but often the best things come after a wait.

In the passage that I read a moment ago Joseph and Mary had brought Jesus to the temple for dedication as was the practice of the Jews at that time. The temple was a busy place with many people coming and going, sacrifices were offered continually. They had expected to offer two birds as a sacrifice, as was the standard for those without much money, and then be on their way, but instead they found themselves once again receiving unexpected attention, as had happened on the night of Christ’s birth. I’m sure they had not anticipated this sort of reception.

First, we see a man named Simeon, and we are told that he was waiting. We don’t see him elsewhere in any of the gospels, what we know of him we find in these few verses. He was just and devout, he lived in Jerusalem, and he waited for the Messiah. Specifically, he was waiting for the consolation of Israel, which basically means that he was waiting for the Messiah.

Things were not great in Israel at that point, especially for those who wanted to follow God. Israel existed as the kingdom of Judea, a vassal state of Rome, and was only a few years away from becoming a direct province of the Roman Empire. King Herod was oppressive and cruel, and even worse, he was not even really a Jew. That was hardly the only problem. The religious elite were corrupt and self-serving, there was considerable influence from outside cultures, the language of the day wasn’t even Hebrew, it was Aramaic. The rich and powerful had a lot and seemed to be getting more, and everyone else seemed to have less and less. We didn’t read the first part of the chapter, but it’s familiar, we know that Caesar Augustus had commissioned a census so that he might tax everyone in his empire more effectively. There might not have been any wars going on in that immediate area at that time, but that’s about the only good thing to be said. Things were tough. People were self-absorbed and self-involved. All this was nothing new. It had been this way for many years, and did not seem to be getting better. It was not an easy time in general. And in particular, it was not an easy time to follow God. Of course, it rarely is.

Simeon was someone who did follow God, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. He was in the minority, for while there were no doubt other people in Jerusalem who were just and devout, people who lead honourable lives, there were likely far more who went through the motions, and while they were perhaps not outwardly corrupt and wicked, they did not truly follow God in their hearts.

There were others who likewise were looking for the Messiah to come, who waited for the consolation of Israel, but perhaps not in the same way as Simeon waited. Many of them expected that Messiah would arise and throw off the megalomania of Herod, break the shackles of Rome, and restore the kingdom to something that resembled what it had been in the days of David and Solomon, or at least what they imagined it was like in those days. Not everything was sunshine and lollipops in those days, either, far from it, but it’s easy to imagine an idealized past and project a better tomorrow. They expected glory and power and might. They anticipated a Messiah who would save them there and then, who would turn things around on this world for God’s chosen people, and would fix things up for them. We of course, have the advantage of time and perspective, and we know that was not what happened, and was never scheduled to happen at that point in time. But the people then and there did not know it. This is why so many of them were disappointed when Jesus of Nazareth was not at all as they expected.

Simeon was not disappointed. He could not be further from it, he was delighted to see the Messiah, even as a newborn baby, barely a week old. He had waited, probably for most of his life, for this day, and here was the fulfillment of it. Not the final completion of the prophecy, of course, but the fulfillment of promise. While he probably was not going to live another thirty years to see Christ’s ministry and His death and resurrection, Simeon believed God and had seen the first part of the promise, had held the child in his arms. And that was more than good enough for Simeon. His response was prayer and thanksgiving.

It does not seem that he expected the immediate removal of Roman influence and corrupt leadership. While he spoke of glory for the people of Israel, he spoke before that of light for the gentiles. He did not speak in his prayer of Israel being free, of being restored to any sort of power. He did not look forward to Israel ruling the world or anything like that. He spoke rather of salvation, the instrument of which he had now seen with his own eyes. He spoke a blessing over Mary and Joseph as well, and told them how their child would bring about the fall and the rising again of many in Israel, and he warned them that there would be discomfort and upheaval to follow. This was not going to be easy or pleasant. Their little child would grow up to be a sign that would be spoken against, and that what many people thought deep in their hearts would be revealed because of Him.

We’ll get to how some of that transpired in a few minutes, but before that, let’s consider Simeon for a moment more. Now, we don’t know how old a man he was, probably not young, though. Old enough to say that he was ready to depart in peace, meaning that as far as he was concerned, he was fine if he were to die now, he was satisfied with the answer to the promise that he had received. I’m guessing he was a man in his sixties or seventies, or at least that is how I picture him, I don’t know for sure. We aren’t told. Old enough to know what was important, that much we do know.

Of course, you don’t have to be all that old to know what’s important, and you can certainly be old and not really have a clear grasp of what matters and what doesn’t. But there should be a certain measure of wisdom that comes with age. In any case, Simeon was probably not as old as Anna the prophetess whom we meet next. In verse 36-37, we are told more about her, her name, her family, and her situation, she was a widow, and of a great age. I’m not sure from the passage if she was 84 years old, or if she had been a widow for 84 years, which would put her well over one hundred, but it does not particularly matter. She was very old, and had lived well beyond the typical life expectancy of her day.

We are not told that she was directed specifically by the Holy Spirit to seek out the newborn Christ, or if perhaps she knew Simeon, knew what he had been promised, and saw and heard what he had just done, and realized who this child was. In any case, she likewise was anticipating the arrival of the Messiah. She recognized the young child for who He was, and she reacted similarly to Simeon in that she rejoiced and gave thanks. We might not know the particulars of what she said to Mary and Joseph, but we are told that she did go and tell others, that she shared this good news with others in Jerusalem who looked for redemption. That means that there absolutely were other people like Anna and Simeon who were waiting for the Messiah, who were looking for the redemption of Israel, probably many of them.

Some of them were not in Jerusalem, not even in the land of Israel at all. Earlier we heard a passage from Matthew chapter 2, where we hear of some wise men from the east who came to Jerusalem looking for one who was born King of the Jews. They had seen a star that proclaimed the prophesied birth of the Messiah, and they came seeking Him.

We don’t know what prophecy exactly they were familiar with, the most common guess is that it was from Daniel, but there is a much older prophecy, from the prophet Balaam, son of Beor who lived in a city on the Euphrates, and spoke of a star arising from Jacob, we can read about that in the book of Numbers, chapter 24. And there certainly could be other prophecies that we are not familiar with, not recorded in scripture, of course. But these wise men, they knew what they were looking for, and they made a considerable journey to find it.

It’s interesting to compare the accounts of Simeon and Anna with that of these wise men. These all had different backgrounds, different life experience, and different levels of relationship with God. Simeon was a devout man and the Spirit of God was upon him, Anna a prophetess who spent all her time in the temple, the center of the worship of Jehovah. The wise men, whom we often refer to as magi, which means a priest in the Zoroastrian religion, which was the established religion of the Persians. These men were certainly not as closely associated with the God of Heaven. They were not proselytes to the Jewish faith, so not even what we would consider believing gentiles. But all of them ended up in Jerusalem looking for the same thing, the same Messiah.

And you know what, that’s pretty amazing. It doesn’t matter if you have been walking with God, have been looking for Him your entire life, or if you have come only quite recently. It does not matter if your knowledge is great, or if your knowledge is far from complete. He will be there for you.

The wise men, for all their wisdom, had incomplete knowledge. By the time they arrived in Jerusalem Mary and Joseph had returned to Bethlehem, where they were lodging for a while. The arrival of these strangers in Jerusalem caused quite a stir, not the least because Herod’s title as conferred by the Romans was King of the Jews. Someone else born to that same title, well, that would be a concern. Imagine you are at work, and all of a sudden people are calling some new hire by your title. Not cool. Herod, who was already paranoid and murderously inclined, reacted as badly as you would expect. He did not see the redemption of Israel, because of course he was not looking for the redemption of Israel. He instead saw a threat.

We know from Luke chapter 2 how there were those who were looking for the Messiah, who were waiting for His arrival. In Matthew 2 we see instead those who were not waiting, not looking, not wanting the Messiah. Herod called the chief priests and scribes, the people who would have known the scriptures and prophecies the best, because that was their job, that was their primary pursuit. And indeed, they knew the prophecies of the Messiah, they knew exactly where He was to be born – in Bethlehem of Judea, they knew the exact prophecy.

If they had been looking for the Messiah, then having foreigners arrive in Jerusalem saying that they had seen a star which proclaimed His birth, you would think that they would have been very interested. They would have gone to see for themselves; to verify if this was true, to know for certain if the long awaiting promise had been fulfilled. But they did not. They did not make the short trip to Bethlehem, they were not even a little interested. I can think of a couple of reasons.

It’s possible that they did not really believe the prophecies. Sometimes that can happen, you can know all about something, know all the details, but not really believe it. Or perhaps they believed that there was a Messiah, but they didn’t really care. They were comfortable in their roles, and if Messiah showed up to say that He was taking over from Herod, from the Romans, then surely He would reward them for their, well, I’m not entirely sure on that one either. Can’t say faithfulness, can’t say diligence, maybe for their knowledge or their success or something?

Ultimately, the reason why doesn’t matter, the end results are the same. They were not seeking the Messiah, they were not looking, they were not waiting, they were not interested.

There are people in the church today who are much the same. They know the stories, they have heard the gospel, but it does not reach their hearts. There are even people working in the church who have studied theology and scripture, but as an academic exercise, not as life changing truth.

While we see differences between Simeon and Anna and the magi, we find great similarities in their hearts, in their intents, in their purpose. The chief priests and scribes, and of course King Herod, were entirely different in their hearts, their intents, and their purposes. They were far more interested in their own interests, their own influence, their own prestige. They did not care much about the people around them, and they did not care about actually seeking God, and they certainly were not waiting for the Messiah.

Today, you are faced with a choice, which of these do you want to be like? But even before that choice, first ask yourself, which of these do you more resemble now?  It’s all well and good to say that you want to follow God, that you want to seek out the Saviour and walk in His ways, but it’s another to actually do it. It requires sacrifice, not a burnt offering such as was done in the temple, but a personal sacrifice. Perhaps the sacrifice will consist of your money or your possessions, and while we might not like to give those up, there are far more difficult sacrifices. Following God might require giving up your plans, your desires, your talents, your comfort, your time.

It will almost certainly require seeking His will, and waiting for His leading. This doesn’t mean we sit on our hands until God speaks from Heaven, though. Anna spent her days in the temple long before Christ was born. She was in the right place. Likewise Simeon was just and devout for years, he didn’t start that on the day he heard from the Holy Spirit. His heart was right with God. And the wise men, they had their eyes on the heavens looking out for a sign. Waiting does not mean being idle. And seeking does not mean hunting blindly in the dark.

At this time of year when we are most keenly reminded about the birth of the Saviour, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the hustle and bustle of the season, to get absorbed by our own concerns, instead of thinking about actually seeking Him. It’s easy to rush here and there and everywhere doing what we want instead of waiting for His leading. It’s easy to go our own way instead of His way. It’s far more challenging to wait.

We may not know the big picture, we may not see far down the road for the Lord’s roadmap of our lives. But if we are being honest with ourselves, we probably have a pretty good idea of what God wants us to be doing now, even if we aren’t sure what he wants us to do next. We probably know how He would like us to live, even if the world at large disagrees.

God wants us to seek His Son, find Him, and follow Him. That’s the next step, that’s right move. But if and how you do that is up to you.