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Sexagesima
The Fourth Sunday After The Epiphany
Almighty and everlasting God, who dost govern all things in heaven and earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of thy people, and in our time grant us thy peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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The Fourth Sunday After The Epiphany
Sexagesima
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A Sermon by
✛
All Things Come to Those Who Wait
Has anyone ever quoted this proverb to you, “All things come to those who wait”? It is not something that any of us like to hear – at least I know that’s the way I’ve always felt about it. Still, as I read the scripture texts for today, thought about this Feast of the Presentation, just one of the names it has gone by over the years, and tried to catch the import of them, I kept coming back to the proverb: all things come to those who wait.
What I discovered was that the proverb’s origins are most likely French, “tout vient a point a qui sait attendre.” ‘Wait,’ ‘attendre,’ is really the operative word that brings us to share the richness of this celebration. Simeon, Anna, Mary, Joseph, the Church through the ages, remind us that we are to wait, to attend, upon the Lord so that we might know the good things God has for us.
Luke tells us that Simeon was waiting. We also the same implication in his words about Anna and her presence in the temple. Waiting is something that very few of us do well. In fact America has, from early on, sought to build a society with a minimum of waiting. Abraham Lincoln would offer his own version of the proverb, “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” Cute, but not entirely correct, because it’s based on what I believe is a misunderstanding of what it means to wait. What we’re seeing in this Feast and in the Scripture we’ve read is not waiting as most of us think, rather we’re looking at attending.
If we look the Oxford English Dictionary and look to the word ‘attend’ we’ll discover that it is the equivalent of the French “attendre,” and comes from the Latin word “to stretch.” Thus the OED tells us that the primitive significance is “to stretch to; hence to direct the mind on the observant faculties, to listen, apply oneself; to watch over, minister to, wait upon, follow, frequent; to wait for, await, expect.” Notice what’s going on here – to wait, to attend, is NOT PASSIVE. We’re not to sit back and see what comes, rather we are to be actively engaged, stretching toward that which – or the One who – we expect. Mr. Lincoln, wise as he was, missed the point….to wait and have good things come to one means that we are hustling. So, Simeon and Anna were stretching themselves, attending to, our Lord, so they might hear and respond when the moment of fulfillment came.
All things come to those who wait.
Malachi’s prophecy – attested to by both the situation in Luke and in the Book of Hebrews – shows us a God who has been attending to Creation and to its fulfillment, its salvation, which is being brought into the fullness of union with its Creator. God has been waiting for the right moment, it comes, is heralded by prophets and the righteous of Israel, and comes to fruition in the birth a child in Bethlehem. At this moment we begin to understand the rich complexity of our Christian faith, and its great affinity for and dependence upon Judaism. This is why Augustine would say – within the context of a commentary –, “Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet, Vetus in Novo patet” – that which was latent in the Old Testament would become obvious – patent – in the New Testament. I found this jingle worked too: “The New Testament in the Old lies concealed/The Old in the New is revealed.”
Because in the encounter, the meeting of Simeon and Anna with the Lord Jesus (the Greek Church calls this Feast Ypapante, the meeting), we see the coming together of the Old and the New Testaments. They waited, they strove, they attended and their eyes beheld “salvation, which you prepared in the sight of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.”
John of Fecamp, an 11th century monk and spiritual writer, sums this up so beautifully when we writes: “O goodness, charity, admirable generosity! Where the Lord will be there the servant will be; could any greater glory be given to us? The servant will reign with the Lord. What we render to you, Lord God, for so many benefits of your mercy? . . . . For your Son, our King, has not taken charge of angels but of the descendants of Abraham, having become like us except for sing (Heb 2:16-17). It is indeed human nature not angelic nature, that he has assumed and, glorifying it by the gift of the holy resurrection and immortality, he has lifted it above all the heavens, above all the angels, above the cherubim and seraphim, and placed it in him, at your right.
It is human nature which the angels praise, the blessed spirits adore; it is human nature before which the powers on high bow and the innumerable heavenly creatures throb with delight. Here is my whole hope: in this human being who is Christ, there is a part of each of us, there is blood, there is flesh. And where a part of my being reigns, I believe that I also reign.” [Confession Theologique in Days of The Lord (Liturgical Press, 1994), p. 110-11]
That reality is why Simeon sang, Anna rejoiced, and Mary pondered, holding it in her heart. Beloved, this is what you and I are called to behold. It is the very gift of being drawn into God’s image and likeness, restored, so that we might live in a manner that is deeply peaceful and wonderfully productive; lives that change the world around us. In short, what this Feast calls us to do is to see again the wonder of the Incarnation and what that act means for us. This is why Pope Leo the Great preached to the people of Rome, “Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.” [Sermon 1 ‘On the Nativity’]
What we celebrate in the Feast of the Presentation is the real conclusion of Christmas, and a second Epiphany (showing forth). It is one more opportunity – forty days after the Feast of the Nativity – to remind ourselves of what has happened and what we are supposed to be about. In all of this we are reminded that Mary is the type, the example for us, and for the Church. She was chosen by God to be the THEOTOKOS, the God-bearer. You and I are chosen, through our baptism, and empowered by the Eucharist, to bear God in our lives as really as she did in hers.
All things come to those who wait – if we wait, attend, extend, ourselves as we have read and heard, ALL comes to us. For we are in God and is in us. I leave you with the wise words of Origen, preacher and theologian of the early Church, who said, “In order to be worthy of being delivered and going toward better realities, let us – we who stand in the Temple, holding the Son of God and pressing him in our arms – pray to the all-powerful God, let us also pray to the child Jesus himself with whom we desire to converse while holding him in our arms.”
All things come to those who wait……wait and see!
