Sermon preached by Stephen Fielding on 4 February 2008 at St Peter’s Tewin

‘God has a plan’

This is a sermon about the plans God has.

Last Thursday I went to the school assembly at Tewin School. I’d never been before. It was a wonderful experience. I got chatting to the children beforehand. I asked one little boy how old he was. ‘I’m 4’, he said, ‘and my daddy is 100……and you look much older than he does!’

An old man – a genuinely old man called Simeon – and a very young child – Jesus - are at the centre of the gospel reading for today, and at the heart of our theme and celebration – the presentation of Jesus in the Temple.

It was the most natural thing in the world. All good Jewish parents did it. They brought their first-born son to the temple to dedicate him to the Lord. So Mary and Joseph bring their son to the temple in Jerusalem to consecrate Jesus to the Lord – to dedicate him to the most High God.

Picture the scene if you will. We are in the Temple in Jerusalem – the centre of the Jewish world, the place to which Jews looked as God’s true home for God’s true people. By some process of the spirit, Simeon, an old man, devout, holy, righteous, a man of God, hears a call from God. And what he hears is this. Simeon, I have told you that you will see the Messiah, and once you’ve seen him you will be able to die in peace, knowing that my promise to Israel has been fulfilled. Go to the Temple, and there you will see the one I have promised you, the one who is to be the saviour of the world. So Simeon goes – and you can perhaps imagine what must have been going through that dear man’s mind – what must have been the feelings of anticipation, trepidation and hope. God has crossed Simeon’s path, God has a plan for Simeon and here it is being worked out before his eyes.

Taking Jesus in his arms, Simeon utters words that have reverberated around the world ever since – memorable words that say that Jesus will be

‘a light to lighten the Gentiles – and the glory of his people Israel’.

What a stupendous claim is being made here! Jesus, and not the Temple, is to be the centre of the Jewish world and the centre of God’s world. In the heart of the Jewish faith and worship comes the claim that this child is to displace the temple and become Israel’s true Lord. But more than that, he will be the centre and heart and blessing for all the world too, not just for the Jewish people. God had a plan for the world, it involved Simeon, and here was its further unfolding.

What lay behind the idea that the Jewish Messiah would also be the saviour of the Gentile pagan world? How was it that the promised salvation of the Jewish people, the children of God, should also be extended as a blessing to the whole wide world? It was all there in their Scriptures, in what we call the Old Testament.

God had acted in creation, he had created the world. God had acted in the Exodus, he had acted to bring the Jews out of slavery in Egypt. God had acted in the Exile, had brought the children of Israel out of their exile in Babylon back into Jerusalem, where the Temple which had been destroyed would be rebuilt again. And God, said the story, would act again to establish his kingdom of righteousness and love. The Jews knew there would be a new Exodus, a new covenant, a new David, the new better than the old. The people of Israel, God’s chosen people, had a divine vocation, given to them by the Lord of the whole earth. They had a vocation to be a blessing to all the nations, not just to the Jewish people. Israel is called to be a vocation to the world. The universal mission is there in the whole OT scheme of salvation. The Lord is the Lord of all, and so must his Messiah be.

That is the background, briefly expressed. And here is Simeon, holding in his arms the one who is to be that blessing for the whole world, Jew as well as Gentile, the ancient people of God and people like you and me.

God had a plan for his people and he had a plan for Jesus too. And the gospel story is the good news of the working out of God’s plan for Jesus – of his obedience to his father’s will. Jesus the teacher, the healer, the miracle worker, the one who will suffer and die for you and me, who will die to win the world’s salvation. And who is alive to give power and strength and blessing.

So God had a plan for Simeon, for Jesus, for the parents of Jesus in the middle of the picture. And the presentation of Jesus in the Temple is a sign of that plan being implemented. It is the offering of the world’s saviour, the one who will change the course and destiny of the whole created order.

Do you believe that God has a plan? And if you do, do you believe that he has a plan for you, no less than for Simeon, or Jesus, or Mary and Joseph? And if you do believe that, what is God’s plan for you and me?

Where is God crossing our path? When I say my prayers, will I review the day and ask myself – where was God in those encounters today, in the good as well as the bad? What is God calling me to do, or not to do? I think that we Christians perhaps do not ask ourselves that question often enough, or perhaps we don’t ask it at all. But if we think that God is at work in the world and at work in our lives, then we should be seeking him and asking what is he telling us. Where is he at work in our lives? That might be the most important search we can undertake. Think of the last week or the last two days, take an event and ask yourself, where was God in this, and what might he have been telling me? To do this is to dedicate ourselves to the Lord – to have heart, mind and will open to the life giving spirit of Jesus Christ and to God’s plan for us.



Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your glorious plan revealed to Simeon. We pray that we may always look for you in our lives, that we may ponder that revelation and in our turn acknowledge Jesus as the world’s true light.

AMEN