The t the typical scene at Christmas that we focus on is of course the manger scene. Uh it’s calm and it’s peaceful and it’s a silent night and we love that picture the young couple with their baby in the manger wrapped in cloths and handful of shepherds who make a little drop in and it’s a beautiful scene. That’s the one that gets flash frozen in all our minds when we think of Christmas. But like Boxing Day, you know, Boxing Day often brings a little disappointment to children who get all excited about the manic excitement leading up to Christmas. If we follow the plot of post Christmas, immediate post Christmas in scripture, it quickly jump cuts from the manger scene to this highly disturbing account of a dictator uh trying to kill babies. And to preserve themselves, that Christmas couple with their baby, they have to hastily run off to North Africa as refugees. to preserve themselves. And in between the major scene and that dash to Egypt, we have this brief scene that Jennifer just read in the temple at Jerusalem that offers both this major key of long uh awaited fulfillment, expectation, and then it modulates to a minor key of trouble and conflict. And Christmas properly understood has to include both the major and the minor chords. Without the major chords, there’s no joy. There’s no celebration without the minor chords. All that’s left of Christmas is just syrup sentiment. The song of Simeon really in in Luke chapter 2 embraces both moods, provides that hinge from the Christmas story to the rest of the New Testament nar narrative. So, we’re going to look at the major chords and the minor chords in the song of Simeon this morning. Luke chapter 2, we’re given precious little information about Simeon. What we do learn about him though is that he’s a man of great spiritual depth. We’re introduced to him with these words. There was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon who was righteous and devout. And whatever being righteous and devout entails, it has to involve Simeon being serious about his faith, serious about his behavior, his attitudes and actions toward God and toward other people. That’s what righteousness entails. And devoutness implies, I suppose, a disciplined life, an intimate walk with God. and his intimacy with God is really indicated in three very quick references to his close alignment with the Holy Spirit. We read the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. So Simeon’s life with God, it wasn’t bookish. It wasn’t religious. It was relational and sensitive and personal and powerful. He’d merged the plans and purposes of God with his own plans and purposes. Says his whole life was given to waiting for the consolation of Israel. He was looking forward to the messianic age, to that arrival of Christ, the promised one who’d bring hope and deliverance to the people of Israel. And there’s no indication that Simeon was of the professional religious class, that he was a priest or a Pharisee. Even if he was, uh, it’s not important enough to mention. He was a man with an honest walk with God. Over the years, he had made the plans and the purposes of God, the thing that drove his emotional, intellectual engine, waiting for the consolation of Israel. So, we have this very beautiful moment when he’s supernaturally prompted uh by the spirit to go to the temple at Jerusalem at a certain time on a certain day. Of course, it’s the very day when Jesus is being brought to the temple. This is 40 days or about 6 weeks after his birth in obedience to the command of Leviticus 12. It was the time of ceremonial purification for Mary following childbirth. So Simeon spied Mary and Joseph and the baby. There was some kind of supernatural recognition took place. Again, all the work of the Holy Spirit. Simeon walked over and the parents allowed this elderly stranger to take their baby into his arms. Now, most of us know what it’s like to hold someone else’s baby, the baby of a sister or a daughter or a close friend. And usually we we comment on how tiny they are and we mention their face and and their hair or their lack of it and and um something of maybe we make ridiculous little baby sounds ourselves. And Simeon though does none of those things. He’s seeing something very profound here. Simeon sees with spiritual eyes. He knows exactly who he’s holding. And his song begins in that celebratory major key. He says, ‘Lord, now you’re letting your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation that you’ve prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. When I was growing up for my first couple of decades, Simeon’s song would be chanted in unison by the congregation near the conclusion of our Lutheran liturgy. The order of service entitled that section the nun demitis which is Latin for the phrase let us thou depart and chanting the nctitis. That was a good sign for uh terminally bored teenagers that the service was grinding to a final conclusion. But its real purpose was for the congregation to say together, I’ve seen Christ in this service. The word and the sacraments have ministered to me. Seeing Christ is all I need. Now I’m ready to go home, even if it’s my eternal home that you’re taking me to. Lord, now let us thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. What was Simeon seeing that day in the temple that all the other people were just passing by and not seeing? He lived in expectation, waiting for the consolation of Israel, thinking, “Lord, is it today? Could it be today? If it’s not, I’ll still be waiting for it tomorrow. I’m not going to stop anticipating it. I’ll live my life on your timetable, knowing that one day my eyes will indeed see the salvation that you have prepared in the face of all people.” So, Simeon had concentrated his attention on the plans and promises of God. Ezra Klein is an opinion columnist for the New York Times. In a recent column he titled, “Pay attention to how you pay attention.” And he begins by quoting a University of California philosopher writing about our interaction with the internet and how it affects and demands our constant attention. Says, “Attention is not neutral. It is the act by which we confirm meaning on things and by which we discover that they are meaningful. The act through which we bind facts into cares. When we seed control of our attention, we seed more than we are looking at now. We seed to some degree control over what we will care about tomorrow. And Ezra Klein notes that on the old internet, Facebook was primarily a way to stay in contact with friends and family. Today, only about 17% of the time people spend on Facebook is viewed uh looking at content of friends and family. On Instagram, it’s only about 7%. contact with friends and family has been replaced by an endless scrolling of videos, a wormhole that takes great effort to pull oneself out of. And Klein says these apps have become better at fulfilling their corporate purpose and worse for human flourishing. Meta’s goal, he says, is to get users to spend as much time on its app as possible. What Meta shows me is what Meta most wants to wants me to see, to hold my attention for as long as it can. The algorithms serve the company’s ends, not my ends. If Meta wanted to know what I want to see, it could ask me. The technology has long existed for users to shape their own recommendations. These companies do not offer us control over what we see because they do not want us to have it. They don’t want to be bound by who we seek to be tomorrow. Attention is sometimes an act, but it’s first an instinct. Algorithmic media companies exploit the difference between our attentional instincts and our aspirations. In in so doing, they make it harder for us to become who we might wish to be. And Klein concludes, “When our attention’s held for hours each day by blackbox algorithms that feed us not what we want so much as what we find it hard to look away from, we are being in a sense deformed.” So Simeon was a man he knew what to give his attention to. And what he gave his attention to was what he ended up caring about. He had been formed and molded by the expectations of Christ, eager desire uh to see the Messiah. He developed a sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. He was fully prepared to depart this earth once the promise to him was fulfilled that he would see the salvation of God. Lord, you’re now letting your servant depart in peace according to your word. He knew that the salvation he was holding in his arms would give sight to all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. He through eyes of faith, Simeon could envision salvation for Jewish and non-Jewish people, even for the peoples at the time inhabiting what to him were vast unknown regions of Canada and Paraguay and Nigeria and New Zealand. None of us have ever received a promise quite so sweeping and worldchanging as the one given to Simeon. But Simeon’s watchfulness and his attentiveness, that’s a good model for each of us, right? Because we live believing that one day Jesus will return. This current age will come to a sudden violent end. We’ll be ushered into his presence. And if we give attention to the promises that be given to us, it will determine what we’ll care about and the kind of person we’re going to become tomorrow. We’ll be endlessly distracted and anxious and self-absorbed. Or we’ll have a sense of our connection to the Holy Spirit. We’ll feel motivated to have friendship with and influence other people for Christ. Will be either full of prayers or empty of prayers. What we place our attention on today will determine what we care about and who we become tomorrow. That’s the lesson for us from the major chords of Simeon’s song. But the song didn’t end there. The minor cord was struck when he turned then to bless the parents and specifically to address Mary. We read, “The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him, meaning their baby Jesus. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed, and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.” He’s saying that this baby is going to be the the source and the catalyst of much conflict and pain in the world. That’s the combative nature of Christmas that we don’t really sing about in our Christmas carols. This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel to be a sign that will be spoken against so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. So Jesus is going to cause many to rise, many to fall at the same time. He’s going to come and he’s going to stake claim uh every square inch of the world’s surface and really every square inch of everyone’s heart saying it all rightfully belongs to me. And that possessiveness of Jesus arriving as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords disguised just for the moment as a tiny baby. It’s going to attract some. It’s going to offend others. Jesus will cause conflicts. He’ll pick fights. He’ll polarize. And he’ll divide. Certainly comes with a heart to save all those who will come to him, knowing at the same time that many never will. At the conclusion of Jesus’ famous sermon on the mount, he says, “On judgment day, whether you rise or fall, whether you go to heaven or are cast down into hell depends on whether you know and love me.” John chapter 3, Jesus states, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God. So Jesus was completely unapologetic about the fact that his coming was going to have a polarizing effect on humanity. Some would see him and they’d fall down in worship. Others would want him completely out of their lives and they were willing to kill him to make that happen. Simeon said the baby in his arms was a sign that would be spoken against. You’ll either have to rise or you’ll have to fall because of him. You’ll either find that he repulses you or or else you’ll embrace him completely. Tim Keller, late Presbyterian pastor in New York City, acknowledged that there were plenty of people in New York who really hated Christianity, hated Jesus, hated all the claims. And there were plenty others who really with every fiber of their being worshiped Jesus made him the central and supreme figure of their lives. But for most people they they neither hated him nor embraced him. Jesus didn’t seem to make them rise or fall. They were moderate people, moderately happy, maybe moderately religious. What Simeon said about Jesus making people rise or fall didn’t seem to apply to them. Why? Tim Keller says it’s because they don’t know who the real Jesus is. Their Jesus is a fabrication. Their Jesus is an idol. There’s no evidence for such a person. Not one shred of historical evidence for it. Keller asks, “Is your Jesus Christ, the one who says, “I did not come to bring peace on earth, but a sword. I came to set the earth on fire. Is your Jesus the one who polarizes?” Is your Jesus the one who makes people rise or fall but allows no one in between today? Do you either hate and despise him or is he the supreme thing in your life so that there’s no decision you make, not an aspect of your life that’s not in submission to him? King of kings and lord of lords. To know the real Jesus is to either rise or fall. The chemistry of a soul has to be either base or acid. There’s no neutral pH in a person’s heart. either faith solidifies and takes off or it fails to launch and falls. Ross Douet write a book wrote a book this year entitled believe and in it uh he argued that there ought to be a way for people to reason one’s way from skepticism to belief saying that in his book he attempted to unspool some threads of argument that a doubter might be able to follow across the threshold of religious faith. And he ponders why skepticism, why religious doubt seems so resilient, saying Christmas is a good time for that contemplation in so far as Christmas itself is an argument for religious belief. Here’s this profound and magical seeming event, the obscure birth of an infant in the provinces of a powerful and cruel empire that radically redirects 2,000 years and counting of human history. that introduces a story and a value system into the world that’s so powerful that even non-believers can’t shake its influence that once a year makes almost everyone stop and listen for angelic choirs hearkening to the numminous yet still despite all of that unbelief endures Alexander Bethani is an Austrian cognitive scientist he’s a psychotherapy researcher he’s a philosopher he’s put out the first academic study in English dealing with a phenomenon known as terminal lucidity. And terminal lucidity is defined as an episode of unexpected, spontaneous, meaningful and relevant communication or connectedness in a patient who is assumed to have permanently lost the capacity for coherent verbal or behavioral interaction due to a progressive pathophysiologic dementing process. In other words, people who have undergone severe cognitive decline with their brains ravaged by Alzheimer’s disease and various other forms of dementia suddenly wake up and speak as lucidly as ever for a period of time immediately prior to their death. It’s that unexpected return of cognitive clarity, self-awareness, memory, lucid functioning of patients who were assumed to have permanently lost any of those capacities. It’s not a new phenomena. It’s been written about since medieval times. It’s uh been repeatedly witnessed, but it didn’t have a name. It didn’t receive academic consideration till the last few years. There were no concerted efforts to study or understand or even acknowledge it by the scientific medical community. But once the ball started rolling, terminal lucidity, the n the term began showing up in reports and peer-reviewed academic studies. Scores of witnessed accounts began streaming in. Alexander Bethany includes a good number of them in his book. Nurses, especially nurses and doctors and people who work in hospice care. Study recently carried out by a British psychiatrist named Peter Fenwick found that no fewer than seven of 10 caregivers stated that they have in the course of their work in hospice observed cases of unexpected clarity in their dying patients. One nurse wrote, “My colleagues and I wanted to thank you. We call it the last hurray or the second wind. I have myself observed this many times. Patients come back and die. I first witnessed this, she says at nursing school, how confused I was until an older nurse told me that there were things that really characterized the daily experience of nursing, but that we wouldn’t learn about in our normal training and how right she was. Studies show that terminal lucidity was it’s not particularly common. It’s not particularly rare. One study tracked 100 dementia patients who were good candidates for lucidity. They were ravaged by dementia and they were nearing death and found that six of those 100 patients uh there was an episode of terminal lucidity. Another study pegged that figure at 14%. Charlene and I might have been involved with one. Barb’s here this morning and Barb’s daughter Stephanie was uh was very very comeomaos it seemed and uh we were in her hotel room or her hospital room and we we were praying and we were singing some worship songs and then we left and Barb said later that day Stephanie returned just completely herself and um and was that way for the next couple of weeks before she passed away. So, I don’t know what that’s all about, but using questionnaires, a database was assembled. It analyzed the cases running from ch children who were 8 years old to elderly people 100 years old. Most of the lucid episodes lasted between 10 minutes and several hours. Nearly 80% of the uh patients, they didn’t just show a slight improvement in their general condition. They experienced a full recovery of their memories, their verbal skills, their entire personality and former abilities were back. About a third of the patients died within less than two hours after the lucid episode. A full 90% died within 2 hours and a couple of days. No medical explanation really for it. The patients brain structure and activity brutally stricken by Alzheimer’s. It remains unchanged. There’s no known case of medical history in which the tissue degradation in Alzheimer’s has ever been reversed or undone. Alexander Bethne says that such a such a feat would come close to un uncooking a boiled egg. For cognitive function to return, it require large cell formations to somehow spontaneously regrow. Not only somehow regrow, but do it in an organized manner into the functional networks of the patient’s brain. So what’s actually happening with terminal lucidity? No one knows for sure. Researcher Alexander Bethany suggests that the mind and the brain are actually two different aspects of a person’s lives. And throughout the life through our lives, the mind and the brain are very closely aligned. But in the extremity of death, they separate. Now, as we as Christians, as we might think of that, it’s not so much the mind, but we would think the self, the soul is climbing down from the worn out brain like a rider dismounting a played out horse. Then the rider addresses the room and is very soon gone. Lots of examples in the book. A typical example of a family witnessing terminal lucidity. Uh, one one lady says, “My mother had advanced Alzheimer’s. She no longer recognized us. She didn’t even seem to care who these strangers were visiting her once or twice a week. On the day before her passing, everything was different. Not only did she recognize us, she wanted to know what had happened in the course of the past year for every one of us, delighting in good news, shedding the odd tear for bad news, just as this affectionate motherly woman had done before her dementia. Her comments were as wise and caring as ever. When she heard that my younger daughter had recently broken off her engagement and descended into a deep depression, she asked her to stay for a while afterwards cuz she wanted to talk to her in private. My daughter never told me what she discussed with my mother, but it was a turning point for her. When we took our leave, we didn’t know what to expect next. Was she miraculously healed of her dementia? With hindsight, however, I believe that my siblings and me understood that she knew exactly that she didn’t have very long to live. She said goodbye to every one of us, held her hands, stroked them with her thumb just as she had done when we were children. She was I can’t think of another way to say this. She was simply her old self. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to last. And she died the same night. Now, for most families witnessing those cases of terminal lucidity of a loved one, it’s received as a great blessing and as a gift, a beautiful farewell. Other families are very confused by it. Some feel guilt because they felt they’d said their goodbyes to that person many months or even years earlier when the loved one was still lucid. Their way of coping was to differentiate between the way this person was now and the way the person had been for the rest of their lives. But now this coping mechanism collapsed the moment the patient suddenly and wholly unexpectedly returned. Some think in fear, did we bid farewell far too early? So they feel some guilt of it. Another man talks candidly of how his family responded to their own case of terminal lucidity. He says, “What does one do about an experience one cannot possibly explain? In our family, we keep quiet about it, which has always been our way. It confused us. Each of us has worked through and banished the memory of my grandmother’s lucid moments in his own way. We’ve hardly mentioned it since. My family prides itself in being rational, evaluating everything according to scientific criteria. This experience didn’t fit our rational world where everything is structured and always clear. Except that is my grandmother’s clarity of mind before she died. I think I’m the only member of my family to try and understand all this, even falling back on some religious or spiritual approaches. Anyway, what I experienced with my grandmother somehow occupies a unique place in our family’s worldview, that’s probably why we usually keep quiet about it. Ross Douet wonders why God doesn’t turn up the dial of evidence that people might respond to that would overwhelm their will to disbelieve. But he notes many examples in which more evidence simply falls on deaf ears. People have an enviably direct experience of God and say in essence, “No thanks.” Doubt it wonders if some of the shepherds who saw the angelic choirs rather than going to Bethlehem decided to simply go back to sleep. This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel to be a sign that will be spoken against so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And Simeon’s very personal final word to Mary, “And a sword will pierce your own soul, too.” Because Mary didn’t know that day that one day she was going to stand at the foot of the cross, witnessing the life of her eldest son dripping out in tortured agony. This little baby in Simeon’s arm was going to die in full view of his mother, and she was going to have to experience the bottomless grief about living her child. And it would feel like a sword going through her soul. And it would happen because Jesus first willingly allowed a sword to go through his soul and to pierce and a spear to pierce his own body. Jesus died for the sin of his mother and his father and his brothers and his sisters and his friends for the sin of all of us. It’s the only way we could be saved. Substitution. It was either him or us. Someone had to die. And Jesus without any sin of his own to account for said he would do it on our behalf. And now to put our faith and trust in what he has done. It makes Jesus the tide that raises us even as others remain resilient in unbelief and continue to fall. One day every one of us will have our soul climb down from our worn out brain like a rider dismounting a horse. As Simeon declared, “When all the rising and falling has taken place because of Jesus, then the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.” on that day. May it be for us as it was for Simeon. Lord, you’re now letting your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the face of all peoples a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of the people Israel. Let’s spend a few moments. This is your time to respond to what God has spoken in his word to you. And a couple things you might want to consider as you go to prayer. Consider um the attention that you’re giving to things of of God compared to the things of others. Thank Jesus that his life and his death and his resurrection has caused you to rise and pray that your eventual departure will come in peace. This is just your own couple of moments with the Lord. So take the time just to pray and I’ll close us off after that.