Rev. Don Erickson

Simeon is an old man who doesn’t want to die until he sees the Anointed One, the “consolation” of his people. He is holding out hope till the very end. Why? Luke tells us he was an upright and pious man. Heaven seems already his. Hope for heaven doesn’t seem necessary, at least not for himself. Simeon has been waiting for salvation for his people. But not just for his people – for all people. As he holds the Child, he says the prayer he has been waiting to say all his life, “my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have made ready before the face of all peoples, A light for a revelation to the gentiles and a glory for your people Israel.” Salvation is in that child right then and there. Jesus will not be made ready. To use a playground cliché, Jesus was born ready. As an infant, he is already ready, and for all peoples, both Gentile and Jew. Simeon is not pleading to somehow stick around for 33 more years until the day when Jesus dies on the cross or is resurrected. Sal...

The hymn, Amazing Grace. It’s one we all know. Maybe even the story behind it, how John Newton, once a slave of sorts himself, later captained slave ships. How during a storm that threatened his life and all the lives on his ship, Newton saw the light of God and the darkness of his heart. Somehow that light pervaded him, an enlightening grace so amazing that it was able to save a wretch like himself. Grace changed John Newton’s life and gave us one of the greatest hymns we have, a hymn that even the enslaved would come to embrace in a profound way.  The hymn describes a grace so powerful that it liberates enslavers and the enslaved alike. The Christian hope is that through this grace all will be fully free, body, mind, and spirit. Only a grace cosmic in its scale and its reach can be so transformative. Last week, we discussed this grace and its accompanying gift of gratitude. In that sermon, I recited 2 Timothy 1:9-10. Let me read it again as I begin a follow-up discu...