Go tell

Luke 2:22-35

Colossians 3:12-17

I'm not much of a history buff, but I was doing some of my Benedictine continuing education reading...Esther DeWaal writes about the practice of baptism in the early centuries of the church

Baptisms were usually done as the culmination of Lent, at Easter Eve worship, by immersion in water....as candidates stood at the edge of the pool of water, they were instructed by the bishop “take off your clothes!”

Following immersion they were clothed with new garments, symbols of their new life in Christ.

We may not do that anymore, most of us would say thankfully (especially our two girls being baptized today)--but there is still much to learn from this ancient practice. The willingness to drop everything of your old life, the vulnerability to stand naked in front of all, and the openness to a completely new life are still hallmarks of the Christian community.

We can see such hallmarks even before there was such a thing as Christianity, we see it in the nativity stories.....shepherds left sheep behind, stood vulnerably where they shouldn't really be, and judging by their telling everyone about what had happened, they were open to something new.

Likewise Simeon in our story today...

We can see this pattern all through faith history, not just in Christianity: listen, go, tell

shepherds listened to angels, went to Bethlehem, told what had happened.

Simeon listened to the Spirit, went to the temple, fore- told what he envisioned

If we'd read on, Anna listened to scriptures, lived at the temple, and told what she'd encountered in the Christ child.

That is the pattern we are called to live: listen, go, tell.

Each of us has different experiences with God, we're not all called to “listen, go and tell” in the same exact way....what I hear and how I encounter the Divine, where I live and where I work will be significantly different from how Chris does, or you do. But that doesn't excuse any of us, individually or as a congregation from living this pattern.

Those early Christians being baptized had listened to God's call on their lives, listened to teaching all through Lent, then went to the edge of the pool, and dropped their past to tell everyone watching who and whose they now were.

And those new clothes bring us to the meat of this new life pattern, as St Paul writes in Colossians.

As God’s chosen ones: Like those first Christians, God has chosen us for a great task—the task of living together in a covenant of love

God has chosen us to live out that covenant not only for ourselves but in community, for it was to a community of Christians that this letter was written—so our chosen-ness by God is to be shared with others, and felt by others.

Not only are you chosen by God, but you are

Holy and beloved in the sight of God.

If God considers you and me sacred, holy…if God calls you ‘beloved’, can we do any less for each other?

Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility meekness and patience:

Today we’re all decked out in our finery for church; we have taken time to look good on the outside; new clothes or jewellery we got at Christmas perhaps, make up, cologne. We go to a fair bit of trouble to look nice in our outward appearance.

What God asks of us is that we take as much care, not just for church or special occasions, but moment by moment and day by day, with how are lives are dressed, how we are on the inside

All are hallmarks of the life pattern of Listen, Go, Tell, because that's how people will know who and whose we are.

All are attitudes of spirit that many of us have already found in one another, and all are attributes that will strengthen and grow our faith life together here in this place and beyond these walls. We listen to scripture, to God, to one another, and learn to cast off our old attitudes and behaviors, put on these new clothes, and by our lives tell what God is doing.

So today, let us not only celebrate the birth of the ultimate chosen one, holy and beloved as he was, but let us celebrate the love and expectations God has for each and every one of us.

Listen--What has an encounter with angels, or the Christ child or the Spirit meant to you?

Go---Get dressed in compassion, kindness, humility, patience

Go-- tell it with your life.