Archbishop Geoffrey Smith

Malachi 3.1-4, Hebrews 2.14-18, Luke 2.22-40

The account of Jesus being presented to God in the temple, which was read as the gospel reading today, is a beautiful story of devotion. When I read the story in preparation for today, I was struck by how moving it is.

There are Mary and Joseph totally committed to God, ‘fulfilling everything required by the law of the Lord’, including presenting Jesus to the Lord. Jesus, as the first-born male child, was first consecrated to God, and then redeemed or bought back through the offering of a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.

And, then there are the other two beautiful characters-Simeon and Anna. They are wonderful examples of people who are so close to God through constant prayer, worship and study. So devout, that they were sensitive to God and so able to recognise in Jesus the promised one.

In many respects Simeon and Anna are the key characters in this event. They had remained expectant that God would fulfil his promise and send the Messiah. They had remained attentive, looking for the promise to be fulfilled, watchful for the activity of God even in an environment of foreign occupation, where God’s prophets had been silent for many years.

Simeon and Anna kept turning up. Coming to the temple and spending time at the temple, steeping their lives in the worshipping activities of the temple. Living righteously. Remaining full of trust and hope and ready to respond to God’s action.

I think Simeon and Anna’s example can offer valuable lessons for us as we begin a new year. In some ways, the new year always holds a great deal of promise, but as a church and a society, we are in a time of significant change.

Decline in church attendance in Australia while certainly not universal is very common and is overall our current reality.  It’s clear that we are moving from one situation to another.

Part of the increased detachment from Christianity has been a rise in the number of people who say they have no religion. Now up to 39% of the Australian population.

The current era has been described as a liminal time, a liminal space where the future for the church in Australia is not clear, and that can be a difficult and anxious place to inhabit.

And it’s not just the church where anxiety is found. Our society as a whole is more and more anxious.

Across the globe there seem to be complex and intractable conflicts. No easy solution can be found for the situation in the Middle East, which has led to suffering for Palestinians and Israelis. Or the civil war in Sudan, or the military junta in Myanmar. There are many, many people suffering. It’s hard to see how these conflicts will end and how peace will come.

So what might Simeon and Anna have to say to us as we start a new year in an anxious context both locally and globally?

First of all, Simeon and Anna were people of faith and trust in God. They trusted, really trusted, that God would fulfill his promises, and they held on to that trust even in the face of evidence to the contrary. After all, at the time, Palestine was occupied by troops of the Roman Empire. There had been no prophet in Israel for many years. God seemed silent. God seemed not to hear the prayers of his people.

But Simeon and Anna didn’t give up. They kept trusting, and they kept praying, and they kept looking for what God was doing. Looking with expectation for God to move. Looking with expectation for God to fulfill his promise to send the Messiah. That’s why they were ready and able to spot what God was doing in this little newborn baby boy. There was nothing spectacular, northing noticeable about this baby called Jesus or his parents.

But Simeon and Anna were ready. They were ready to recognise what God was doing.

Rather than giving in to the anxiety of others, or even our own anxiety, we can be people who follow Simeon and Anna’s example of trust in God.

There are good reasons for us to trust God with hopefulness.

First of all, God’s character. God is faithful. We do not know exactly what will happen to the Anglican Church of Australia in the future. We do not know what will happen in the future with the perplexing problems the world is facing, or even the difficulties for Australia, but we do know that in Jesus, God has inaugurated his reign. We pray for God’s kingdom to come trusting that it will.

We trust that when Jesus said, ‘I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overpower it’, he meant it, and he wasn’t crazy. We trust that the future of the world is not one of death and destruction but of life and new creation. Jesus’ resurrection guarantees that, and we can trust in it.

The second reason is what we see. We continue to see the light of God breaking into people’s lives. We see people coming to faith. We see people being healed. We see the forces of evil being pushed back even in the midst of so much suffering and pain and violence and intolerance in the world. We see the effect of God all over the place.

The third reason for trust in God’s promises is the experience of history. The church has had periods of decline before-many of them. In 1750 for instance, there were 16 people at the Easter service in St Paul’s Cathedral London. The Church of England was moribund. Then along came the Wesley’s. And the church was renewed. Who’d have guessed that would happen?

And in 1921 one of my predecessors in Adelaide, Arthur Nutter-Thomas said in his address to the annual synod, bemoaning poor church attendance- ‘Religion just isn’t fashionable anymore’. Then following the suffering of the great depression and World War 2 came a period of great regeneration in the church in the 1950’s leading to the highest percentage of the population regularly attending church in Australia ever. Who’d have guessed that would have happened looking forward from the 1920’s?

History tells us that while there have been periods of decline and very substantial change, God has continued to be faithful to his mission to the world through the church through the ups and the downs. We don’t know what is over the horizon, but God is trustworthy. We can put our trust in God.

And it’s not just the church. Who’d have guessed that for instance the Berlin wall would have come down when and how it did. That barrier of oppression came to an end. An event many, many people had been praying for since the wall was built.

One of the really beautiful things about Simeon and Anna was that they were expectant. They were there watching for God to move. Open to God fulfilling his promise.

As we think about our life as disciples of Christ trust in God is important, but so is expectancy and watchfulness. Expectancy that God will fulfil God’s promises. Expectancy that God will continue to bring people to faith in Jesus.

Expectancy that more and more Gods kingdom will be visible in our lives, in the life of the church and the life of the world.

It’s really important that this trust in and expectancy of God are not only within us but also seen in our actions and attitudes. Our internal attitudes are important because they determine whether we are in peace and also affect our actions.

This applies to us as congregations as well. It’s easy for congregations to be anxious about their future and the future of the church. It’s easy for congregations to just go through the motions and not expect God to do anything much at all.

But that’s not the Simeon and Anna way. Their way is to trust that God will fulfil God’s promises. Their way is to expect that God is and will act to bring about God’s reign.

And this is not a passive, do nothing approach. Simeon and Anna were not sitting by the pool drinking cocktails waiting for God to do Gods thing. Nor were they trying to solve the problems of Palestine. They were looking to God. They were trusting in God. And that was fuelled by their worship-they turned up and focussed on God. It was fuelled by their prayer and their study of the scriptures.

Simeon and Anne were immersed in a rich action of spirituality, and that fuelled their trust in God, their expectation of God and their ability to see what God was doing and joining in.

Following that example is so important for the church in the current era, in the world in which we live. We have everything we need to be people of hope, and right now hope is a great gift to enjoy and share.

At the start of 2025, the question for the people of St Johns Halifax Street is-how are you going to follow the example of Simeon and Anna? How are you going to soak in God, and so be ready to trust God, to expect God to act, to see what God is doing and join in?

These are live questions. This is not a theoretical discussion. The church and the world needs people of genuine hope. We need little and large communities of hope. Spots of light in the darkness that make a difference. Hope that is not wishful thinking but hope that is confidently based on God.

So as the year gets properly underway, what needs to change here at St Johns? Nothing? Praise the Lord. Keep on keeping on. But if change needs to happen so we can be more like Simeon and Anna, let’s have the courage to make the change. Because the world needs us. It might not know it does. But it does.

We have a God given vocation we must fulfill. Let us pray that we may have the courage to be Simeon’s and Anna’s and fulfill it.