Howdy. Well, I had to let y'all know a little bit about part of my childhood. Now I have to let you know I was able to miss the 70s by this much.
Alright, 1980, 1980. I know, I really, I dodged a bullet there. So, bell bottoms, I was spared.
So, but with it is as a child, I enjoyed plenty of good movies and one of them being Transformers, the original movie. 1986.
Cartoon movie had Orson Welles, Leonard Nimoy, Robert Stack, lots of them. And for me, that was a childhood memory that I cherished.
Well, as I got older and I discovered that if you wanted to get that movie on VHS, that was a type of tape, these, playing things on it,
is that it was really hard to get a hold of. But I was like, you know, I hear that you can actually get it on this thing called a DVD.
So, I went and made sure I told my sister, for Christmas, I'd really like this DVD. And I saw that you could find some of it online for maybe 35, 40 bucks.
I thought, that's not too bad. But when I got it for Christmas, and it was in the original wrapping, and I realized she'd bought it new.
And buying it new is about 100 bucks. And I'm like, Stephanie, you didn't have to buy it. You could have gotten it, you know, used.
And that would have been great. She was like, I am not buying my brother something used for Christmas. Okay, all right, I got it.
Well, fast forward, is that then I said to her, I'd really like a nice shirt for Christmas because I'm a single guy and I have no idea how to dress myself.
So, she went and found me, though, a Lululemon polo. I did not realize how expensive that clothing is. I saw it to the side.
I'm like, wow, thank you. I didn't realize. And then I was like, I like this shirt. And then I found two more very similar to it for 20 bucks each online.
Now, I was a little bit worried and I did tell my sister, but fortunately she has not disowned me. She's just glad I'm dressing better now.
But that idea that we may have a stigma in our minds about certain things, some preexisting idea of what we think about something or someone.
And so as we are going into our discussion for today is to realize that as we start, the beginning shows us how many stigmas we have to overcome.
How is it that we are overcoming the stigmas that we come across in life?
Because I want you to notice a few things about what's happening in our gospel is that Mary and Joseph were coming in to the temple 40 days after Mary had given birth to Jesus.
And that's a very specific number. And the reason for that was that in those days, it was a time whenever cleaning things and purifying them, it was a lot harder than it is today.
You couldn't just easily sanitize stuff or try to pop it in the washing machine and clean it immediately.
But rather is that because things might be messy or unclean is that you wanted to make sure to keep things separate.
And so whenever someone had given birth is that there were two things.
One is that they would wait seven days when they were apart from other people and then after that another 33 days before they could go into the temple.
And so this was just mainly because of a focus on cleanliness.
But the reason why we also ask the question about a stigma is because it was twice as long if she gave birth to a daughter.
Now, giving birth to a son, giving birth to a daughter, they are just as difficult and just as complicated as one another.
So why the difference? Because as God was giving the law to the people, he was speaking it to a community that saw women as the ones who had eaten the apple first in the garden.
As a community where if a mother had a daughter, they felt that they had to purify for both of them at the same time.
Is that in a community that didn't realize certain things would be the same as one another.
Is that they were dealing with getting over certain stigmas that they had in their own mind, which we know was not something universal.
Because it was not something that was continued after Jesus came onto the scene.
But more than that was the stigma about Mary and Joseph themselves.
Is to realize that they came from Nazareth.
Nazareth was sort of like this off the beaten path, out in the boonies kind of a place.
It's like if somebody from a big city were to say, oh, can anything good come out of Lubbock or Nakadotius or something along those lines.
Or for some people on the right side of the sanctuary, can anything good come out of Texas A&M.
I know and I'd like to say yes, something good can come out of Texas A&M.
I'd like to think at least a few, but only a few.
But with it is to realize that it was just a stigma, this idea that you're off to the side, can anything good come from there.
Realizing they were giving turtle doves as a sacrifice because they didn't have enough money to go to buy a sheep, to buy a lamb.
But more than this is even the people that were there to proclaim who Jesus was.
That there is Simeon.
This man already knew that his time was come.
He is an older gentleman.
And how often is it that in society we oftentimes take for granted those who are older in our world.
And that he's over there saying, I'm going to see the Messiah before I go.
I'm going to see the Messiah before I go.
Could you imagine how dismissive people were?
And just like, oh, old man Simeon, whatever.
Okay, fine, fine.
But even more than just Simeon was also Anna.
Is that she wasn't able to be in a family for very long before that was lost to her.
That she wasn't for whatever reason able to move on to being married again.
Whether because of a choice of hers or the situation she found herself.
To be there at the temple all alone for so long.
Is that here are the people that had to face stigmas about who they were and whether they were worth anyone's time.
But you see, God sees what we don't see what God sees that we don't is so much that we may take for granted.
And even the fact that Jesus was there as a baby.
Because when someone is a baby, it is not obvious who they're going to become later on in life.
Now I'm going to be honest with y'all.
I still have no idea how mothers can tell the difference between babies.
They're babies. They're small. They have a head.
You know, hopefully two arms and two legs.
I don't know how y'all can tell the difference.
The most I can figure out is if it's a chubby baby or a less chubby baby.
So I'm God bless you all that y'all can tell the difference.
I have no idea. But little baby there and you're like,
okay, what are you going to become other than somebody who spits up on my arm?
You have no idea. You don't know if they're going to want to be an actress, an artist, an engineer, a teacher, a nurse.
You don't know if they're going to want to be somebody who is quiet or somebody who is boisterous.
You don't know if they're going to be somebody that loves to pick at you or somebody who's always mild-mannered.
I don't know who those mild-mannered people. I only make friends with the ones who like to poke fun at me.
But with it is to realize that you don't know what the future is because the future, it feels unknown.
So as they come in and they are holding this baby, how could Simeon know what future there was for Jesus?
Is because God reveals more than what we see. God has in mind more than what we may realize.
See, that's the thing is that what God is going to do, it's going to take time.
Because the plans that God has for us, they don't always happen just like that.
Most often they're going to take time and it is going to be hard for us.
Because we wonder what God is doing and we have to wait over time as he is working in our own lives.
Because even God himself there in human form, did he immediately get a chance to start his ministry right away?
I hope not because he was kind of short.
But to realize that he's going to need to spend the next three decades growing, living, experiencing life as a human being before it is time for him to start his ministry.
As he is anointed in the Jordan, that was after 30 years of scraping his knees, dealing with other kids,
learning to read and write, having the opportunity to discover a career, having to walk among everybody else,
before getting to live into what he was truly meant to do.
But here's the thing, it didn't determine when he was truly the Messiah.
See, Jesus was always the Christ. It didn't just start in the river.
He had always been and he will always be.
But that's the thing is that the same thing is true with us as well.
Is that even though we may not know what the plans are in front of us,
is that our worth and our place in God's kingdom is already there.
We have already been given our identity in Christ.
We are already loved. We're forgiven. We are already cherished.
So even though we may not be doing what our future may be yet, we may not see it.
That doesn't mean that God doesn't already have it there.
And it doesn't mean that we're not already a vital part of it already.
Because see, there are a lot of times where we struggle because we feel like we haven't arrived.
We feel like we haven't achieved or gotten where we wanted to go.
But how many people have not arrived by a certain time in their lives?
I'll give you a few examples.
Colonel Harland Sanders was at the age of 40 running a small gas station
in a little restaurant in an apartment next door and did not start the first KFC until he was 62.
Julia Child didn't even know how to cook when she got out of college
and did not write her first cookbook until she was 50.
Laura Ingalls Wilder didn't start the Little House series till her 60s.
Ray Kroc was a traveling salesman with paper cups and milkshake machines
and did not team up with the McDonald Brothers until his 50s when they started the first fast food restaurant.
Leo Goodwin Sr. thought in his 50s, you know what, I think we could come up with some cheaper insurance
and began the government employee insurance company, aka Geico.
I'm pretty sure that Geico came along later.
Duncan Hines did not actually become important to culinary until the age of 55.
Sam Walton didn't start his first Walmart until 44.
Stan Lee didn't come up with a fantastic four until his 40s,
and only after that, Spider-Man, Black Panther, X-Men, and others.
The inventor of ramen, 50, and a cup of noodles, 61.
Even realizing so many others, but Gladys Burl, you may wonder, Gladys Burl,
Polio as a child did not run her first marathon until the age of 86
and even continued till she was 96 with running.
So, none of you have an excuse. There you go.
Joseph A. Campbell started soups at the age of 52,
and then realizing that J.R. Tolkien wrote and published The Hobbit at 45,
Lord of the Rings at 56, and even later on realizing John Pemberton,
who had a saber wound and was dealing with addiction to heroin.
In his effort to find a pain reliever that was not addictive,
he stumbled upon the formula for Coca-Cola at the age of 55.
Destiny does not reveal itself in our timing.
We do not know what it is that we are meant to be doing throughout the rest of our lives.
The thing is, is that many people need time to discover their calling.
We spend so much time trying to see how many people made it by the age of 30.
If somebody's made it by the age of 30, it wasn't because of their own efforts by themselves.
Circumstances may be helpful to some, but for the rest of us,
it oftentimes just means more perseverance.
We may need to grow. We may need to do a bunch of things that don't succeed.
Even as we may go through so many trials and have to try things that did not work
when we first tried them out, how often do we feel like we may have wasted our time and efforts?
The times whenever we know we've failed, whenever we're thinking,
I should have known better, I should have done better, I wish I could go back and fix those things,
I should have fixed it on the past because we wish for a different future.
But when we ask this question and we look at is anything wasted,
then we also look to understand a bit more about God.
Because when we look at this question of do we waste our potential,
what we realize is how many people already proved that that is not the case.
Think about those who were Jesus' disciples.
The ones who were there when it was time for him to be arrested
and how many of them, as much as they said, we will die with him, ran away.
The ones who wouldn't even admit to knowing him.
The times whenever they were even wondering what was going to happen
and not even knowing for sure about this resurrection.
Or even looking at Jesus' own family.
That even his own family being there and wishing he would just stop with whatever he's saying and doing
would just cut out this rabbi thing.
And then to know later on what happens with all of these people.
Because that's the thing, sometimes our family and our friends are the very ones
who struggle to see what we could become the most.
And then we realize that we do that with them too.
Is that sometimes we assume that this is all they could really be.
And it's almost as if we've kind of given up on them, even as we wish they wouldn't give up on us.
But then those very disciples end up being the ones to take the gospel to the ends of the earth
and give their lives for Christ.
And the family of Jesus not only writing parts of scripture themselves
but leading the Church of Jerusalem into being a beacon of Christ's resurrection.
What we discover is that as much as we may see the fall of many
we also see the rising because of forgiveness.
Because God sees the times when we have not lived out who we were meant to be.
God sees the times and he knew this.
And his plans take us and our brokenness into consideration.
Because as lovely as it would have been if people would have just trusted in Jesus.
God also took for consideration that they were going to crucify him
and he would need to raise him back up again.
And that's the thing about it is that we are always welcome back.
Is that as much as we worry, did I mess up what God was going to do?
We're not that big.
We're not that important.
Because at each step God keeps bringing us back
and saying I am still in front of you.
The thing is is that whatever we may be able to see right now
is that God sees us differently.
Because grace sees us as God's heirs.
Because that's the thing about someone who is an heir to a legacy
is that they may struggle all along the way
but they are still going to inherit what has been given to them.
And that's the thing about this is that even as Simeon saw what others couldn't
God reveals what even we can't see in ourselves.
You may have given up on things.
You may have decided this is all I can be.
This is all I can do. This is all there is in front of me.
That doesn't mean that God has stopped seeing what he plans to do for you.
In you. Through you.
But knowing that God is the one continuing to do this
is that it also doesn't stop when we discover we didn't do everything right.
Because when we realize our sins, that's not about dwelling on all the things in the past
and giving up on our future.
But rather is to say God, I'm going to give you my present.
Plun intended.
Because we realize is that God's grace takes the worst
and turns it into something beautiful.
Wherever you may be
and even at the ways in which you may be thinking that you have failed what God's plans are
God has not failed you.
And that because of his grace, you are a part of his kingdom
and his purposes and the future that he has for you.
So may his grace be the thing that builds you up
and encourages you to keep going.
And when you realize what it is he's doing in your life,
may you bring that same encouragement to those around you
who need to remember that God's grace is sufficient for them as well.
Thanks be to God.