Here is a link to our Gospel reading for today from Luke:
Luke 2:22-40
Today is a feast day—and no I am not talking about the feast of the 3Bowl that is Super. I am talking about The Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple. It is the celebration of one of the major events of Jesus’ life. It occurs each year on February 2nd, 40 days after Christmas, the day of Jesus’ birth. Most years it does not fall on a Sunday, so it passes by with little notice from us. But this year we get to celebrate it together.
So what exactly is the big deal about this day? The day itself more than 2000 years ago was an important day for Mary and Joseph, but it was not an unusual event in the life of a Jewish family in that day and age. It was the religious custom of that time that a woman, 40 days after giving birth to a child, would go to the Temple to participate in the rite of purification. It was also the custom to present a first born male child in the Temple and to offer a sacrifice to God. Mary and Joseph are simply doing what any good Jewish couple would do. But like most occasions in Jesus’ life, there is nothing simple about the event.
So what exactly is the big deal about this day? The day itself more than 2000 years ago was an important day for Mary and Joseph, but it was not an unusual event in the life of a Jewish family in that day and age. It was the religious custom of that time that a woman, 40 days after giving birth to a child, would go to the Temple to participate in the rite of purification. It was also the custom to present a first born male child in the Temple and to offer a sacrifice to God. Mary and Joseph are simply doing what any good Jewish couple would do. But like most occasions in Jesus’ life, there is nothing simple about the event.
There that day in the Temple are two prophets, Simeon and Anna. They are great in years. Both know their time on this earth is growing short. I would imagine that their bodies are beginning to fail them in many small and big ways. Both have been faithful to God their entire lives. Both have longed for the Messiah and simply hope to see this Messiah before they die. And their wish is fulfilled. Their eyesight may be growing dim, but Simeon and Anna have an inner eyesight, an inner wisdom born of their years and their faithfulness that allows them to look at the infant Jesus and to see within him the Messiah for which they have been waiting all these many years. They look at Jesus and they see who he is and who he will become. They look at Jesus and they see hope.
As I reflected upon this encounter between Simeon and Anna and the infant Jesus, I found myself thinking about all babies, for I think we can all agree that all babies are miracles. There is nothing more special than holding a baby in your arms, for a baby is the greatest hope there could ever be. A baby represents absolute potential. When you look into the face of a baby you are looking at the future. When you look into the face of a baby you are looking at someone for whom all the doors remain open. When you look into the face of a baby, you are looking at someone who could be anything in the world—the next Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King Jr. or Ghandi. When you look into the face of a baby, you are looking at someone who could be the next Mother Theresa, Amelia Earhart, or Susan B. Anthony. Maybe you aren’t looking at the next Jesus Christ, for there was only one of him, but you are looking at hope and potential. Within each baby that is born is the potential for love, compassion and kindness. Maybe every child born won’t become known around the world, but within every child born is the potential to bring light and life to the world.
So what happens then to so many children that causes this light, this potential to become dim or to burn out all together? What happens between the day a child is born and when he or she becomes an adult that keeps so many children from fulfilling their potential and being loving, compassionate people who bring light and life to their little corner of the world?
The answer is a lot. Though all people are born with the same potential for love, compassion and kindness, not all children are born equal. Not all children are born into circumstances that allow this love, compassion and kindness to grow and to flourish. I’ve recently spent some time reading the Children’s Defense Fund’s 2014 Annual Report on the State of America’s Children, and the news is not good. We, as a society, are not doing a very good job in creating an environment in this country in which all children have the opportunity to live into becoming the loving, compassionate and kind people they were born to be. In fact we seem to be doing a worse and worse job of this every year.
The answer is a lot. Though all people are born with the same potential for love, compassion and kindness, not all children are born equal. Not all children are born into circumstances that allow this love, compassion and kindness to grow and to flourish. I’ve recently spent some time reading the Children’s Defense Fund’s 2014 Annual Report on the State of America’s Children, and the news is not good. We, as a society, are not doing a very good job in creating an environment in this country in which all children have the opportunity to live into becoming the loving, compassionate and kind people they were born to be. In fact we seem to be doing a worse and worse job of this every year.
According to the Defense Fund’s Annual Report, one in five children (20%) in this country lives in poverty and half of those live in extreme poverty at less than half the poverty level. For a family of four this means $11,746 a year, $979 a month, $226 a week and $32 a day or $8 a day per person. Nearly 1.2 million public school students were homeless in 2012. This represents a 73% increase over the rates of homeless before the recession hit this country. More than 10% of children lacked access to adequate food in 2012, a rate 23% higher than before the recession. The top 1 percent of earners received 22.5% of the nation’s income in 2012, more than double their share in 1964 and equal to levels last seen in the 1920s, (The Children’s Defense Fund,The State of America’s Children 2014, pp. 4-5).
We live in a culture that believes that hard work is the only solution to the poverty problem. We have a pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality. This works if you start off your life from a fairly stable place—when you have enough of what you need to grow and develop properly. This doesn’t work so well if you start off in a place of poverty. More than 2/3 of poor children live in families where one or more family member works. In no state could an individual working full-time at the minimum wage afford the fair market rent for a two-bedroom unit and have enough for food, utilities and other necessities in 2013. A person would need to work more than two-and-a-half full-time minimum wage jobs to afford a two-bedroom fair market rental, (The Children’s Defense Fund,The State of America’s Children 2014, p. 5).
And yet, we are the richest country in the world. We rank #1 in gross domestic product. We rank #1 in number of billionaires. We are second to worst in child poverty rates among industrialized countries, with only Romania worse than we are. Among industrialized countries we have the largest gap between rich and poor, (The Children’s Defense Fund,The State of America’s Children 2014, p. 18).
When you begin life without enough food, living in stress because your family does not have a secure place to live, and with all the other stressors that go along with being a family living in poverty, your brain does not develop properly. Hunger, malnutrition and stress have devastating consequences for children.
And yet, we are the richest country in the world. We rank #1 in gross domestic product. We rank #1 in number of billionaires. We are second to worst in child poverty rates among industrialized countries, with only Romania worse than we are. Among industrialized countries we have the largest gap between rich and poor, (The Children’s Defense Fund,The State of America’s Children 2014, p. 18).
When you begin life without enough food, living in stress because your family does not have a secure place to live, and with all the other stressors that go along with being a family living in poverty, your brain does not develop properly. Hunger, malnutrition and stress have devastating consequences for children.
Much of what we do in our culture to deal with childhood poverty addresses the symptoms and not the causes. We collect food for food banks, we fund soup kitchens—these are important, for they help people who are in an immediate food crisis—but we don’t spend much time and energy addressing the reasons why poverty exists. We don’t do much to change the world, so that people don’t have to go to food banks and soup kitchens. If you are wondering what I am talking about, perhaps an analogy will help you out. Let’s say you begin feeling piercing pains in your chest. Would you be happy if your doctor said to you, here’s some pain medication, this will take the pain away. No. I suspect that you would say to your doctor, “You need to figure out what is causing my pain, because it could be something that will kill me.” You would want to know the cause so you could fix it. The same is true of childhood poverty. We need as individuals and as communities to start doing the hard work of addressing the causes of childhood poverty, not just treating the symptoms.
Every little baby is a bundle of hope and potential. We need to see every baby born with the same eyes with which Simeon and Anna viewed Jesus. I suspect that when we see every child with these eyes, the eyes of God, we will find that we have no other choice but to do something to make sure that all children begin life with the same chance, with the same opportunities to become the compassionate, loving and light-giving people that they were born to be.
Every little baby is a bundle of hope and potential. We need to see every baby born with the same eyes with which Simeon and Anna viewed Jesus. I suspect that when we see every child with these eyes, the eyes of God, we will find that we have no other choice but to do something to make sure that all children begin life with the same chance, with the same opportunities to become the compassionate, loving and light-giving people that they were born to be.
The following is a link to a Frontline Documentary that follows the lives of several children living in poverty:
The following is a link to the Children’s Defense Fund’s 2014 Report on the State of America’s Children:
http://www.childrensdefense.org/?gclid=CJLUwpSsprwCFWVyQgod7jEA2g