Don't Box Up Jesus Series

Don’t Box Up Jesus

Good morning! Please turn in your Bibles to Luke 2.

And let me be the first to wish you a very Happy Boxing Day! That’s right. If we lived in England, Australia, Hong Kong, or Canada, today we would be celebrating Boxing Day. Quick trivia question: What does Boxing Day represent?

A. The day you box up all your Christmas decorations

B. The day you box up all the Christmas gifts you want to return because they were the wrong size

C. The day you box your brother over the Christmas gift mom and dad gave you “to share.”

D. The day you prepare boxes of gifts for the poor

The answer is D. In countries that are or were part of the British empire, the day after Christmas is traditionally a day for remembering the poor. The tradition of giving Christmas boxes to those less fortunate has been around since the Middle Ages in many European countries.

But whether you do it the day after Christmas or not, most of us will, at some point in the next few days, put away all our Christmas decorations. The lights will come down. The Christmas tree will be put out to the curb. The Nativity set will be carefully boxed up until next year. And Christmas will be over.

And for a lot of people, there’s an emotional let-down after Christmas. An uncle in one pastor’s family had a favorite saying. When a relationship ended, he would say, “Yep. We’re over like Christmas.” When the score of a football game got too lopsided for his team to come back, he’d say, “Yep. This game’s over like Christmas.” Because for him, there wasn’t NOTHIN as over as Christmas.” That’s true for a lot of people. But you know what? It doesn’t have to be that way. The days after Christmas shouldn’t be a let-down for us. They can be a launching point, a glorious beginning in our lives. The key is this: Don’t treat the risen Savior as just another Christmas decoration. Give Him room and permission to work in your life all year round.

In other words, don’t box up Jesus.

Let me give you the setting for our Scripture passage for today. It’s forty-one days after the birth of Jesus. This completes the time the Old Testament Law mandated for a woman to complete the days of her purification following the birth of a male child. So Mary and Joseph now take Jesus to the temple to present Him to the Lord. While they are there, they meet an old man— well, the text doesn’t say he’s old, but we assume he is, named Simeon. The Holy Spirit had told Simeon that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. So when he saw the baby Jesus, God’s Word says Simeon took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said: ‘Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel.’”

But Simeon isn’t the only senior adult Mary and Joseph meet at church that day. They also meet a woman named Anna, and that’s the story I want to focus on this morning. If you are physically able, please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word as we look at Luke 2:36-40:

36 And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, 37 and then as a widow until she was eighty-four.[a] She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

Pray with me…

1. I want to challenge us this morning, first, that instead of boxing up Jesus until next year, we make up our minds to stay close to God, no matter what.

Let’s think about Anna’s life story. We read in verse 36 that her husband died only seven years into their marriage. It doesn’t say how. Maybe he got sick and suffered from a long term illness. Maybe it was an accident. We don’t know. But we can imagine it broke Anna’s heart, because she never remarried.

Some translations seem to say that she was 84 years old at the time of this story, while others suggest that she had been a widow for 84 years, which might have made her over a hundred at this point. Either way, she’s old!