David Orendorff, Luke 2:21-40

Simeon and Anna are yet another forgotten but essential piece of the Christmas story and our lives. We know nothing of them except what is in today’s scripture. But before we meet Simeon and Anna in the temple, we must take time to know why Mary and Joseph have brought Jesus to the temple. In a short hand way, Luke refers to three Jewish rituals following the birth of a child.

The first is circumcision. If you don’t know what circumcision is, ask your mother or father. I am not going to give a description. It is too painful. Its meaning is to mark those males who are born into the Hebrew nation and Jewish religion. Other peoples have practiced circumcision, but by the time of Jesus in the Mideast it was almost exclusively a Hebrew practice. It was actually controversial in the Hellenistic period into which Jesus was born. Many Hebrew families were refusing to circumcise their sons, calling it barbaric and saying it made their sons appear strange and to be mocked at athletic events and the public baths.

By mentioning Jesus’ circumcision, Luke wants the reader to know that Jesus is fully Jewish and that his parents are not ashamed of being Hebrew in a Greek culture. Jews are often strangers in the culture surrounding them.

The second ritual, what Luke calls the time for purification, is actually two rituals that Luke has collapsed into one. His Jewish readers would probably understand this easily enough, but I needed to be reminded. The two rituals are purification of the mother and presentation of the first-born son.

The purification of the mother is based on Lev 12:1-8:

If a woman conceives and bears a male child, she shall be ceremonially unclean seven days. On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. Her time of blood purification shall be thirty-three days; she shall not touch any holy thing, or come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purification are completed.”¹

If you asked me why they thought this, I don’t know. But the Hebrew Scriptures are full of why women and men are unclean around sexual cycles and functions. We really have no room to criticize because we also have unexplained fears and taboos.

Anyway, after the seven days being secluded and “unclean,” the mother is expected to present herself to a priest for cleansing and then to remain in ceremonial isolation for another thirty-three days, for a total of 40 days. Interestingly, Luke includes Joseph in the ritual of purification. There is no law that requires this, but it is a nice gesture. Luke is again making the point that this is a good and proper Jewish family.

The ritual of presenting the first born is based on Exodus 13:2:

Consecrate to me all the firstborn; whatever is the first to open the womb among the Israelites, of human beings and animals, is mine.”

The Hebrew people and we are reminded that God comes first. Instead of holiness being the last thing of our lives and the last place we give attention, it is to be the first. In a sort of contemporary way, it means the offering check is the first obligation of our paycheck. Unfortunately, in the day of Jesus, girl children were not valued as much as boy children. So it is the first son that is consecrated, dedicated and declared to belong to God and therefore holy. There are some Catholic traditions that still strongly encourage and guide the first-born son into the priesthood.

And yet again, as if a triple underline, Luke wants the reader to know that this Jewish family follows all the laws of Moses. By the rituals of circumcision, purification and dedication, combined with the information that Jesus descends from the priestly family of Aaron and the royal family of David, as well as having roots in the prophetic traditions, Luke is hoping the reader will understand that Jesus and his family are as biologically and ritually Jewish as you can get.

By citing Leviticus 5:7 as his final ritual reference, Luke is yet again reminding the reader that Mary and Joseph are properly Jewish, but also that they are poor.

If you cannot afford a sheep you shall bring to the Lord, as your penalty for the sin that you have committed, two turtledoves or two pigeons, one for the sin offering and the other for the burnt offering.”²

At the time of the sin offering, the petitioner acknowledges their sin. The burnt offering is then a request for atonement. In this understanding, forgiveness is a two-step process; 1) an acknowledge of personal failure, and 2) a request for reconciliation.

Though Mary and Joseph cannot afford a sheep and so offer a sacrifice of a pair of birds, they are not the poorest. The poorest are permitted to offer 1/10th of an ephah of fine flour. An ephah is a dry measure. 1/10th an ephah is roughly equivalent to three quarts.

So what we know is that this very Jewish and somewhat poor family enters the temple. Two people notice the baby and make prophetic announcements regarding his future.

The first of those is Simeon. What we know of Simeon is what Luke tells us. “This man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.” Being righteous and devout of course indicates that Simeon was both a just man and a man devoted to God. “Looking forward to the consolation of Israel” is a rabbinic way of saying that Simeon was watching for the coming messiah and the reign of God on earth.

In fact, the Holy Spirit had told Simeon he wouldn’t die until he had seen the messiah with his own eyes. Coming to the temple and seeing Jesus, Simeon knows he has seen the messiah and he is now prepared to die.

Anna is the other person who takes particular notice of the baby Jesus. We are given a good deal of Anna’s history regarding her tribe, that after a relatively short time being married, her husband died, and she remained a faithful widow until a very old age. And she too was quite devout, never leaving the temple while it was open but worshipping there with fasting and prayer, night and day. When Anna sees the baby Jesus, she begins praising God, for she too knows she has seen “the redemption of Jerusalem,” which is yet another way of naming the messiah.

Simeon and Anna are the first ones outside family to see that this baby is special. We forget how important are those who, though not family, see our gifts and potential and encourage us to be the best of who we are.

I don’t know that anyone noticed anything special about me at birth. At least my parents have never mentioned it. But I do remember a fourth-grade science teacher, though I can’t recall her name, who thought I was brilliant and encouraged my love of exploration. And I remember a college math professor, David Skinner, who saw me as gifted and, through high expectations combined with appropriate praise. drove me well beyond where the other students were challenged. And I remember three seminary professors, Don Mauck, Fern and John Giltner, who saw in me gifts for preaching, for comforting, and who gently pushed me in the direction of pastoral ministry even though I wanted to be an academician.

Just as Anna and Simeon saw clearly the future of Jesus and so called him (along with his parents) into that future, so all these and more have been, by their clear vision of what God has made in me, prophets and shapers of who I have finally become.

I once made mention in “Who is Who is Religious America.” It is only a slight honor to be noted. But the point is when I got my five minutes of fame, none of those who saw the truth of my soul and called it into being were mentioned. They never will be mentioned. I can’t even remember all their names. But they are the folks that God had watch over me and beyond my family guided me to be the grace I was made to be.

Where I fail is not their fault. But where I am who I was made to be, I owe them a great deal.

You have those folks in your life, and you are those folks in the lives of others. You may not remember the names, nor may you know when you have been prophetic for the life that makes a difference. But forgotten as they are and as you are, still the kingdom of heaven, the reign of God, the messiah are only seen when these folks see and sing praise. The messiah in us is only made known when the forgotten prophets of our lives speak the vision into being.

Shalom and Amen.

1. It is two weeks and 66 days for a female child. [↩]
2. At the time of the sin offering, the petitioner acknowledges their sin. The burnt offering is then a request for atonement. Fin this understanding, forgiveness is a two step process; 1) an acknowledge of personal failure, and 2) a request for reconciliation. [↩]

David Orendorff, Luke 1:5-25, 57-80

Today’s scripture is usually used to focus on the birth of John the Baptist and his subordinate relationship to Jesus. If this were a movie, Zechariah and Elizabeth would be lost someplace in the credits. Well, I think they deserve more notice. We don’t have time in one sermon to develop all the interesting subplots concerning Zechariah and Elizabeth; Elizabeth’s’ secret pregnancy, Zechariah being struck mute, Luke’s use of punitive miracles, Mary’s song of praise, or Zechariah’s prophecy, to name just a few.

Elizabeth and Zechariah, like Joseph, are humble people. The only reason we occasionally remember them is that they are distant relatives of Jesus and the parents of John the Baptist. It is like when my children were growing up and I would be introduced not as David, but as Erika’s or Johanna’s father.

I begin with some of Elizabeth’s story. We are told in Luke 1:36 that Elizabeth is a relative of Mary. Like all families, the relationship is complicated. The Greek word in Luke 1:36 is συγγενισ which means “of common origin.” In this case it means that Mary and Elizabeth come from the same family. They might be cousins of some sort; they might be aunt and a distant niece, or some other kinship. The exact relationship remains speculation. Whatever the kinship, Elizabeth is a part of Mary’s family.

We are also told in Luke 1:5 that Elizabeth is one of the daughters of Aaron. Aaron’s family is one of the 12 Hebrew tribes. It is the branch of the family specifically assigned priestly duties. Elizabeth is from a family that is deeply involved with the temple and with maintaining faith in God. By inference then, Mary is also one of the daughters of Aaron. In the kinship of Mary and Elizabeth are both Mary’s family of origin and her church family.

Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband, is family by marriage. And since he is a priest in the temple, Zechariah is also of the church. Zechariah extends the family of Mary to in-laws and reaffirms Mary’s relationship with her church family.

Zechariah also carries with him the history of Israel’s prophets. His name means “God remembers.” His namesake is one of the Minor Prophets who lived in a time of poverty, famine, and political oppression under the Persian King Darius I. Zechariah the prophet had a vision in 592 BCE which centered upon a symbolic representation of the Jewish community revolving around the rebuilt Temple in a land secured and sanctified by God.¹ Remember that the rebuilding of the temple becomes one of the themes of Jesus life, death and resurrection.

It is also significant that Zechariah and Elizabeth are old and childless. Biblically, this makes them like Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 16:1; 17:1-21; 18:9-15; 21:1-8), and like Elkanah and Hannah (I Samuel 1:1-20). Generally it is a disgrace for a woman to be barren, especially of sons. Abraham and Sarah finally give birth to Isaac, who is the first child of the Jewish nation. And Elkanah and Hannah finally give birth to Samuel, who was the first recorded prophet of Judaism and the Jewish people’s first national leader. The child that finally comes to Elizabeth and Zechariah is John the Baptist, yet another major figure in the history of our faith.

This is the complicated family into which Jesus is born. As Mary’s visit to Elizabeth suggests, it is a family of strong ties to each other and their shared history. And it is also a family with strong religious ties, a family deeply committed to faith in God and a prophetic justice.

I, too, come from a complicated family. Much of my identity is tied to being an Orendorff. I have mixed roots of Irish, Scottish, English, German and Native American. We have traced ourselves back to Christian Orndorff who in 1741 arrived in Pennsylvania from Germany. Religiously, the early American Orndorffs were of the German Reform tradition which had close ties to the early Methodist movement. A favorite family story is that the Orendorffs were folks of such deep faith in God that when the ship they were on in crossing to the Colonies was threatened by a storm, they sang to God without fear. It sounds apocryphal to me and something Methodists would want to say, but true or not it is a foundational story of who we Orendorffs are. We sing to God in the face of danger.

Whatever we are doing, we tend to have the mind of an engineer in doing it, whether we are soldiers in the Prussian army, farmers (an Orendorff invented the first mechanical hay stacker), or manufacturing iron. For our careers we are predominantly mathematicians, physicists, and administrators who sometimes morph into teachers and preachers. We value education highly, and both by formal and informal means we seek to expand our knowledge and understanding.

We have sometimes been friends and confidents of great people. Orendorffs love to tell how one of us split rails with Abe Lincoln and later even loaned him some books for his law study. But we have never been one of the great movers and shakers around which history is written. We are always some of the “Oh yeah, they were also there” kind of folks.

I tell you all this to say that the family from which I come, its current influence and its history play a significant role in who I am and have become. I started college in engineering but later chose ordained ministry, just like my grandfather.

You too have a complicated family history. Whether it is your family of origin, a family into which you were adopted, or your church family, it has greatly influenced who you are and who you become. None of us is born into a vacuum. All of us are born into genetic histories, family psychologies, and a complex web of relationships.

Sometimes we are aided by our family history. And sometimes we are frustrated by it. Sometimes our church history is an asset, sometimes it is a detriment. Good or bad, it is ours and has enormous influence on our conscious and unconscious being. We pick life partners in large part due to family history or our struggle against it. We parent, have friendships, chose careers under the powerful influence of family history.

If we understand this, then we understand how very import the devout and just people of our families are to us. We understand how the grandmother that prayed for us when we had gone astray was the tipping point for our return home. We understand how the cousin that remembered us when we thought we were lost mattered. Perhaps we have a favorite aunt or uncle that believed in us, encouraged and inspired us.

Scriptures says that Elizabeth and Zechariah are “both righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord.” These are the good people every family and church needs to shape the world toward shalom. They are favorite aunts and uncles. They are the forgotten family and church who nurture the child Jesus to become the Christ. They are an important influence that prepares family and faith to receive a messiah. They are the kind of family Jesus and we need to care for us as we grow up.

Like Joseph, who chose to be Jesus’ father and, with little recognition, chose to serve God and us, Zechariah and Elizabeth serve God and serve us with their quiet and often forgotten love. I believe it is the thousand forgotten Zechariahs and Elizabeths of the world that truly make the future of the world.

Walter Russell Bowie in his exposition of Luke 1:5-6 says it this way:

Three names are mentioned here: Herod, Zechariah, and Elizabeth, and the second and third of these are very different from the first. Herod was one of the most evil figures of his age, cruel, sensual, with no standard of judgment higher than his own relentless will for power. It may well be that many in Israel estimated their time by this man who seemed to be its dominant representative. What could it be but an evil time when a man so evil overshadowed it?But meanwhile, in Herod’s time, there was another sort of person, quiet, inconspicuous, and yet more important than Herod, men and women who were the sound core of society and gave it such real wholesomeness as it did possess. Then and always there were and are the lowly and humble men (and women) in whom the strength of the present and the promise of the future lie.²

History is generally written around those whose name has become big before us. Not many write history around the common good men and women that live quiet lives of decency and are the wholesomeness of every time and place. To live lives of quiet decency is so common that it is not news, it is the expected. Like Walter Bowie, I believe it is these “lowly and humble men (and women) in whom the strength of the present and the promise of the future lie.”

It doesn’t matter that my name or your name will be forgotten shortly after we die, because the goodness of our hearts will live on with more power than any name. It doesn’t matter that we won’t have a spot in the history book, because the baby born to us then and now will be loved by us, and that love needs no name.

I thank many generations of Elizabeth and Zechariah for being my family and being my church. Without them I would not know the profound and broad love of God. And without the love of God I would not know joy. And I thank all you who have been family and church to my children and now my grandchild. Because of your faith and because you walk, by the grace of God, in all the commandments and ways of the Lord, I know that Ashlyn will be loved and will herself then know how to love like Jesus, the true joy of living.

Shalom and Amen.

1. Dictionary of the Bible, ed. Paul J. Achtemeier, (HaprerCollins, San Francisco, 1996) page 1239 - [↩]
2. Walter Russell Bowie, The Interpreter’s Bible (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1952), volume 8, page 30/ [↩]

David Orendorff, Matthew 1:18-25

For most of us, Joseph is a footnote to the story of Mary and Jesus. I want to look at that footnote. I believe that in Joseph we discover a radical witness of graciously given love and a way to the joy of Christmas.

Matthew ¹ tells us that the father of Jesus is a carpenter. This probably means Joseph is a laborer who makes things of wood and is of the peasant class in Palestinian society. He, or his family, have lost their land and now must make a living serving others. In short, Joseph is probably poor and though not a slave, he is nobody.

This nobody gets lucky and is betrothed to Mary. And because Joseph is nobody, it is probable that Mary is poor and nobody as well. Betrothal is a formal contract between a man and a woman’s family. When Mary is of age (probably 12 or so) Joseph will come and take her as his wife. Joseph is older than she, but how much older is uncertain.

Then Joseph gets unlucky. Mary is discovered to be pregnant and not by Joseph. Joseph now has a problem. He can choose to take Mary for a wife and raise her child as his own. In this choice he will, of course, be marked as a cuckold even before the wedding night. Or he can divorce Mary, for betrothal could only be broken by divorce.

At first he decides for divorce. Not a messy public thing, but a quiet thing because he doesn’t want to shame her. While he is sleeping on it, God weighs in by way of “an angel of the Lord.” In his dream Joseph is given as clear a command as a dream can give, “do not fear to take Mary as your wife” and some very vague information, “that which is conceived of her is of the Holy Spirit” - whatever that means.

Joseph now has an even tougher choice. He must choose whether or not to obey the God seen in a dream. To obey comes with public humiliation each time the baby Jesus is taken out of the house for it will always be told that Jesus is not the son of Joseph.

Joseph courageously chooses to wed Mary and to be father, in all that means, to Jesus. Without Joseph to house, feed, protect and teach the baby boy Jesus, there is no rest of the story. Joseph, this most unlikely peasant carpenter, makes a place for God in his home and in his heart.

True to his humble beginnings, almost no one notices or cares. The writers of the New Testament have mostly forgotten him. Mark’s gospel doesn’t mention him. None of the letter writers of the NT, including Paul, mention him. And in Matthew, Luke and John’s gospels he is forgotten almost as soon as he comes on the scene. This near total agreement on the insignificance of Joseph has led many a Bible historian to question whether there ever was a Joseph.

Mary, on the other hand, virtually from the beginning, is glorified and praised. People pray to her, “Holy Mary, mother of God” with passion and expectation. Almost no one prays to Joseph.

In Nazareth, Mary has two great churches. Vickie and I have stopped at both of them. At the Roman Catholic Church of the Annunciation we saw, as tradition has it, where Mary was told by Gabriel that she would have a child. It is a big, beautiful, ornate and rich place. And at the Greek Orthodox Church of Mary’s Well we saw, and tasted the spring from which Mary drew water for her family. It is an impressive church filled with reverent icons of Mary and her child.

Joseph also has a church in Nazareth. It is small and just one block from the Church of the Annunciation. We didn’t take time to go there, almost no one does. Our guide said there was nothing to see.

In the early church everyone got their own annual feast day. Mary has several days marking various events in her life. All the disciples get days. Even Matthias, the thirteenth disciple, the one who was elected to replace Judas, gets a day. Joseph didn’t get a day until 1620. To the history of Jesus, and to the people of Jesus, Joseph just doesn’t appear to matter all that much.

He remains, to this day, secondary and forgotten, only to be brought out with the Christmas Crèche. Then we all remember his failure as a husband to find lodging so that Mary is forced to have her baby in a stable with the animals and the filth.

Joseph is sort of like the nurse who was at your birth, but who has most likely been forgotten. She (it probably was a she) was there to help out. Her role was undoubtedly important to your life. But, she was not the mother who had grown this baby, and she was not the doctor who would deliver this baby, she was just a helper, a midwife, to the main event. Joseph is a midwife to the main event. And like most all midwives, he is soon forgotten.

But without Joseph, we would not be here. Mary, for her unwed pregnancy, could have probably been executed. Without the love of Joseph which was greater than a premature pregnancy; without Joseph’s difficult obedience to God’s will in a dream; Mary would have been without a home, without safety, without a warm place in a cold world, without a lover to comfort her in a cruel world.

Without the love of Joseph for the baby that was not his, Jesus would have been just another fatherless child. Most such babies were left outside to die, or were buried alive as a disgrace. It is the forgotten midwife Joseph that provides the cradle for the Christ. It is the forgotten hands and heart of Joseph that make a place for Jesus in the world. Joseph, without power or acknowledgement, simply does what must be done that God might be born and welcomed into the world.

I know a little how Joseph may have felt. I suppose every father does. When Vickie was great with Erika, I was often forgotten. I was invisible in the grocery store or at coffee time after worship. The high school girls of the youth group I led decided to give Vickie a baby shower. The boys begged to come. My presence was an afterthought since the shower was in our home. I cooked, washed, cleaned, and remodeled while Vickie slept the second trimester away. Again in Sunburst, when Vickie was pregnant with Johanna, the women of the church and community gave her a baby shower. I wasn’t invited. I stayed home and took care of Erika who was feverish and nauseous from cutting teeth. We sat in the bathtub while she threw up on me.

I trained as a La Maze coach. I remember the births of my children as if I was a midwife. I was in the delivery room and I like to think I was useful. But I also know that I was the least one there. As our children grew, I worked to provide food, shelter and money for us. My life became the slave of their needs. I would willingly do it again. Vickie isn’t interested.

Perhaps the most difficult part was that the affection I had grown to enjoy with Vickie was lost to our children. In a natural and important way, Vickie’s care became primarily focused on being the mother of Erika and Johanna. David was more often the provider and problem solver than the beloved. It was not an intentional slight. No one, least of all Vickie, meant to relegate me to the status of “he was also there.” It is simply the consequence of becoming a father. But though it was natural to being a father, it was difficult to be the forgotten midwife.

I have learned that the in my ministry I am primarily a midwife to the ministry of others. I received Bear Creek not as the child of my own creation, but as the child of others who have gone before me; as not my family, but a family of God. I am not the one who now makes you pregnant with love. I am the midwife of the Holy Spirit as it fills us with child for the sake of the world.

I am the one who laughs with you when you discover God, and holds you tight when faith seems not enough for the day. I am the one who reminds you of the promise of Christmas, Christ born in us for the world. I am a footnote to your journey with God in the world. I am Joseph, the forgotten midwife of Emmanuel, God with us.

I suspect that I am not that different from you. Most of us, most of the time, are more midwife than mother. We are not often pregnant with God, but find ourselves caring for another’s pregnancy, another’s birth, another’s child. We are the ones who laugh with the mother when she begins to swell with the promise of a new life. We are the ones holding the mother, great with child, and rocking her with our arms in the days of discomfort and discouragement.

We are the forgotten who serve in the nursery of faith. We are the silent who work hard so that we might offer our wealth to serve God’s love. We are the ones who without fanfare, or a memorial plaque, or even a footnote in the official records, show up to care for each other as the blessed children of God. When the bright light is shown and the TV crews come to visit, it is not our faces that fill the screen of the evening news, but it is we who have cared for mother and child so they shine. We are the crib, the evening meal, the hands that hold tenderly, and the hearts that love dearly.

Ours is a ministry of mostly anonymous service. Like Joseph, we are called to receive and care for Mary, pregnant by another. Like Joseph, we are called to raise Jesus as if he were our own child. It is a humble ministry, a selfless ministry, a ministry with thankless long hours done as a gift of love. But without the forgotten midwives, without us, there is no Emmanuel, no “God with us,” no Christmas.

And here is the mystery never to be explained. Contrary to the desire to be the star, life’s true and long lasting joy comes most often in being forgotten midwives. Joseph discovered God in this mother and her baby. He gave his living to their love. And in the giving he forgot himself and he was forgotten. But it didn’t matter, because he had become servant love. May we too become servant love.

Amen and Shalom

1. Matt. 13:55, see also. Mark 6:3 [↩]