St.
Christopher’s Episcopal Church, Springfield, VA
Year A, The Presentation
of the Lord, Luke 2:22-40
It is a moving and beautiful scene that the writer of Luke
gives us in today’s gospel lesson. This text is of course the basis for today’s
feast, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. And there are actually two
Jewish rituals going on here that our gospel writer puts together. The first is
the purification of Mary, who after childbirth would have been ritually unclean according to Jewish law. And so a mother was required to wait forty days after
the birth of a boy (and longer after the birth of a girl) to re-enter the
Temple. And this ritual of purification
called for the sacrifice of a lamb and a pigeon or dove. But if a family was
poor, as Mary and Joseph were, they could sacrifice two pigeons or doves, as they
do.
And the
second ritual is the dedication of the firstborn son to God, which took place
when the child was a month old, and usually included the parents paying five
shekels to a priest in the Temple to redeem the child from God. But for
whatever reason, the gospel writer takes some liberties and conflates this
second ritual with the story of Samuel and his mother Hannah in the Old
Testament, and so we don’t get the five shekels. That’s okay, though.
We can give
Luke a little leeway, since what we do get is more important. We get an illustration of Joseph and Mary’s faithfulness
to God through the law of Moses, the law as Luke understands it, at least. Luke
wants us to know not so much about the rituals themselves but that Mary and
Joseph are faithful Jews, just as Jesus will be a faithful Jew. They actively participate
in the rituals of the Temple, in rituals that keep them in relationship to God,
and this is good.
And so we
have this image of this holy family, this young woman Mary, really still just a
girl, and her poor carpenter husband, Joseph, traveling with their infant son the
twenty-odd miles from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to abide by the teachings of their
religion, to practice their faith.
And they
encounter two other people who have spent their long lives practicing their
faith: Simeon and Anna, both in their eighties and both deeply committed to the
God of Israel. Simeon and Anna have both spent their lives believing in the
promises of God and putting into practice their love for God. Simeon, we are
told, is “righteous and devout,” and Anna is forever fasting and praying. It’s
a beautiful, beautiful picture of fidelity to God, with the infant Jesus and
his dedicated parents encountering two people who have remained steadfast and
sure to the promises of Israel, who have believed in God’s promise of a
messiah, made some 800 years before.
What must it have been like to see the Messiah
in the flesh for these two? These two who day after day worshipped, worshipped
and prayed and remained faithful to a God they loved. What must they have felt
when they finally encountered this infant, the Messiah, the Christ, the savior
of Israel and the world?
We get some
idea of what it must have been like of course in Simeon’s words that we often
sing in morning prayer. He proclaims that he has peace, that he has seen God’s
salvation, God’s light for all people, both Israelites and Gentiles. He can go
in peace. He has seen the Messiah.
We too, of
course, can have the deep peace of Simeon and the excitement for God of Anna,
who wants to tell everyone about the child. We can have a deep and abiding
peace of God and this overwhelming zeal for God. We can have this, since we,
too, can see the Messiah.
But I would
argue that in order to do that, it takes some practice. I’m not saying that God
doesn’t love us if we don’t practice our faith—God loves us without condition,
no matter what—but I’m saying only that we are truly able to see God working in
the world and in our lives when we do. Luke tells us that the Holy Spirit was
upon Simeon, and Simeon was able to recognize the Spirit and see the Messiah
because he opened himself to it. He opened himself to it in worship and prayer
and in participating in the life of the Temple.
It is so
much easier to see the Messiah when we have practiced our faith. When we have
prayed and worshipped and participated in the life of the community of the
church. When we have done that, it is of course so much easier to see the
Messiah in each person that we encounter, from the person sitting beside you,
to the cashier at Target, to a guest at our hypothermia shelter this week.
Christ is present in each of them, in each of us, but that’s difficult to see
when we haven’t practiced. We need time in worship and prayer, time with God
who so desires relationship with us, to be able to recognize the movement of
the Holy Spirit and to see Christ in others and to serve and love others as
Christ served and loved us. We need the practices of faith to see. And there is
of course great peace and joy in seeing in this way. In fact, this is the only
way to true peace and joy on this side of the grave.
Why, then
do we not do the things we need to do to be able to see? And I of course count
myself among those who often don’t. While I go to a worship service almost
every day because it’s required of me as a seminarian, my heart is not always
in it. And as far as my personal prayer life, it doesn’t come close to that of
Simeon or Anna. And so I sometimes don’t see so well. And when I fail to see
the Christ in my neighbor, especially when it’s in a seminary community where
we sort of live on top of one another, that inevitably leads to unkindness and
gossip and resentment and all that stuff that keeps us from experiencing the
peace and joy Simeon and Anna feel.
Simeon has
something to teach us about this. After proclaiming he has seen the Messiah, he
pulls Mary aside and tells her that her tiny baby boy will cause many to fall
and that he will be opposed by many. Essentially, Simeon says, Jesus is
divisive. Jesus is divisive and many in Palestine in the first century and many
today come down on the side opposed to Jesus. Perhaps because truly following
Jesus requires too much--too much time, too much effort, too much money, too
much caring for the other and not focusing on me.
A life of
faith is quite a lot, actually. It requires a lot. It’s certainly not all
unicorns and rainbows. It’s not all happy, clappy. Jesus is divisive, dividing
people and dividing even our own hearts, because
dying to self is painful. Dying to self is painful. And that is exactly
what following Jesus requires. Dying to self again, and again, and again. And
I’m not sure why, but somehow this dying to self seems to be the only way for
us to see Christ in the other and experience true peace and joy, to experience
salvation.
Jesus
is divisive because Jesus offers us a radical choice, but it’s certainly not an
easy one: A life where we get to do exactly what we want to do or life that
requires something from us. But this life that requires something from us leads
to salvation. Not salvation from a fiery hell or condemnation, but salvation
from a life that is self-focused and empty. This life that requires something
from us, that challenges us to worship and pray and serve, allows us to really
and truly see, so that we might have the most profound peace and joy in the
here and now. A life of faith is not easy. But in the end, it’s the only life
worth living. A life of faith is true life, since this life that requires
something from us ensures that we can see the Messiah.
