|
In the days after Mary’s delivery, Mary and Joseph did the
things that the Law required of them following the birth of a child. On the eighth day they had the child
circumcised, and they named him Jesus, as they angel had told them they should. And on the fortieth day,
Mary was purified in accordance with the Law. Then they brought Jesus to the Temple to be presented to
the Lord, for according to Torah every first-born belonged to God.
There was in Jerusalem that day an old man named Simeon. Simeon, a good and righteous man, was
waiting patiently for the deliverance of Israel, because the Holy Spirit had promised him that he would
not die until he had seen the Messiah. And the Spirit led Simeon to the Temple when Mary and Joseph and
Jesus were there. In the baby Jesus, Simeon recognized the promised Messiah, and he took Jesus in his
arms said, “Now, Lord, you are releasing your servant in peace, according to your promise, because I have
seen with my own eyes the deliverance you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light that will
bring revelation to the nations and glory to your people Israel.”
What a wonderful thing for Simeon! What a wonderful thing for Simeon, to have it personally
revealed to him in his old age that the consolation of Israel had come as God had promised, and to be able
to die in peace, assured of the salvation of God!
But even so, old Simeon must have grieved for the future, because the Spirit took the occasion of
that day to reveal something else to Simeon as well. The promised deliverance would be neither easy nor
automatic. There would be pain ahead, much pain, for even as Simeon gave his blessing to Joseph and Mary,
he said, “This child is destined to be a sign that will be rejected. And you, Mary, will be pierced to
the heart as well.”
What was it that Simeon saw that day? Clearly, he saw that Jesus was the Christ, the promised
Messiah who brought deliverance and salvation. But he must also have seen that Jesus was not the Messiah
the people expected. He must have seen as well that the child whom Joseph and Mary had just offered to
God in the Temple would, when he became a man, offer himself to God on a Cross, not to the armies of
Israel in a regiment. Simeon must have seen that Jesus would be mocked and spit upon, betrayed,
abandoned, and rejected. Simeon must have seen that Jesus would deliver Jerusalem riding on a donkey, not
on a horse. He must have seen that Jesus would be a sign of love, not a sign of force, and that the
people would reject him because they would neither understand nor want the deliverance he brings. And
Mary would see it all.
Certainly the Spirit revealed the truth to Simeon that day. And Simeon spoke the truth to Mary,
too, because what he spoke is the way it happened.
But did Simeon see even more? Did he also see that not even the Resurrection would end the
rejection of the salvation the child would bring? Did the Spirit also reveal to Simeon that even after
Jesus’ victory over death, those who would claim his name would still reject his way? Did Simeon see that
even those who would later take the name Christian would still miss the point -- that the Lord of Love
brought deliverance and grace and love and peace, not just to some, but to all?
Even Peter would miss the point at first. When a man named Cornelius, who hungered for the
salvation of God, asked Peter to pay a visit to his home to tell him about Jesus, Peter balked. The man
who claimed the name of the man who walked the way of the Cross was afraid to walk down the street to
another man’s house for Jesus’ sake. “I can’t do that,” Peter said. “Cornelius is a Gentile, a
foreigner. Righteous people don’t visit the homes of pagans. The Bible forbids it! Salvation is for
Jews.” Clearly, even after Calvary and Easter Day, Peter had not yet seen the salvation, the deliverance,
the consolation, that old Simeon had seen when Jesus was just a child. “You stiff-necked people, with
uncircumcised hearts and ears,” Stephen had said to those about to stone him. “You are just like your
fathers. You always resist the Holy Spirit.” It was a charge that might reasonably have been leveled at
Peter, too, at first.
But something led Peter to go to Cornelius’s house despite his fear and reluctance, and along the
way Peter received another shock. He had a vision. And in the vision, he saw “something like a large
sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well
as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air,” all the animals that the Scriptures forbade a righteous
and devout Jew to eat.
And a voice spoke to Peter and said, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” And Peter said, “Never,
Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” What have the righteous to do with the
unrighteous? he was asking. And the voice spoke to him a second time and said, “Do not call anything
impure that God has made clean.” The Spirit then spoke to Peter again and told him to go on to
Cornelius’s house. And after Peter arrived and heard that an angel of God had spoken even to Cornelius,
Peter made a speech in which he said, “I now know how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but
accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.”
And then, while Peter was still speaking and telling everyone about his new understanding, “the
Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message,” and the circumcised believers, Peter’s fellow Jews who had
taken the name of Christ, were given still another shock. They “were astonished that the gift of the Holy
Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.”
Only the direct intervention of the Spirit of God could convince the righteous Peter and his
fellow Christians that everyone did not have to become like them in order to receive the grace of God.
Do you suppose that even back when Jesus was just a child, Old Simeon saw that the new way Jesus
was bringing, a way of grace and love and peace, was a kind of deliverance that was going to be awfully
hard for most of us to accept, because we human beings have a way of becoming so committed to the ways we
have been used to that we just have a hard time imagining life that is new and fresh and different? Life
like the way of the Cross, the way of love. Life like the way of the giving of self for the sake of the
other, like the way of the righteous giving and loving for the sake of the unrighteous.
Only the Holy Spirit prevented self-righteousness and fear from driving a wedge between Peter and
his brother Cornelius. Only the Holy Spirit freed Peter, as he had freed Simeon before him, to proclaim
the way of Messiah, the way love, as a way that is open to people of every nation. Only the Holy Spirit
could convince Peter that Jesus had brought something entirely new, a way of grace and peace, not another
way of force or just a different form of law.
And what about us? What about us today? What about us as a nation, as we wait for the
consolation and deliverance of America? Will self-righteousness and fear drive a wedge between us as a
people and the peoples of other lands? Will self-righteousness and fear drive a wedge even between us as
Americans? Or will we be open to the Spirit’s call to us to proclaim and live, even here, the deliverance
which Simeon saw, a way of grace and love which God brings for all?
Thirty-five years ago our nation was seriously divided, divided over a war we were waging on
foreign soil, divided as we seem to be dividing once again. The division, those of you of a certain age
will remember, brought destruction and death to the schools and streets of America. It was a division
that infected some who shared the blood of family, and it was a division that infected even some who
claimed to be bound together by the Blood of Christ.
In one parish, an Episcopal Church somewhere in the South, a number of parishioners urged their
vestry and their priest to join them in a public protest against the war in Vietnam and to have the parish
go on record as opposing as unjust and immoral the war our nation was waging. Others in the parish were
adamant that their parish would do no such thing and threatened to split the parish if they did. What,
after all, do the righteous have to do with the unrighteous, or the patriot with the rebel?
When the division neared the boiling point, a parish meeting was called to seek a solution. At
the meeting, following the invocation of the presence of the Prince of Peace as their guide, one side of
the room began to charge the others with a lack of patriotism while the other side countered with charges
of immorality and brutality, until it seemed that an exchange of blows would soon replace the exchange of
words. And the whole thing pierced Mary’s heart. And it pierced Jesus’ heart as well.
Then a man stood up and asked for the floor. Quietly, with tears in his eye’s, he said, “I have
two sons. One of my sons is in Vietnam. He is a soldier in the midst of all the fighting there. His
life is on the line just about every day. He is there because he believes that what his country is doing
is both necessary and right, and that it is therefore his duty to be there.”
“My other son is in Canada. He left his home and his country, because he believes that our war in
Vietnam is misguided, wrong, and unjust, and that it would be immoral for him to take part in
it.
“I am here in this parish church, and I need a church that can serve both my sons.”
And what about us here today who, like old Simeon, patiently wait for the promised deliverance of
God? What has righteousness to do with the unrighteousness? we want to know before we die. What about us
who wait for a word of personal deliverance? Well, there is a story for us as well. It comes from
Dostoevsky, from The Brothers Karamazov.
The elder, Father Zossima, noticed in the crowd two glowing eyes fixed on him. An
exhausted, consumptive-looking, though young, peasant woman was gazing at him in silence. Her eyes
besought him, but she seemed afraid to approach.
“What is it, my child?” asked the elder.
“Absolve my soul, Father,” she said softly, as she slowly sank to her knees and bowed down at his
feet. “I have sinned, Father. I am afraid of my sin.”
The priest sat down on a step. The woman crept closer to him, still on her knees. “I am a widow
these three years,” she began in a half-whisper, accompanied by a shudder. “I had a hard life with my
husband. He was an old man; he used to beat me cruelly; he lay ill. I thought, looking at him, that if
he were to get well, if he were to get up again, what then? And then the thought came to me....”
“Stay!” said the elder, and he put his ear close to her lips. The woman went on in a lower
whisper, so that it was almost impossible to catch anything. She was soon finished.
“Three years ago?” asked the elder.
“Three years. At first I didn’t think about it, but now I’ve begun to be ill, and the thought
never leaves me.”
“Have you come from far away?” asked the priest.
“Over three hundred miles,” she said.
“Have you told it in confession?”
“I have confessed it. Twice I have confessed it.”
“Have you been admitted to communion?”
“Yes. But I’m afraid. I am afraid to die.”
“Fear nothing,” said the elder, “and never be afraid. And don’t fret. If only your penitence
fail not, God will forgive all. There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord
will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love
of God. Can there be a sin that would exceed the love of God? Think only of repentance, continual
repentance. But dismiss fear altogether. Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive, that he
loves you with your sin, in your sin. It has been said of old that over one repentant sinner there is
more joy in heaven than over ten righteous men.
“Go, and fear not. Be not bitter against men. Be not angry if your are wronged. Forgive the
dead man in your heart what wrong he did you. Be reconciled with him in truth. If you are penitent, you
love. And if you love, you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a
sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God. Love is such a
priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the
sins of others.”
What has righteousness to do with unrighteousness? What has the Law to do with the Cross? What
old Simeon saw, even back when Jesus was but a child, was that the way of a righteous God is to make peace
with his unrighteous children. What old Simeon saw was that the way of love, the way of the Cross, is not
a contradiction of righteousness, but is the perfection of righteousness, and a strength and a consolation
that overcomes even the force of armies and the power of fear. It is the way of God, a deliverance that
conquers even death.
And seeing that, Simeon could live and die in peace. The question for us on this Feast of the
Presentation of Our Lord in the Year of Our Lord 2003 is: Will the Spirit of God reveal it to us
today?
In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
|