O God, take our minds and think
through them. Take our lips and speak through them. Take our hearts and set
them on fire. Amen.
February 2nd
is a holy day called the Presentation of the Lord, or in Catholic circles, the
Purification of our Lady. Bringing your attention to Leviticus chapter 12, it
says,
“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
“Speak to the Israelites, saying: ‘If a woman conceives and bears a male child,
she shall be unclean seven days; as at the time of her menstruation, she shall
be unclean. 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… When the days of her
purification are completed, whether for a son or for a daughter, she shall
bring to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting a lamb in its first
year for a burnt offering and a pigeon or a turtledove for a purification offering.
He shall offer it before the Lord and make atonement on her behalf; then she
shall be clean from her flow of blood. This is the law for her who bears a
child, male or female.’”
Under the Mosaic Law, a
woman was ritually “unclean” for 40 days after childbirth, when she was to
present herself to the priests and offer sacrifice for her “purification.”
Contact with anyone who had brushed against mystery, whether that be birth or
death, excluded a person from Jewish worship.
In today’s gospel
reading, we find Mary and Joseph respecting the Mosaic Law by offering the
sacrifice prescribed for the poor: a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.
We also discover a number of people who have been waiting for a very long time
for their great hope to arrive. First of all, Simeon, who’s described as
waiting for the consolation of Israel. Secondly there’s Anna and the people
that she speaks to who are looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. All these
people are looking for the same thing. They’re looking forward to the fulfilment
of prophecies such as Isaiah’s that told of the restoration of Jerusalem, of
the coming of the Messiah to restore the fortunes of Israel, and to establish
God’s Kingdom here on earth, bringing salvation to all peoples.
All these people were
waiting for God to act. Most of them had been waiting for many years. We’re not
told how old Simeon was, but the implication is that he’d lived beyond the
normal span of years as he waited to greet the coming Messiah. He’s certainly
ready to go once he’s seen Jesus. Anna we’re told, is 84, which was a great age
for the time. But notice that their time hasn’t been wasted. Rather they’ve
spent their time in worship of God. Simeon is described as righteous and
devout. That is, his life was exemplary. He was a regular worshipper of God. He
was open to God speaking to him and responded when he heard God’s voice. We’re
told the Holy Spirit rested on him. Presumably that means that he’s a prophet,
like the prophets of old. God, it seemed, had been silent for 400 years. There
had been no prophets since Malachi. But now here is Simeon, waiting for the
Messiah to be revealed. In fact, Luke tells us that it had been revealed to him
by the Holy Spirit that he wouldn’t see death before he had seen the Lord’s
Messiah.
Similarly, there was
Anna. She too was a prophet. She never left the temple but worshipped there
with prayer and fasting night and day. What a great example of a godly woman.
And what a great example of a woman who acts as a mouthpiece for God. Anna is a
great example of a woman whom God uses to teach his people about who Jesus is.
Simeon and Anna had each
spent long years at prayer in the temple. In that time, they must have seen
countless babies. But, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, some special
quality in Jesus aroused in them the conviction that this child was the
Messiah. Their long years of faith-filled yearning were over. They recognized
him. The Anointed of the Lord had come.
This Feast of the
Presentation of the Lord is a celebration of that extraordinary moment of
recognition. It is a moment worth thinking about, because we are all invited to
experience it. Each one of us is called upon to recognize Jesus. We won’t have
that forty-day old baby to gaze at, but the same Holy Spirit who inspired
Simeon and Anna is with us, enabling us to recognize Jesus in the Scriptures,
in the hungry, in the stranger, in the prisoner, and in the Eucharist we share.
In Luke’s account, Jesus
was welcomed in the temple by two elderly people, Simeon and the widow Anna.
They embody Israel in their patient expectation, both living in a world of
patient hope where suffering has become a way of life. They acknowledge the
infant Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, God’s appointed redeemer who will
deal with the suffering by sharing it himself. Luke also tells us that to love
Jesus is to suffer with him when Simeon tells Mary, “A sword will pierce your
own soul, too.”
When we look at the world
around us, we can see the suffering. People are hurting, hungry, sick, and
dying. Violence is rising. Politics are becoming destructive. God’s people are
suffering. How do we recognize Jesus in this suffering? Where is God in this
suffering? From theologian and author NT Wright,
“Everybody has their own role in God’s
plan. For some, it will be active, obvious, working in the public eye, perhaps
preaching the gospel or taking the love of God to meet the practical needs of
the world. For others, it will be quiet, away from public view, praying
faithfully for God to act in fulfilment of [God’s] promises. For many, it will
be a mixture of the two, sometimes one, sometimes the other.”
Keeping Wright’s words in mind, what
is our role in this suffering?
In Simeon’s and Anna’s world,
suffering was an everyday thing, with no end in sight. But they were able to
hold out hope that God’s promises would come true one day. They found that hope
in Jesus. When we look around, it feels as if this suffering will go on forever.
There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. In fact, it just seems to get worse
on the daily. But we can have hope, too. Our hope lies in the knowledge that
God is sitting with us through it all, shedding the same tears and feeling the
same grief, while also presenting to us, in Jesus, the knowledge that the Kingdom
of God is confronting the Kingdom of the World.
I will end this time of teaching with a
prayer for grieving by Cole Arthur Riley,
“God
who is moved to tears,
Lead us into a kind of solidarity that
reminds us that in pausing to bear witness to suffering, we do not center
ourselves as the rescuer. We do not become the voice. Free us from the responsibility
to understand every tragedy at once. Help us to discern our capacity for
solidarity, lament. Help us to learn when to stand and when to rest and allow
others to do so, remembering that our activism is shared among a collective. We
don’t have to hold it alone.”
Amen.
