[Note: Some churches (including my own) replace the readings for Christmas 1 with those for Epiphany, but I’m not ready to leave Christmas behind just yet — Epiphany isn’t for another six days! — so I’m sticking with the Christmas 1 readings. If you’d like an Epiphany-focused reflection today, feel free to check out here and here.]
The other day, I was writing a post on my bookish blog about my ‘author of the year’, the late great ‘Canadian Man of Letters’ Robertson Davies. As I was reflecting on what resonated so strongly with me in his writing, two related things seemed clear. First, he feels like a man of a bygone age. Writing well into the 1990s, he was a representative of an ‘Old Ontario’ culture that had long passed away; and he was still firmly entrenched in the Western literary canon, happy to allude to Homer or comment on the transition from Attic to Koine Greek long after such things ceased to be part of the general educational curriculum, or to reflect on the meaning of the arts in an increasingly-tech-focused society. But second, he was aware of the fact that this world that he represented was passing away, and seemed generally okay with it. His writings speak of ‘Old Ontario’ as a rather dull and stultifying place, and he writes proudly of the refugees and immigrants changing the face of Canadian society. And while he certainly had qualms about society abandoning the old humanities completely, he never seemed resentful about the old literary canon being set aside. In other words, he loved the world he knew, was a very aware that the world was shifting beneath his feet, but also seemed to welcome the world that was emerging. What a great example for all of us. Time comes for us all, and all of us will see what was once new, exciting and edgy be seen as old, banal, and regressive.
All of this was on my mind, when I looked at the Gospel reading for the first Sunday after Christmas, which focuses on Simeon, another old man who witnessed the passing of one age into another. The story is found at the end of Luke 2. It starts with Mary and Joseph entering the Temple precinct to present their baby to God, in accordance with religious Law. But the focus quickly shifts away from them them to a stranger in the crowd:
Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God … (2.25-28)
The text understates things a bit here, for Simeon not only praises God, but utters words of prophecy. Led by the Holy Spirit, he sees in this child the passing away of the old age and the arrival of something new and exciting:
‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.’ (2.29-32)
If you are a person with any familiarity to Christian liturgical traditions, both East and West, these words will be very familiar to you from their use in evening prayer services (Vespers, Compline, Evensong, and such, depending on one’s tradition). Put in less familiar language, Simeon’s prophecy reads like this:
Lord, now I can die in peace because I’ve seen the salvation You have prepared for us, just like You promised: A light who will reveal You to the whole world, and the crowning glory of Your people Israel.
Simeon, a man whose life has been lived wholly in the spirit of Advent, waiting and watching for God to act, understands that his waiting has come to an end. Something new is happening. Salvation has arrived in the hands and feet of this infant boy. And this salvation will not just be for Israel but for the whole world.
But where there is change, there is always resistance. Not everyone will be as happy to see the passing away of the old age as Simeon is. And so, his prophecy ends on a foreboding note. Turning to Mary, he says:
This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’ (2.34-35)
As I like to say, the good thing with light is that it shows us what we haven’t been able to see. But the bad thing about light is also that it shows us what we haven’t been able to see. Where truths are revealed, conflict follows. Where people are invested in the status quo, there will be resistance to change. And, of course, we see this in Jesus’ life, whether in the Pharisees who were devoted to the notion of ritual purity that Jesus upended, in the Sadducees who were committed to keeping the Temple that Jesus said would be torn down stone from stone open at all costs, and on and on. But Simeon stands in sharp contrast to this. He could have seen the surprise that the Messiah was going to reveal God to the whole world as a threat to Israel’s national identity — and indeed, many did, even among Jesus’ followers. But instead, he chose to see it as Israel’s crowning glory.
A recurring theme on the blog here the past couple years has been the strange fact that so many Christians today seem more comfortable in the ways of the ‘old religion’ represented by Jesus’ opponents — purity culture, lists of prohibitions, a focus on who’s in and who’s out, and keeping the church doors open — than they are in the new religion of Jesus, which rejects common notions of religious purity, which focuses on positive outcomes more than prohibitions, eagerly welcomes outsiders to the inside, and honours ritual without being defined by it.
The trick for us is, like Simeon, to have eyes to see what it was that God was doing in Jesus and to see it as glory, not to focus on what is being lost, but to see what is gained when we open ourselves up to the religion of Jesus.
Matthew Root 