This sermon was delivered to First Presbyterian Church, St. Cloud, on December 31, 2017. It was a bitterly cold morning, with even fewer in attendance than is typical of “Low Sunday”—that is, the First Sunday after Christmas. Here I’m particularly pleased with the similarity drawn between the three songs of Luke’s infancy narrative and the song “Over the Rainbow” from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Both are, in a way, ancillary to their respective narrative plotline, but they serve to articulate the hopes and dreams of their original audience.
First Sunday after Christmas, Year B
Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:22-40
In the Roman Catholic liturgical year, the first Sunday after Christmas is called the feast of the Holy Family. Some Protestant churches use this title as well, but we Presbyterians simply call it “the First Sunday after Christmas.”
Many pastors and preachers, however, call today by its unofficial name, “Low Sunday,” because statistically the first Sunday after Christmas has the lowest attendance all year.
Now there are all sorts of reasons why that is the case, and I’m certainly not trying to belittle those who don’t make it to church today. (Although a quick shout-out to all of you today wouldn’t be inappropriate!) But beyond post-holiday exhaustion and winter illnesses, it’s kind of fitting, actually, that the one Sunday a year that we look at Jesus’s family life, his infancy and childhood, is the Sunday that gets the least amount of attention from the larger church. The gospels have very little to say about Jesus’s childhood, and the little bit that they do have to say gets placed right here in Low Sunday, the First Sunday after Christmas.
After all, who wants to come listen to the story of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents? That’s hardly good news, but that’s the gospel lesson on this Sunday every third year. And another of the three gospel lessons used on this day is the story that immediately follows today’s reading—it’s the story where the twelve-year-old Jesus goes missing and is eventually found in the temple, talking with and asking questions of the rabbis. And today’s reading presents another episode from Jesus’s early family life, a scene that is not as familiar—perhaps because of its placement in the liturgical calendar. In today’s reading, Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem in order to fulfill the Jewish law. Now it’s a bit unclear which law they are fulfilling—as the presentation of the firstborn is a distinctly different rite from the purification of the mother after childbirth. Luke appears to conflate the two, and some scholars take this as evidence that the author of this particular gospel is not as familiar with Jewish rituals as the authors of Matthew, Mark, and John.
Regardless of the author’s familiarity with ritual details, however, the point is that Mary and Joseph are indeed faithful Jews. They travel, presumably from their home in Nazareth, to Jerusalem—a good five-day journey by foot—and with an infant. And there, at the temple, they encounter a man named Simeon. Now we don’t know much about Simeon other than the fact that he was righteous and devout, and that the Lord had told him that he would not die until he had seen the promised Messiah. Tradition holds that Simeon is an old man, but there is nothing in the text to indicate his age. All we know is that he was righteous, devout, and would not die until he had seen the Messiah.
At this point Simeon breaks out in song, which is why part of the text that appears in your bulletin is in verse form. Now the gospel of Luke includes several songs like this where characters break away from the narrative in order to make some sort of proclamation. When Mary learns of her pregnancy, she sings that her soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and this song has become known as the Magnificat, after the Latin translation of the opening verse. After the birth of John the Baptist, his father Zechariah exclaims, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,” a song known as the Benedictus, again after the Latin translation of that text. Today’s song by Simeon is known as the Nunc Dimittus, after the Latin translation of its opening line, “Now dismiss your servant in peace.”
Now why does Luke add these songs? If they were not included in the narrative, we wouldn’t miss them. The plot moves along just fine without them. But that’s the way songs appear in a lot of stories. Take The Wizard of Oz, for instance. The story moves along just fine without Dorothy singing “Over the Rainbow,” and indeed that’s how the original story by Frank Baum was written. But that song, written for the movie, takes the story of Dorothy and makes it the audience’s own story. It not only symbolizes the movie, but it encapsulates the hopes and dreams of the American public in 1939. It became an anthem, a symbol, for American soldiers during the Second World War. People yearned for someplace else, rich in technicolor and far away from the drab and dreary world of suffering and global violence.
Likewise, these songs of Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon express the hopes of the original audience of the gospel of Luke. After all, the very temple in which this scene with Simeon takes place no longer existed. It, along with the entire city of Jerusalem, had been destroyed in the year 70, about ten to fifteen years before this gospel was likely written. There were a few pockets of Jewish resistance against the empire in various cities, but it would still be several years before they would coalesce into outright rebellion. In short, the audience of the gospel of Luke did not see the situation of the Jewish people as promising. Hope was sorely lacking, but like “Over the Rainbow” during the Second World War, hope is precisely what these songs provided.
So let’s hear Simeon’s song:
29 “Master, now you are dismissing your servant[e] in peace,
according to your word;
30 for my eyes have seen your salvation,
31 which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”
This is in response to gazing down at the infant Jesus in the temple. This song communicates a sense of finality, a sense of peace, and contentment, something that the audience was sorely lacking in the late first century. And, indeed, something that I’d venture that many of us lack today.
Upon hearing Simeon’s song, Mary and Joseph are surprised, or “amazed” as our translation has it. [QUOTE] “And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him.” Why is it that they are surprised? What is it about Simeon’s song that is so astonishing?
Well, if you were to tell me that either of our three children is going to do great things in life, I would say, “Yeah, I know.” Part of being a parent, and I’m speaking for those of us fortunate enough to have absorbed a culture of social mobility, part of being a parent in this day and age and in certain social circles is the idea—the firm belief—that our children will do great things. We see them as having opportunities and resources that we did not have. I’m not saying that is indeed the case. In recent years it has appeared that perhaps high school and college graduates do not have the opportunities and resources that earlier generations enjoyed. But, at the very least, many of us who have experienced or are experiencing parenthood firsthand know, or have known, without a doubt that our children are destined for greatness. We love them, we believe in them, and we see on a daily basis the amazing potential that is there.
Keeli and I have shared our story with some of you that we moved here to Minnesota about a week after our oldest son was born. He was born in Toronto, so he has dual citizenship. And after we first moved here with a new baby, the comment was often made that “Oh, he was born in Canada? So he won’t be able to be president.” Proud papa that I was, my reply was always: “Oh, I expect he can do much better than be president.” We expect great things of our children.
Now, of course, some are incapable of such hope. Whether from systematic oppression, having never experienced the economic freedom that allows for social mobility, or any number of circumstances, some people—no matter how much they love their children—are unable to believe that those children have any possibility of a positive future. Such hopelessness, in drastic circumstances, can cause people to lash out violently towards themselves, others, or both. And we’ve seen that in the news both here and around the world all too often.
The characters in today’s story, indeed, had very little reason to hope. Israel had not seen freedom for quite some time. Ever since Jewish leaders had seen fit to become a vassal state within the mighty Roman Empire, the freedoms of the people in this Judean province had declined. Long before that, when they were in exile under another empire, the Babylonians, the religious and literary traditions of the Jewish people had spoken of a messiah who would deliver them. So with centuries of such continual political subjugation under Babylon, Persia, Greece, and now Rome, you can imagine that it was not easy to have hope for one’s children.
And if we fast-forward just a few decades to consider the situation when the gospel of Luke first appeared, things were even worse. Following a rebellion, Jerusalem had been sacked, the temple destroyed, and the Jewish people scattered to various other cities around the empire.
But here is Simeon, looking at the infant Jesus and declaring that salvation has finally arrived. As amazing as this is for the audience, however, it is not why Mary and Joseph are amazed. Think of what they’ve already encountered: visitations from angels, a virgin birth, shepherds—total strangers, really—barging in and proclaiming that they had seen angels announcing that this child is the messiah. By the time Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple, the good news is old news. They need not be surprised by a stranger’s observation that Jesus is the messiah who will save the Jewish people—they know that. As amazing as that is, it is not what amazes them.
What amazes Mary and Joseph about Simeon’s song of hope and consolation is the one element that is new to the story. They know Jesus is the messiah. They know he will save the Jewish people. What they have not heard until now, however, is that Jesus will be a light for revelation to the Gentiles. In the final verse of Simeon’s song he proclaims that Jesus is [QUOTE] “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”
Not only will their child save Israel; their child will save the world. That shifts the narrative considerably. That’s not what this whole messiah-story has been about. The Jewish people need saving. They are the ones under continual persecution and tyranny. They are the ones who have no hope of gaining freedom. The story is about them—the Jewish people, their hopes, their dreams, their relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who delivers them from slavery in Egypt and from exile in Babylon. What, pray tell, does this promised messiah have to do with the Gentiles, with the people of other nations?
THAT is the good news in today’s story—the amazingly good news. The surprising good news. The astonishing, the astounding, the mind-bogglingly good news is that the glory of Israel will be revealed AND that God’s salvation will be revealed to the world. We are ALL now invited into communion with God and his people.
As Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians, our first reading for today, the fullness of time had come. This, THIS, is the meaning of all that had come before. “But when the fullness of time had come,” Paul writes, “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we”—that is, the Gentiles in Galatia to whom Paul is writing—“[so that we] might receive adoption as children.” Jesus indeed comes to deliver Israel, and by doing so ALSO delivers us. Jesus comes for his people, but in doing so we become his people as well. In the incarnation, God takes human form; God inhabits humanity. God does so in a particular way, by taking on the form of a first-century Jewish male infant, of the tribe of Judah and of the house of David. God’s salvation is localized, in one person. But by taking on human form God saves all of humanity.
We are saved because God came to save the Jews. Because Jesus taught his people to call God “Abba, Father,” we are adopted into that familial relationship—and we, too, may call God our father. And we get to enjoy the salvation that God brings into the world. This salvation is not primarily ours. The story, frankly, is about someone else. It’s about the Jewish people. But, praise God, we are characters in that story. We are included. God saves us, too. And that is some good news.