Endings and Beginnings

(Scriptures Isaiah 61:10-11, Isaiah 62:1-3, Galatians 4:4-7, Luke 2:21-40)

I’m sure, among the Christmas music that we’ve heard on the radio since about Halloween or so, you remember hearing John Lennon’s song that begins:

“And so this is Christmas, and what have we done?
Another year over, a new one just begun.”

This song, written in 1971 – when I was all of 10 years old - as a protest to the Vietnam war – remember the chorus – “War is over, if you want it” - has after 40 years faded into the background music while we shop at the mall. I guess almost anything can become background noise if we listen to it long enough. A song that 40 years ago had an edge to it, had a bite to it, after 40 years has seemingly had its teeth extracted and its dentures put in a glass to soak. Anything can become background noise if we listen to it long enough – and there’s a risk that our Gospel reading for this morning, which has great pathos, sudden shifts in feeling and mood, along with some sharp, jagged edges, can likewise fade into background noise, especially on this New Year’s morning, when perhaps it’s a bit harder than usual to focus. So I’d challenge us to pay special attention to our changing feelings as we consider this morning’s reading from the Gospel of St. Luke.

This morning’s reading gives us a poignant moment in the life of Mary and the baby Jesus. We’re told that in accordance to the requirements of the law – Luke is very particular about quoting the requirements, including Jesus’ circumcision on his 8th day – Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the Temple, to offer the prescribed sacrifice – a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. So far we’ve read about the law, about the fulfillment of prescribed religious observance, about Mary and Joseph doing their religious duty. And we all know what that feels like…doing one’s duty makes one feel….dutiful – sort of like sending in one’s tax return - but it doesn’t necessarily bring any great amount of joy or feeling of liberation, just the relief of having done what is expected and of avoiding criticism or even punishment for noncompliance – sort of like the relief we may feel when we drop our tax return off at the post office on April 15. Relief, but hardly refreshment.

As Mary and Joseph trudge their way to the Temple to do their duty, to do what’s expected, unexpected encounters ensue with two other people who were coming to the Temple that day. (And here’s one quick takeaway – no Sunday morning in church is ‘just another Sunday morning’ – there’s always the chance that God will find a way to surprise us.) Luke tells us that old Simeon, prompted by the Holy Spirit, was on his way to the Temple. Simeon’s path crossed that of Mary and Joseph, and all of a sudden he started gushing on and on and on some more about this baby whom he’d never laid eyes on before. “Now let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation.” Simeon had been told by God that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah – in Jewish rabbinical literature in use even to this day, there’s all manner of instruction as to where one will find the Messiah and how one will recognize the Messiah - and now Simeon recognized the Messiah, recognized that God’s promise was fulfilled. Simeon goes on, calling the child “a light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of God’s people Israel.”


A few more lyrics from John Lennon’s song:

“And so this is Christmas/ For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones/ The world is so wrong
And so Happy Christmas/ For black and for white
For yellow and red ones/ Let's stop all the fight”

We’re told that Simeon blesses the child, but it’s quite a cryptic blessing – Simeon says that the child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, calls the child a sign that will be opposed, revealing the inner thoughts of many – and warns Mary that a sword will pierce her heart as well. Mary’s heart was pierced with a sword more than once, when Jesus left his family behind to hang out at the Temple, when Jesus began his earthly ministry, certainly at the cross. And so we have pain in the midst of God’s blessing, God’s blessing in the midst of the world’s pain – a tension that Mary lived with, that Jesus certainly experienced in his earthly ministry – the state-sponsored execution of John, who had baptized him; misunderstanding by friends and foes alike, betrayal, desertion, his own state-sponsored execution on the cross. It’s a tension that we in the church live with as well, knowing that it is in our deepest moments of sorrow and desolation that God is nearest to us. God is there, and our pain is there in God’s presence. The pain is there, and God is present there in the midst of the pain.

As it is for us and as it was for John Lennon, so it was in Jesus time – “for weak and for strong, for rich and the poor ones, the world was and is so wrong. For black and for white, the yellow and red ones, there was and is a need to stop all the fight” Jesus was a threat to Herod, to Pilate, and Jesus remains a threat to the Herods and Pilates of our day, to the empires of our day, to the worldly powers that be. And for exactly that reason, Jesus remains a source of hope for those of us who, with Jesus, don’t march to the world’s beat, but march to the different drummer of the Spirit within our hearts. I’m reminded of these words of the Roman Catholic Trappist monk, mystic and writer Thomas Merton:

“Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room, His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, who are tortured, bombed, and exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in the world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst. . . . It is in these that He hides Himself, for whom there is no room.”
(Thomas Merton, “The Time of the End is the Time of No Room,”
in Raids on the Unspeakable, pp. 72-3)

Luke tells us that after Mary and Joseph part from Simeon, they have yet another divine encounter, with a prophet – a female prophet, let me underscore – “Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.” Luke tells us that

“She was of a great age, having lived with her husband for seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem."

For Herod, the birth of Jesus was bad news. But for aged Simeon, who had waited so faithfully for so long, and for aged Anna, who had been without a husband for so many years, vulnerable and increasingly frail with the passing of the years, the birth of the Christ-child was great good news – news that upset the status quo, literally earth-shaking (or at least society-shaking) news, but good news all the same. Sometimes having our cages rattled is a good thing, and having our prison doors opened is the best news of all. In a Christmas Eve service in 1978, the martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was gunned down in 1980 by a government hit squad while celebrating Mass, preached these words:

“No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need of God — for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God., Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit, there can be no abundance of God.”
Archbishop Oscar Romero, December 24, 1978,
in James Brockman, ed., the Church Is All of You

Our Gospel reading was a reading about endings and beginnings, the end of waiting for fulfillment of God’s promises for old Simeon and Anna, as they meet the Christ child at hils life’s beginning. Last night and today are days of endings and beginnings as well, as we say goodbye to the year 2011 and begin the year 2012. Forty years after John Lennon sang regarding the Vietnam war, “War is over, if you want it”, our troops have at long last ended another war, are at long last leaving Iraq. We will still have a diplomatic presence there, large enough to populate a sizable town actually, but at least on paper, this particular war is over – though other wars drag on elsewhere in the middle east. For many of us, whether we had loved ones in Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere, or not, it was a difficult year as we fought our own individual and family battles against grief, illness, unemployment, domestic upheaval, depression, deprivation, and as we say goodbye to 2011, we may be tempted to say “good riddance” as well. It may only be in retrospect, looking back months or years from now, that we understand where God was with us in our pain. And for many of us, 2012 will bring both new joys and new battles. May we remember that when we are in need, that is when God is most present with us, that when we feel most strongly our poverty of spirit, we can also know the abundance of God.

I’ll close with these lyrics from John Lennon:

A very merry Christmas And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one Without any fear

May we enter 2012 surrounded by that perfect love of God which casts out all fear, surrounded and filled with the presence of God with us, Emanuel. Amen.