"Light, Salvation, Glory...and a Sword?"

Preached Sunday, December 28, 2014 at Gregory Memorial Presbyterian Church in Prince George, VA

Text: Luke 2:22-40

Merry Christmas! Christ is born! Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad! "Glad tidings of comfort and joy,” “Peace on earth and goodwill to all people!” The songs the angels sing are still echoing in our hearts and world as we gather for worship this morning. For these last four weeks of Advent, we've been singing "O come O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel," and at long last, Emmanuel has come!

In our text today from Luke, we meet two faithful saints who have been waiting and crying out for Emmanuel alongside us. We meet the prophet Anna - a widow who lives in the Temple and spends her days and nights worshiping, fasting, and praying in anticipation of the redemption of Jerusalem. And we meet Simeon, a "righteous and devout" man who Luke tells us has been awaiting the "consolation of Israel".

That consolation that he has been waiting for takes on flesh and blood in the little child in the manger - Jesus Christ. The consolation for which Simeon has been waiting is the salvation that God promised through the prophet Isaiah. You remember, don't you, the opening words of Handel's Messiah? "Comfort, comfort ye my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term...every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill be made low?" I'll stop before I start singing. But the point is, we've all been waiting for the same salvation. And in our text today, in the dimming light of his old age, Simeon sees that the promise is fulfilled.

And, as often happens in the Bible, especially in Luke's Gospel, this glorious moment causes Simeon to burst into song! "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."

Mary and Joseph are amazed, and perhaps we are as well, that Simeon can say so much about a little baby. And then Simeon turns to Mary, looks into her eyes, and continues his prophecy: "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."

When I hear these words - I can't help it - a very clear image pops into my head. You may be familiar with it too. I think of "Debbie Downer," Rachel Dratch's famous Saturday Night Live character. The one who always interrupts a good time with a reminder of some deadly disease, world tragedy, horrific event from her past. I picture Debbie Downer listening as Simeon is singing about his joy at witnessing the Christ child: she steps in, throws a look at Mary, and says, "Yeah...this one...let me tell you, a sword will pierce your soul!" Wah-wah

It doesn't really seem fair, does it? Why, just after we finally get a glimpse of the manger, do we have to already look toward the cross? Our refrains of "Hark the Herald Angels Sings" are still echoing in the background when Simeon steps in and reminds us of the grief of Good Friday. Really, Simeon? Wah-wah.

Then again, I don't know, maybe I understand where Simeon is coming from. Maybe you do, too. Even amidst the joy of Christmas, it's hard for us to forget for too long that we live in a broken world. We need only turn on the news and hear about the deaths of black men like Michael Brown and Eric Garner, or of the two New York police officers recently murdered, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, or the terrorist attack on a school in Pakistan that killed 132 children. Our world knows what it means to have a sword pierce our soul.

Or maybe we don't even have to turn on the TV to remember those swords. For some of us, many of us, perhaps all we have to do is open our eyes and breathe in the courage to face another day, to remember the pain and the grief in our lives and the lives of those around us. There is a sadness, a darkness to life that can penetrate even our moments of greatest joy, celebration, and blessing.

I'm new to this place, a guest in your house of worship, but I have to look no further than the list of prayers and concerns, and to imagine the many more unspoken prayers in this room, to know that your souls, too, have been pierced.

Even as we stand around the manger and rejoice, we are people who have seen the cross who know what it means, like Mary, to weep outside of the tomb. Indeed, a sword will pierce Mary's soul, a sword that Biblical scholar Fred Craddock calls that "reversal of nature which carries in it a pain unlike any other": a mother will bury her child.

If you ask me, though, I think that sword may have begun to pierce Mary's soul long before that. Just a few chapters after we hear Simeon's prophecy, Luke's readers hear Jesus inaugurate his public ministry at a synagogue in his hometown, Nazareth. And they very people among whom he grew up will get so angry that they'll try to push him off a cliff.

Even before the cross, even before Jesus' passion and death, a sword will pierce Mary's soul as she watches her son grow and live into his call - his greater purpose as the Messiah, the Son of God - the one who will bring salvation by turning the world as we know it upside down.

Truth be told, if we listen closely to our text this morning, we can see that this little baby starts turning everything upside down even before Simeon tells Mary about that sword. Did you hear it, earlier in the text? It's easy to miss, to be sure.

But Simeon's prophecy about what it means that the Christ child has come into the world already begins to hint at this soul-piercing, topsy-turvy reality, this world turned upside down. When Simeon describes Jesus as God's salvation, he calls him, "a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel."

It may not sound like a big deal to us as Christians two thousand years later, but the order in which Simeon names these two parts of Jesus' mission - a light of revelation to the Gentiles and then glory for Israel - is actually rather subversive.

This reversal of the usual order would have been jarring and unsettling to Luke's first-century readers. Simeon, after all, is described as one of the most faithful of the Jewish people - the long-suffering people of God who have waited for and anticipated the Messiah for hundreds of years! And the Gentiles? That would include the Roman occupiers, wouldn't it? When those first-century Jewish people like Simeon, Anna, Mary, and Joseph, were crying out for Emmanuel to come and ransom captive Israel - well, they meant that word "captive" quite literally. By the time Luke put his Gospel into writing, the Jewish Temple in which this whole story takes place has been utterly destroyed by the Romans. And yet, here we have Simeon, rejoicing that this little baby has come as salvation and light for the Gentiles?

And we know, looking forward, that this little child Jesus will grow up and go on to cross many other social, religious, and political boundaries that will make everyone around him uncomfortable - and eventually lead to his crucifixion. He'll touch lepers, befriend Samaritans, sit down to eat with sinners of all kinds, extend salvation even to exploitative tax collectors like Zacchaeus and the criminal hanging next to him on the cross as he dies.

This salvation that Jesus brings is in no way "decent and in order." It crosses lines we've been told not to cross. It upsets a status quo that we've come to believe is just the way things are - and always will be. It messes with our assumptions of who is "in" and who is "out".

We still struggle with this today, don't we? The question of who is "in" and who is "out". Of how salvation is supposed to look and feel - and how it actually does.

I feel like I witness this struggle every time I open my eyes and look around. I think of the varied reactions across our nation to President Obama's recent executive order redefining the boundaries of who is "in" and who is "out" when it comes to undocumented immigrants. Or our own Presbyterian Church's continuing debate of what "in" and "out" means for LGBTQ people in the Church. Or the deep-seated racism and distrust that still exists in our communities, that we have seen erupt into protests in recent months. Or the places in our own individual lives where the Gospel works in a way that unsettles us, offends us, turns things upside down.

Sometimes, the sword that pierces our souls is one of grief and pain that the world into which God as Christ has come to dwell in human form remains so broken. Other times, that sword is one of discomfort - even anger - at the way that our God has chosen to save God's world and God's people - every last one of us - by turning the world as we know it upside down.

Jesus brings salvation and a sword; both are true, and that's ok. In the words, again, of Fred Craddock, "As much as we may wish to join the name of Jesus only to the positive, satisfying, and blessed in life, the inescapable fact is that anyone who turns on light creates shadows." Sometimes those shadows are places of deep pain, grief, and loneliness. And sometimes, the light of Christ shines on parts of our world and ourselves that we would rather not see.

I think the good news is that the angels keep singing. Christmas comes again, Christ comes again, every year - every day, really - into our broken world. Even as we experience grief and pain in our own lives, we still sing "Joy to the World", "Love has come!", "O tidings of comfort and joy!" Even as we look around us at a world that knows little peace, we hear those angels out in the shepherd's field, singing, "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth, goodwill to all people."

Maybe it's naive...escapist...a refusal to acknowledge the painful realities of life. Or maybe...it's a taste of salvation. The taste that caused Simeon to burst into song: "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace; for my eyes have seen your salvation!" Maybe it's how salvation begins, how Christ comes to us even "beneath life's crushing load" of our pain and grief; even in our suffering, violence-stricken world. Regardless, wherever we find ourselves, those angels never do seem to stop singing.

So rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.