January 31, 2016

Allanah Church

The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple     Luke 2:22-40

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The Gospel reading begins with a bursting of newness on the scene. The infant Jesus is brought to the Temple by Mary and Joseph for circumcision and naming. Jesus begins life in a devout, law-keeping Jewish family. We are told that in this temple scene there is the merging of two rituals, purification after childbirth and presentation of a first born son, which was required in the Torah.

But this is also becoming a story about suffering. The prophet Simeon has been waiting for God to comfort Israel and the prophet Anna is in touch with the people who are waiting for the restoration Israel. They are both living in a world of patient hope where suffering has become a way of life.

The Gospel writer Luke wants his listeners to know that this infant Jesus is new hope is being revealed. Israel’s history is being lifted out of its suffering, but not only is this new hope for Israel alone but a light for all nations.

Simeon’s first response to the presentation of the infant Jesus is not to speak, but to take the baby in his arms. In receiving Jesus , Simeon is receiving the consolation of Israel. The exclamation of Simeon, is captured in this beautiful hymn we call the Nunc Dimittis, which we have used in evening prayer liturgies from the 4th Century onward. Simeon expresses his readiness to die because in seeing the Christ Child, Simeon perceives that he has seen God’s salvation.

Simeon’s song echoes the trust, hope and hope of the prophetic passages from Isaiah. At the end of the Book of Isaiah is a vision of a new creation that will deeply restore justice and bring comfort and consolation. God will enact something new.

Luke’s story now gathers his listeners into an alternative imagination. There has been suffering and a yearning and now there is radical amazement. Mary and Joseph are amazed. Something new is happening here and they too have to learn who Jesus is. Jesus is pictured here as the today of fulfilment of consolation and comfort for the suffering ones. Jesus comes now as the one who shares a vision of an alternate world in which those on the margins are now at the heart of his ministry, compassionate care to the outsider and a challenge to the dominant culture of his day. It is Jesus’s sustained concern for the suffering ones that connects Jesus ministry to those of the prophets of Israel, in particular to Elisha and Elijah.

There is a longing and a yearning that we hold in our hearts too. The dominant culture of our day cannot any longer be credibly sustained. We ask: can peace come on earth? Can justice prevail? What alternative hope can be imagined for our world as it is now? Has it all gone too far?

Today’s Gospel narrative gives voice to new possibilities both then and now. There is a clear, direct and important connection between the summons of the prophetic in the ancient texts and the contemporary practice of ministry now.

The prophetic voice still needs to call into question the ethos of those who hold the dominant power in our day. We can view this text in relation to Jesus as our new and living way. The one who challenged the dominant powers of his day because he took the suffering of the people seriously; the one who offered an alternate vision of a community whose core concern was justice-making compassion .

How do these ancient texts still speak to the shaping of who we are today… the shaping of our identity and development as a community of faith. We live with the ongoing tension of the Gospel narrative and the dominant narrative of our culture. We see the way parts of our world are becoming more and more dismantled, there are systemic forces at work, there is abuse of power, violence. We can feel overwhelmed, defeated, powerless, experience compassion fatigue and a failure of nerve.

Can these ancient texts shape our frame of reference today. Can they still energize us in our own context. Do they now seem irrelevant, ineffectual, hopelessly idealistic, a waste of time and energy? Indeed all of it could be nothing but a pious illusion if we did not have the accounts of how the alternate vision of Jesus radically reoriented the lives of his followers and others who encountered him, right through to this day.

The dominant culture has little future to offer. It has failed to provide comfort and consolation for the suffering ones, it has failed to provide well being, and sustenance for the many. People do not get helpless by themselves but are rendered helpless by unjust systems. Brueggemannn in his text “Prophetic Imagination” writes, “there is a remarkable depth of numbness in the dominant culture. It can manage charity and good intentions, but it has no way to resist solidarity with pain and suffering. Jesus had the capacity to give voice to the very hurt that had been muted, and therefore newness could come.” Newness comes from having the capacity to express pain, to give it voice, to have it heard and attended to. Only then does hope come.

The prophets imagined creating a new way where there seemed to be no new way. Jesus imagined a new alternative even where there seemed to be no hope. Imagination is the capacity to image a world beyond what we take as the established given. An ability to hold loosely what the world assumes and to walk into alternative contours of reality, which we have only in hint and trace. There is a sense of something more and something other.

In an excerpt from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, William Blake writes:

“The prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spake to them; and whether they did not think at the time, they would be misunderstood and so be the cause of imposition.

Isaiah answered. I saw no God nor heard any…as I was then persuaded and remain confirmed; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for the consequences but wrote.”

The Gospel story for today invites us to use our prophetic imagination, call upon our honest indignation, open our arms like Simeon with a receptivity to working towards ever new possibilities, in the midst of suffering and struggle, acknowledge our own vulnerabilities, our ambiguities, our own numbness.

Now, as always, it is the time to summon our deeply-rooted theological call to continue to be prophetic, to nurture and strengthen our commitment to the alternate vision of Jesus, to critique what it means to be a community of faith. To dare to acknowledge that Jesus is the revelation of hope here in our context.

Sources of reference:

Schweizer, Eduard, The Good News according to Luke

Edwards, James R. The Gospel According to Luke

Carroll, John T. Luke-A commentary

Linafelt, Tod and Beal, Timothy K. (editors) God in the Fray

Brueggemann, Walter. Deep Memory, exuberant hope

Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination